Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre part 2

Ankit, my son-in-law had obtained an appointment with Dr. Doval, the Head of Oncology Medicine at RGCIRC for Monday. the 19th September201.I was to meet the doctor at 4:45pm in the OPD on the second floor of the building. However, Ankit had to leave for the USA on the 19th morning very  early. Now, I had  to be escorted to hospital by somebody else. If my wife would accompany me ,the entire household work  would come to a standstill.The solution was offered by an old friend Mrs. Sharma. She has been a friend for more than three decades.She said that she and her son, whose name is Ankit too, would go with me to the hospital. At the last minute, however, she dropped out saying that she was superstitious and that three persons should not go together. So  her son and I went  to the hospital, he coming to my house all the way from his own residence after driving  down some twenty five kilometres and then picking me up to take me to the hospital which must have been about forty kilometres from my residence.. He is a young boy and loves driving. So he took a route that was longer but familiar. We reached the hospital at 3:35 pm  and announced our arrival to the staff.They asked us to wait and  desired that we should  be paying the consultation fee. The girl at the counter asked us to deposit Rs. 242 as the fee. We had to argue again that I was a retired employee and that the transaction had to be on a credit basis.
Then came the hard part. We began waiting and it seemed that the wait would never end, for the doctor was not there even when the appointment time was long over. The staff, however, continued to ask us to wait and we continued doing that i.e.  waiting. At long last the doctor was spotted and after a few minutes we were able to enter his cabin at 6pm. Meanwhile, the junior doctor had already seen the blood report as also the CT and PET-CT review reports.While the blood report was normal, the review reports had voiced the same doubt i.e. there could be a recurrence of cancer.
Dr. Doval pored over the reports and looked somewhat confused. He sheepishly looked at me and said that unless it was confirmed that the cancer had recurred it would be risky to start chemotherapy especially as I had not been exposed to this as yet. He said that chemotherapy could nave many unintended harmful  side effects.He further stated that since I had no perceptible symptoms it would not be desirable to go ahead with the chemotherapy. He finally advised that I should see his colleague one Dr. Zaidi, the cancer  surgeon in the hospital. Dr. Doval referred the file to Dr. Zaidi and asked me to meet him.     .      Dr.    Zaidi was a serious looking person comparatively younger but  earnest. He looked at the PET-CT plate carefully and felt that it would not be easy to reach a needle to the place in the body where the PET-CT showed a possibility of the recurrence of the tumour. ( In the absence of PET-Ct report saying categorically that there was a recurrence, the confirmation that the cancer had come back could be done only by taking a tissue from the affected part by inserting a needle there). He, however, suggested that I should go to one Dr. Chaturvedi ,the Head of Radiology department to whom he was referring my file. He also said that perhaps, Dr. Chaturvedi might have left for the day and that I might be required to see him the following day. We took the reference to Dr. Chaturvedi's cabin only to be told at their reception office that Dr. Chaturvedi had left  for the day. We went back to Dr. Doval's cabin. He was busy with a patient and therefore. asked us to wait for a couple of minutes more. When we could finally meet him he repeated what he had told us before but asked us to see him the following day with the observations of Dr Chaturvedi on the reference from Dr.Zaidi.
We came home,this time taking a different route  which was shorter.