“Doctor, my wife is in your ward. Please discharge her from the hospital today” a man approached me while we were moving from one ward to another during rounds of all the wards. He looked poor. There was a child in his arms, its back towards me, its chin on his shoulder.
“What is the reason for you to take her away from here?” I asked him after I found out who his wife was and what she suffered from.
“I have a problem at home. There is no one to look after our child when I go to work.”
“We can discharge her at your request” I told him and we moved on with the round.
“That child had mongolism” our Associate Professor told me.
“I wonder if he has shown the child to any doctor” I said. “What about the baby she is carrying now? Has it been tested for mongolism?”
“No. I noticed the child just now. No tests have been done on her as yet.”
“Anyway her pregnancy is beyond 20 weeks, and a medical termination cannot be done” I said.
The man followed us to another ward, accompanied by another man who also wanted his wife discharged from that ward. This time I had a good look at the child in his arms. It did look like it had mongolism.
“Have you shown this child to any doctor?” I asked him.
“No.”
“The pediatric outpatient clinic is in the afternoon every day except Sunday” I said. “Take the child there.”
“Why?”
“We think it has a condition that requires treatment” I told him.
“The child eats, drinks, sleeps. Nothing is wrong with it” he said.
“The child may eat and drink all its life, but may not develop normally mentally. There could be other things wrong with it too. Meet a pediatrician. Nothing will be lost by doing that” I said.
He said nothing. ‘Just discharge my wife, don’t bother about this child’ his eyes seemed to say. I could not convince him more, because he did not want to be convinced. I hope he sees a pediatrician, and pray that the child the couple is expecting turns out to be normal. There seems to be nothing more that can be done.
