3 Deaths, 24 Hours

I had a great Diwali vacation at my village Paikmal in Bargarh district of Orissa till Wednesday, October 21, 2009. Everything was going fine till my aunt called me in the evening around 16:00. I had to rush my uncle to hospital as he was very sick.

The doctor in my village asked us to take my uncle to a bigger and better Hospital. They suggested us to take him to Veer Surendra Sai Medical College Hospital ( VSS ), Burla. VSS is the biggest and most popular hospital of western Orissa.

We reached VSS around 23:30. We went to the causality ward and 2 young doctors came and checked my uncle and around 2 we moved him to the general ward. We requested for a cabin but we were told that we can not get one, as the senior didi (nurses in Orissa are called didi and this didi was in charge of cabins) will not be coming till morning next day. When we reached General ward, we saw the hall was overflowing with too many patients and attendants. It was difficult to recognize the patients from the attendants. It looked more like a railway platform than a general ward in Hospital. Forget about getting a bed there, it was impossible to walk on that Big hall. The stretcher guy who got us there asked us to spread the bed sheet in the floor. Yes, there was not even a bed for my uncle. I and one of my uncles protested, asking for a bed. We said that the patient was in a serious condition -- Can't a bed be provided? One didi angrily replied, "There are many patients in the hospital who are surviving on Oxygen and we do not have bed for them. Who are you?" That is it; I said to myself – Son, this is the condition of hospitals in our country.

I had never seen a dead body very closely before that night. That night I saw 2 and next day I saw one. I was sitting with my uncle, my father was sleeping on a table with 3-4 other attendants. My three uncles were sitting with my uncle, along with me. Two doctors came to bed behind us, checked the patient and covered his face with the bed sheet. A few minutes before one of my uncle had told me that the patient had taken his last breath. The son and the daughter-in-law of the patient took the dead body out of the ward. They came back to wake up the dead man’s daughter who was sleeping. She did not understand what was going on. It seems they had not informed her about the tragedy. She gave a look to the bed where his father was being treated without finding him. She did not say a word but her eyes revealed that she knew what she had lost.

We were waiting for the night to pass. We all were very tired because of a long and tiring evening and night. We were heading out, frequently, for tea and bread in order to stay awake and energized. The hospital canteen was not open in the midnight. There was a small tea shop near the hospital gate and it was more than one mile from our ward. The person who was in charge of the hospital stretcher came to general ward to lift another dead body. The relatives of the dead person requested the stretcher guy to wait for few minutes as they were packing their belongings. The stretcher guy responded, rudely, "Make it fast, I have to go and pick up other bodies". He said, in an hour he picks around five bodies and he cannot wait even for few minutes. I realized that there is no sympathy for you even if you had lost a dear one.

It was early on the morning and our eyes were red like blood. My uncle finally got a bed, the one where the first patient had died. We asked for a bed sheet to one of the Didi because the one in which my uncle was sleeping was not in good shape. The Didi replied, "Why you can’t use the one we gave you last night". We showed her the bed sheet and then after some buttering she gave us a clean bed sheet. Just when we were shifting my uncle to bed, a very sick patient came. The patient was very old and sick. He was in such a bad shape that you could easily count number of bones on his chest. He was nothing more than a skeleton. The instance we saw him, we knew he is not going to survive more than few hours or even minutes. As it happened to us and many more patient there was no bed for even that dying patient. It seemed he was suffering from heart attack. The doctors came and gave him shock treatment. They put him on drip and left. After sometimes, I saw him and I knew he was not breathing anymore. I knew he was dead but I could not find a way to tell his relatives about this tragedy. But to our surprise the patient’s relatives were not aware of the same and they were trying everything possible to keep him alive. The doctors were coming and going but the relatives of the dead person did not bother them. The patient was dead and lying there for hours. I was attending my uncle in the afternoon with others. At that moment one of the most surprising things happened to me. I was very tired to keep my eyes open. Even a death body so near to me could not stop me from closing my eyes. After 4-5 hours of death of the patient one of the doctors came. Immediately he knew the patient is no more. He did CPR, knowing it won’t help. He declared the patient dead.

That day I realized the conditions of our hospitals. Yet, I do not know how we all can improve the condition in hospital or even what our dear politician can do for this. That day I realized while we were busy in our day to day life there are people dying of disease.