" Doctor साहब आप भगवान् हो " . He said.......

Doctor साहब आप भगवान् हो, बाकी सब यह नेता वेता लोग बेकार हैं..यह कोई भगवान् नहीं .

These are words spoken by a man in a general ward to a resident doctor as the doctor wrote in his medical terminology to provide a bed to the patient in a well known govt. medical institute in lucknow as I was standing just metres away with the same dilemma… the hunt for an empty hospital bed for my mother.

Whats the story you may or may not ask, so here is a short detail about it....

My mother had suffered a brain haemorrhage due to very high bp some 5 months back. When she went to the hospital with her medical report of the test, she suffered a panic attack in the OPD and her bp went through the roof. The slight curving of the mouth due to the paralytic attack and slurrying speech as she tried to talk. The doctors advised my father for admission so that she can be put on drips to control the bp. I was in another city in my office. The moment the call came that she had to be hospitalised, I rushed back immediately all the while hoping that it remains stable in the 2 hours it would take me to catch a taxi and head home.

My adrenaline went into pure combat mode. I was asked to head home instead as there was no bed available there and an acquaintance was meanwhile trying to see if he could find any there. Although we were given the option to have her admitted anywhere we could find a bed, we chose to decline as wanted her to be treated by the doctors who had witnessed her condition first hand.

Reaching home, I immediately left for the hospital and carrying her medical card I caught up with the acquaintance. He had no luck since hours. There was no bed  in pvt. ward available, no general even. I myself begged with the HOD , even the director of the institute for the same but they were also helpless against non availability. This was all despite the fact that the OPD doctor had written in the medical card that she needed to be admitted. All this while I was alone in the hospital. Next I went inside the Neuro General ward and stood at one place, trying to catch sight of any empty bed I could see. I talked to 1-2 resident doctors at that time and told them my issue but to no avail. After 5 mins a RD came into the ward and saw me holding the colour coded card and inquired. I told him. As he was south indian, he could speak handful of hindi but to expect him to understand everything was a tough thing. He told me to wait and see. My other instinct told me to abandon the idea, call home and tell them to look into any other hospital but I was so tired off all this the whole day that my mind refused to think at all. I stood there rooted to the ground.

There was no empty bed in the 30+ I could see. Just then I saw a man come up to the same RD along with his friend with some reports and he too had the same request- a bed for his mother. He was from a rural area. The RD was trying to gauge the medical history of the patient from him but hindi was proving to be a bit of barrier so I decided to help the doc and translate for him all the info he needed in English.

“डॉक्टर साहब, एक बेड का सवाल है. बहुत दूर से आये हैं, हालत खराब है. आप जो कहियेगा मैं करूँगा, आपके पैर पड़ता हूँ. आपका ही सहारा है”.

He had the same despair as me. I could try another hospital which was far from my home, but he didn’t have that option. When the RD completed all the papers and wrote that a bed maybe allotted , the man with tears in his eyes said, “डॉक्टर साहब आप भगवान् हो, बाकी सब यह नेता वेता लोग बेकार हैं..यह कोई भगवान् नहीं. भगवान् सिर्फ डॉक्टर होता है ”. I don’t know what prompted him to bring a politician in the pic but I guessed the true nature of any politician must have come into the fore who might have promised him his clout at the time of vote begging.

In the next 2 mins, a patient file came for discharge formalities at the nursing station and before I could blink, the RD turned around to me, wrote the same bed number on the card. I don’t know what I felt then – relief, exhaustion.. I had gone too numb now. That whole fiasco ended for me at 1 am in the night when I returned home leaving my father at the hospital for the night.

The one line said by that UP wale bhaiya or my dilemma reaffirmed our thinking that in times of medical needs, a doc is the person we look upto first. They do everything in their power to see a patient recover. Its just that the medical infra in this country needs a lot to be desired and is never on the agenda of any politician.

On that note, don’t take covid lightly and never believe any politician who says that any version of covid is light. It can take lives in an instance and has taken quite a few of the ones I once knew. Politician talk is just for garnering votes, nothing more.