Sunday 9 October 2011

AIIMS

Shri Santosh Sharma had made valiant efforts to get me an appointment with a cancer specialist at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He made Shri Rao, a joint secretary in the Union Health Ministry, to speak to one Mr. Rakesh who was the personal secretary to the Director of the Institute. I visited the Institute on a Thursday to request Mr. Rakesh  to arrange a meeting with Dr. Rath., the head of cancer department there. Rakesh informed me that both Dr. Rath and Dr. Julka, his second in command had gone out of the country to attend a conference and that they would be available only on the 7th of October at the earliest. He suggested that I should get in touch with him on telephone on the 5th to ascertain whether Dr. Rath would indeed be available on the 7th for consultation.On the 5th October when I spoke to him on telephone he asked me to call him on the 7th of October. When I called him on the 7th October he was kind enough to speak to Dr. Rath on intercom and get him agree to see me  at 10am on the 8th of October which would be a Saturday. I then requested Ankit and Lipika to depute their driver to drive me to the hospital. The driver was supposed to have come  to my residence at 8am on the 8th October. My wife and I had planned first to visit the Hanuman temple before going to the Institute. However, since the driver came around 9am and we did not want to miss the appointment with Dr. Rath we decided to go to the hospital first. The driver took the Barapulla overbridge and we reached the office gate of Dr. Rath at 9:25 am. The man at the gate informed us that Dr. Rath was not in the office and his secretary too had not arrived and that he could not let us in unless either of them was present in the office. I scribbled my name on a slip of paper and the fact that I had an appointment with the good doctor at 10 am.We then called the driver to reach the same spot where he had earlier dropped us  and we then directed him to take us to the Hanuman temple.
After returning from the temple, we came back to the Institute. It was 11o' clock. Dr.Rath was still not in his office. His secretary therefore asked us to wait and arranged to seat us in what was perhaps a pantry. After what appeared an interminable wait, a young doctor came to where we were sitting and asked us to gve him our papers. His young age betrayed that he could not be Dr. Rath who being the head of the department should be  at least in his fifties, which the doctor in our room certainly was not. He disappeared for a short while and when he returned he was accompanied by Dr. Rath who however did not enter the pantry. I walked up to him and tried to convey to him what my problem was. He was a cheerful person but told me that he was sending his man the young doctor with me to his colleague Dr. Julka who was the expert in the field.According to him, the subject was his concern, and therefore I should go to him.On being asked whether he was not a surgeon he answered in the negative. I was disappointed because I had earlier met Dr. Julka on two occasions and my assessment was that the person was not sincere. Anyway, the young doctor, whose name, as we discovered later, was Dr. Harish took us to where Dr. Julka was seeing the patients. Breaking the queue the young doctor placed my PET-CT report before Dr. Julka and waited for the pearls of wisdom from his mouth to drop. Dr. Julka never had a look at the PET-CT plate but went over the concluding part of the written report and stated in no uncertain terms that there was a definite requirement of not only radio but chemo therapy too.He said he did not give much importance to the FNAC test result which had indicated that there was no cancer in the region that was  shown in the PET-CT as carrying a recurrent tumour. Dr. harish then explained to us what further we were required to do .There would be five weeks of radiotherapy, five days a week and there would be chemotherapy too. My wife and I were shattered. We told him that we would decide and then inform him soon.
On 9th Oct. which was a Sunday, I telephoned Dr. Zaidi of RGCI&RC and asked him how much reliable the FNAC test was. He said it was 99% reliable. I further asked him that since he had seen the hard copy of the test  result whether he could confirm that the test was conducted correctly. He did but a doubt continues to linger in my mind.

1 comment:

  1. We're looking for kidney donors for the sum of $500,000,00, For more details,Email: donyahockett2018@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete