A few hospital stories

Many of the patients we run across have fascinating stories behind them. There is no shortage of people suffering in situations that are hard to imagine, yet there are also stories of hope--stories that seem to make working in a hospital much more worthwhile. I thought I'd share a few of them.

When doing rounds, we met a woman with her daughter. When her daughter was born, she was feeding her when a piece of paper caught fire and flew into the baby's face. Having been burned on the cheek, the mother took her child into the hospital to have the plastic surgery performed. When the baby got there, they underwent cosmetic surgery to fix her cheek. The mother also asked Dr. Joshi to do a check-up on the baby at the same time. What they found was that the baby had severe, life-threatening jaundice. In addition, the baby had severe liver failure, which of course required a liver transplant. In India, transplants from a cadaver are illegal, so the liver transplant had to be done by the mother. The mother and daughter went to Bangalore and they successfully performed a partial liver transplant from the mother to the daughter. Today the daughter is perfectly normal, and the mother continues to have a smile on her face.

Other stories are not quite as uplifting. It's admirable to see the lengths parents will go to save their children. Yet here in India, there is still a sense of male superiority. One father had brought his son into the hospital to get treatment. We interviewed him and asked if the treatment would be a financial hardship. He said that it would be, but that it would be worth it because he's a boy. He went on to say that he wouldn't have brought a daughter to a private hospital, but would have taken them to a government hospital (where while treatment is free, the quality of care is abysmal). In India there is a huge emphasis on carrying on the family name, especially among the lower classes. Parents have lost their jobs and emptied their life's savings in order to get their children treated. The good thing is that most of the children end up doing very well.

Payment in India is also a bit different. Only the wealthy have any sort of medical insurance, so families often have to dig deep into savings. The first child has traditionally been the financial responsibility of the mother's parents (perhaps another reason why women are not prized here--they end up being a lot costlier than sons). Often the family will have to ask relatives for money, which nearly always will be paid back (at much lower interest rates than a bank loan would be). Each family has its own financial responsibility, and among sustenance farmers whose monthly income is usually around a few hundred rupees (i.e., just a few dollars a month), they just simply cannot afford to be paying for someone else's health care.

Our project has allowed us to get to hear some very personal stories from the different patients. One girl was born to a family, and right after delivery had some sort of respiratory distress. Unfortunately, the hospital where the baby was born did not have the facilities to treat the child, so the child came to DMH. By the time the baby got to DMH, there was a high chance of suffering severe brain damage. The baby spent several days in the hospital and was improving, but the parents weren't so sure. Both of them had disabilities, and in the end they just weren't willing to take the risk of raising a severely disabled child. They cut off support for the girl and she died. Fortunately, for every child that doesn't make it, there are ten others that do make it. Often Donna and I are disappointed when a patient has been discharged before we are able to interview the parents, but on the other hand, a discharge means that the patient is well enough to go home. How can you better quantify success?