{"id":179080,"date":"2017-06-25T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T18:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=179080"},"modified":"2017-06-27T23:59:04","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T18:29:04","slug":"a-hell-of-a-ward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-hell-of-a-ward\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hell Of A Ward!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Emil van der Poorten<\/a> \u2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Emil van der Poorten<\/p><\/div>\n

I have, from time to time, when writing about other issues, dropped in \u201cvignettes\u201d from my time in a Provincial facility designated as a \u201cTeaching Hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those remarks made in passing have not been complimentary and might I say at the outset of this piece, that the criticisms I have made were understatements rather than hyperbole. The same goes for what follows.<\/span><\/p>\n

Very nearly a year has passed since what I am about to recount unfolded and, certainly, what I am about to commit to this column is after sober second thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

Early in 2016 at the direction of my Cardiologist, I channeled a person who, I was given to understand, was the only one practicing as a Cardiac Electro Physiologist in town. I will describe this person hereafter as CEP #1.\u00a0<\/span>I was directed to have a Holter monitoring device fitted, which, to put it simply, provides a 24-hour long Electro Cardiograph.\u00a0 <\/span>Despite the inconvenience of driving into town on two successive evenings, the first to be fitted with the device and the second to have it taken off twenty-four hours after its installation and for the results to be provided to the consultant. I did so.\u00a0<\/span>There is another little tale attached to that adventure with the fitting, taking-off and results analysis but it can wait for another day!<\/span><\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, I \u201cchanneled\u201d CEP #1 to provide an expert analysis of the results and make appropriate recommendations to my cardiologist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thanks to a memory that, as I approach the four-score mark leaves something to be desired, I forgot to take the document when I saw this consultant!\u00a0<\/span>I was summarily booted out of the consultation chambers no sooner this error was discovered!\u00a0 <\/span>In retrospect, there was enough time left when my omission was discovered to have asked me to go home and bring the document to the consultant before the clinic time ended.\u00a0 <\/span>But that is hindsight!<\/span><\/p>\n

A little chagrined I reported (by SMS ) the state of affairs to my Consultant who I was scheduled to see in a day or so because he was leaving the country for a conference of some kind. To my query as to what could be done in the circumstances, I had a one-word reply – \u201cColombo.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Despite my limited internet skills, I found a Cardiac Electro Physiologist and travelled down to Colombo at the crack of dawn the next day having \u201ce-channeled\u201d him and having obtained the services of a driver to take me to the capital city, my own physical condition precluding my steering a vehicle for such a long distance \u2013 better than a hundred kilometers each way.<\/span><\/p>\n

A very pleasant surprise awaited me! A doctor in the same specialty – CEP #2 for purposes of this discussion – as the one who had turfed me from the consultation room in the hill capital, spent about three-quarters of an hour explaining what ailed me and my future prospects in that regard.\u00a0<\/span>He also gave me a letter of introduction to another Cardiac Electro Physiologist in the same town.<\/span><\/p>\n

On my return, I saw my cardiologist and then channeled the doctor to whom I\u2019d been given a letter of introduction, for purposes of this narrative CEP #3. My subsequent visits to him suggested that there were <\/b>doctors to whom the Hippocratic Oath did<\/b> matter!<\/span><\/p>\n

Alas, he was transferred to another hospital far, far away, but was considerate enough to give me the name of yet another specialist in his field in the same jurisdiction, CEP #4 for purposes of this discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another good relationship had to be terminated as that doctor, too, was transferred to the capital city!<\/span><\/p>\n

I now had no choice but to return to CEP #1!<\/span><\/p>\n

Another \u201cHolter\u201d was the first outcome.\u00a0 <\/span>Then the determination that I should have a Pacemaker installed followed. I was informed that this was a very simple procedure, did not require operating theatre facilities and would be done by the man seated before me in CEP #1\u2019s Consulting Room.\u00a0 <\/span>A side bar here: I have never, in my better than three-score-and-ten years on this earth, ever had two doctors for the price of one in the same consultation room unless it was to share complementary expertise over very difficult problems!\u00a0 <\/span>And that is in three continents! However, it was subsequently told that CEP #1 had a health condition that precluded anything even as physically non-taxing as a pacemaker installation.\u00a0<\/span>Looking at the minion in the room I inquired, only half facetiously, \u201cDoes he know how?\u201d The huffy response was that he had done \u201cmany dozens,\u201d if I remember right, of these implantations successfully. I had a vague feeling of unease, but who am I, a mere layman, to dispute the opinion of a specialist in the cardiac field?<\/span><\/p>\n

The next step was the purchase of a Pacemaker at a cost of approximately Rs. 300,000. There went another term deposit! This had quite a rigmarole attached to it and required yet another trip to town for the purpose.<\/span><\/p>\n

Done, and now the big day dawned!<\/span><\/p>\n

I went down to the Teaching Hospital and registered myself in the appropriate ward and the process of preparation for the procedure began.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the uninitiated, a Pacemaker is little bigger than a matchbox, if that, and requires an appropriate-sized incision on either one\u2019s left or right pectoral muscle to insert it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The nightmare began when an attendant very brusquely informed me that I should have shaved my entire body before I came to hospital. I hadn\u2019t because I hadn\u2019t been told to do any such thing. My neighbor, a young soldier who was the other patient awaiting the same procedure that day, offered his brand new disposable razor and a new, unopened blade for the purpose.\u00a0 <\/span>The attendant rejected the offer and wheeled me in a gurney into a toilet facility that didn\u2019t exactly epitomize cleanliness. In the area adjacent to the toilets and where the wash basins were located were broken-down wheelchairs and other unserviceable flotsam and jetsam.\u00a0 <\/span>This is where the shaving procedure took place.<\/span><\/p>\n

He proceeded to shave my entire body, holding the razor blade between his fingers.\u00a0<\/span>Considering what was being done and the tools employed, and given the fact that this was the 21<\/span>st<\/sup><\/span> Century, he did a marvelous job, only nicking me once!<\/span><\/p>\n

The description of this procedure would not be complete without reference to the fact that I was subjected to a barrage of questions as to my ethnic origin, with seeming disbelief about the fact that I was born and raised in Sri Lanka.\u00a0 <\/span>I insisted on conversing with the man in my more than passable Sinhalese and told the man that I was born in Tumpane, raised in Harispattuwa and educated in Kandy.\u00a0<\/span>I only make reference to this because at one point of the shaving procedure he was asking me, quite aggressively, whether I was a Muslim. That was distasteful enough, but the added, scary, dimension was that he had in his grasp, as he asked the question, a part of my anatomy which, given the circumstances and his being in control of a very sharp cutting tool, could have had me walking out able to pass for an adherent of Islam!<\/span><\/p>\n

Ah, well, at this time of one\u2019s life one tends to charge that to experience!<\/span><\/p>\n

– More to follow in a future instalment (or instalments?)-<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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