Burns patient seeks refuge

Mr. K. Karim, an Indonesian patient from Medan, passed through the door and walked slowly to the nearest couch. His wife held his hand. He was tightly bound in bandages from his left shoulder to the arm. The light on Ampang Putri Hospital’s suit room that Monday radiated as he sat with a solemn smile.

Uncertain at fi rst, he soon told The Jakarta Post the story of his medical journey from Medan to Kuala Lumpur. “There was an explosion in the bakery I inherited from my father, burning my left hand and foot completely. I thought I’d die,” he started.

It happened in Aug. 24, 2007, and immediately after the accident his staff took him to a nearby hospital, which transported him to one of the major hospitals in Medan.

“So I was there. At fi rst, I thought they were treating my wounds properly, but things were not getting better. Every two days for 23 days they washed my wounds, dried them and changed the bandages. I was given no medication, all they gave me was saline solution intravenously,” he recalled.

His wife recalled how he would try to bear the pain every time they changed the bandages. “His burned skin would bleed and his fl esh almost seemed to melt away, disintegrate. Throughout the surface of his leg and hand was blood, and every time they removed the bandages, my husband would pass out. They didn’t even give him a pain killer,” recalled his wife.

Some of us may have had visions of a murder scene in a horror movie, but none of us talked.

“A friend fi nally suggested a doctor he knew in this hospital, and we made arrangements to come. But we should have known that things would not go as smoothly as we thought,” said the 58-year-old Karim.

The hospital refused to discharge him, saying he could not go unless accompanied by a doctor. And when a doctor fi nally agreed to accompany him, the couple felt they were being made to suffer for going elsewhere.

“They refused to bandage my wounds. Bandaging consisted of three pieces of white cloth but they refused to give them to me. I suffered there for 23 days, spending more than Rp 90 million, and they wouldn’t even bandage my bleeding flesh.”

To make the story short, they paid a Rp 300,000 deposit for the bandages and fl ew immediately to Kuala Lumpur. “The doctors here are professionals. They’re treating me
with medication and are very patient.”

Karim stayed for two months in Ampang Putri, he returned home for a month and now he’s ready to get shots for his burns. “They’re second degree burns and require regular shots and skin grafts. It will take a long time to fully heal, but at least I’m healing,” he said.

Is the whole procedure expensive? “Well, considering the money I wasted on all those painful days in Medan, the cost for treatment in this hospital is definitely worth it.”

-- JP/Er Audy Zandri