Quiet. Too quiet.
I know I’ve kept silent for a good long while.
Part of the reason for that had to do with a little adventure I had back in July. My lungs, for reasons known only to themselves and [insert name of higher power here], decided to no longer play well with others, and quit doing the whole process-oxygen-in-a-timely-manner thing.
For those of you following along from the States, know that the whole Indian hospital experience is definitely a “kids, don’t try this at home” style of activity. As a bonus, getting to the Indian hospital is a whole separate “adults, you must be this high to take this ride” experience. “Ambulances” here are basically a taxi service to transfer people between diagnostic labs, clinics, and hospitals, but aren’t available for emergency services. So for emergency transport, you call a friend with a vehicle, and hope they’re home. Or a taxi. The drive from Rewalsar to Mandi is, at the best of times, 45 minutes or more of scary mountain driving. The somewhat nervous taxi driver attempted to drive slowly so as not to jostle the sick Western lady, and it took a little bit of hypoxic yelling to explain the need for speed. After which the hills and valleys fairly flew by.
So, the hospital. Ya know those emergency room scenes like on Grey’s Anatomy, or House, or whatever, where the sicko du jour speeds in on a gurney, and oodles of medical professionals pop out of nowhere with all sorts of arcane equipment at the ready? Yeah, well, about that…in a remote Indian hospital, that all fails to happen, pretty much. What did happen is the taxi driver and a friend dragged me up the stairs into the trauma department–the local term for the ER–where a gentleman was prepared as could be with….um…pen, notebook, and stethoscope.
Editrix’ note: Some time after getting out of the hospital, I learned that in the ER doctor’s opinion, if I had waited one more hour to come to the hospital, I might not have made it. How long does it take to drive from Rewalsar to Mandi again?
A good friend stood by and translated my wheeze-filled symptom descriptions into proper Hindi. During the intake, a woman in street clothes marched into the room with an uncapped syringe, and attempted to inject me. Doctors, it turns out, don’t necessarily wear white coats or uniforms, although the “behaniya” (”sisters,” referring to nurses and female medical assistants) wear coats and uniform salwar suits. There was a tense couple of minutes while I got the newcomer to understand that doctor or no, she wasn’t injecting me without telling me what was in the needle. That settled, I finally allowed the injection, and a few minutes later was admitted.
My hospital room was downstairs. Elevator? What elevator? Good thing I arrived with enough muscle to transport me down the stairs to my bed…
The two most important things to know about Indian hospitals are:
- You play, you pay. The whole nightmarish American healthcare model–where a worker comes in to check on your health insurance and your ability to pay as soon as you’re in the door–gets replaced by a much simpler scenario where you get only the health care you can pay for directly.
- You never go to a hospital by yourself. Always take along a “looker-after,” someone to see to your meals and chase down a nurse if you need something.
That second rule doesn’t sound like much, but it actually means all the difference between getting better, and, well….not. In an Indian hospital, the basic assumption is that you can do stuff on your own if you don’t have a handler standing by. My first morning in the hospital, a lady bounced in to tell me my medications were waiting for me in the pharmacy, two floors up. All I had to do was walk up two flights of stairs to retrieve them.
I looked at her, looked at the IV dripping high-velocity antibiotics into my arm, looked at the oxygen feed tethering me to the wall behind my bed, and shook my head.
My visitor repeated her good news about the meds, and looked at me expectantly.
I shook my head again, and explained in my horrible but by now somewhat passable Hindi that a trip two floors up to the pharmacy would not be happening soon.
Finally, my medical messenger seemed to see the IV and the oxygen feed for the first time, and reluctantly allowed as how she might have the meds brought to my room.
Later I discovered meals could be ordered from the hospital canteen, only three flights up.
About a couple hours after this, a man cheerfully entered my room, to inform me that I needed to get an X-ray, one flight of stairs up. “Chello! (”Let’s go!”) It’s time for your X-ray!” No amount of polite refusals or pointing at the oxygen and IV feeds could dissuade this man, so up I got. After taking about five minutes to walk from my bed to a meter or so down the hallway, my X-ray escort asked me if I wanted a chair.
I agreed instantly, thinking he meant a wheelchair. Silly me. This is India, so the x-ray guy literally meant a chair–one of the plastic ones good for indoors or out. Once seated, three other guys were drafted into carrying me up the narrow flight of stairs and into the X-ray lab.
By the time I was carried back to my room, Chinta (our current bhi-bhi) had finally arrived to act as my looker-after. For the next four days, she slept in the room with me, chased after nurses whenever my breathing went south, fetched in food, water, and the very occasional chai, helped me wash, and basically acted as my legs within the hospital.
I suppose I should mention the occasional power outage, which would instantly shut off the flow of oxygen from the machine in the wall…fortunately the hospital did have its own generator for such magic moments. Just outside my room was some loud machinery or some such that ran noisily and randomly at odd hours. This being India, I found the noise reassuring, because as long as I could hear it, I knew the neighborhood had electricity.
When I finally got discharged, as is the Indian custom, I bought sweets for the behaniya, medical assistants, x-ray techs, chief doctor, and other folks who helped me fail to die while in the hospital.
The month of August was spent taking more antibiotics, and not moving around much. The worst thing about being that sick was the combination of boredom and cabin fever. Looking at the same four walls for a solid month, with only the occasional bathroom or kitchen break, was so boring that any reason to take a trip out of the house was welcomed as a major expedition. My first trip to town on my own feet took forever as I negotiated the rocky footpath, but it was worth it to be back in town and hoisting cups of chai again. It was only recently that I got back into the routine of going to town on my own.
So yes: much better thank you. To the list of prayers recited during kora I’ve added one extra one along the lines of, “Can we not do that again, any time soon?”
