My Heart Bled

I guess I have seen so much pain and suffering in my 29 years as a doctor, that pain and suffering would not touch my heart again as it does a non-medico’s heart. But they do. I have seen so much trouble added to suffering of poor patients by neglect of duty by those employed for that express purpose, that I thought nothing would hurt me any more. But I was wrong. It is usual practice to send blood samples to the laboratory in the hands of patients’ relatives that it may be put down as standard operative procedure (SOP) on the website of different departments. A few days ago I was sitting in my office when I happened to glance up from my work and happened to see a very old man shuffling towards the laboratory just beyond my office. He had a small bottle with blood in it, and a form of request for a blood test. There was something in the way he carried himself, bent with age but still proud and moving with a purpose. I left my work, got up, and went out. I stopped him and asked him, “What do you want, Sir?” “I am taking this blood sample to the laboratory” he said. “Did they not have any servants in the ward?” I asked. I knew there were servants in all of my wards, but their physical presence did not guarantee they worked as required. “I don’t know,” he said. “The nurse said it was urgent, so I brought it myself. It is my daughter’s. She is in labor.” Since he had reached the laboratory, I did not stop him. After all, he was a father trying to do his best for his daughter who seemed to have some emergency, and delaying him would trouble him further. He went into the laboratory, while I rang up the ward and asked the nurse why she had sent the old man with the blood sample. “Sir, we have only one servant. The sweeper is absent for last one week. The servant has gone to the laundry to get linen.” I had no solution to the problem of servants not reporting to duty, servants not being sent in place of absent servants, and servants on duty not doing their best at all times. I had no administrative control on them, and our complaints were not addressed by those who had these powers. The Dean who was in office that time had wisely shook head and said ‘yes, something must be done about the servant problem’ has superannuated and used this stepping stone to go even higher. I have not been able to get the old man out of my mind ever since, and thought there could not be anything worse than that. I was wrong again. Today I was rushing to a meeting, when I found a middle aged woman limping horribly while pushing a wheelchair. There was a sick man on the wheelchair, probably her son. She was taking him along the long corridor somewhere, probably back to his ward after getting a radiograph or ECG done. Every step of the way seemed to be painful for her, and still she was hurrying as much as she could. Perhaps he was due for some sort of treatment and it was already late. I wanted to stop her and push the wheelchair, but I had no time. And how many wheelchairs would I push every day? I wondered where the servant of the concerned ward was, and what he or she was doing. I also thought the patients’ relatives were not complaining because they at least had stretchers on trolleys and wheelchairs to move their patients, or they would have to carry them on their shoulders or backs to wherever.