An open plea for a little compassion from doctors

Sun, 06/21/2009 11:51 AM  |  Headlines

My little brother dreamed of being a racing driver. We - the family - did no approve because we thought it too dangerous. So he went behind our backs and won several local competitions in Sumatra.

We still did not approve and sent him away to Jakarta. To our relief, he shifted to body building until one unfortunate morning he fell from his bike on a slippery corner and broke his arm near the elbow. With the broken arm went the broken dreams.

My mother brought him to traditional healers but there was no recovery. Eventually she brought him to a hospital in Malacca and the doctor fixed his arm easily with a pin. The doctor assured him that he would recover in one to two years and by that time, the pin holding together not only his broken bones but also his shattered hopes could easily be removed through surgery.

One year on, he started feeling dejected about his life and itching to get back into racing. After much tears and consideration, my parents started seeing the reality - that they must let him be a racer.

The first thing they had to do was to buy time to let his arm heal. Two weeks ago, however, he could wait no more. He announced that he was going to join a race. We were taken aback but there seemed no stopping him. The only realistic thing to do was to have the arm checked and the pin taken out.

I called a hospital to book an appointment for the next evening so that my brother could go straight there from work - hungry and tired, but excited. We waited and waited.

The doctor was supposed to be there at 6.30 but was stuck in Jakarta traffic. When the clock hit eight, the time the radiology department would close, I saw no point in waiting any longer.

We came back the next afternoon to see a different doctor and ensured plenty of time for the x-ray. It was the right move. When the clock hit 1.30 p.m., again the nurse announced the doctor had called to say he was having a meeting at East Jakarta, while we were in Tangerang..

We eventually got our turn around three hours later and told the doctor the situation. He checked my brother's arm and quickly saw the pin. He was friendly and seemed capable. We asked if it was possible to get my brother off the hook so that he could race. He asked us to go for an x-ray and we came back.

So far so good - until he paused soon after and said "You sure you wanted surgery right?"

"Yes," we answered eagerly.

He said we could just go for the x-ray, bring the result home and hand it in to the hospital officer in the morning of the surgery, scheduled three days later. I felt rather uncomfortable with the arrangement but he seemed confident with his judgment and quickly wrote us the necessary papers to get our price quotation. My brother was uncomfortable so we rescheduled it to two weeks later.

Off we went - my brother for his x-ray, and I for the price of the surgery. Apparently, the cost of day surgery amounted to more than what we paid for a three-day hospital invoice in Malacca. Too expensive? After the x-ray, we looked at each other.

"How can the doctor only see the result on the day of surgery? Let's show him the result anyway." I exclaimed to him.

The doctor saw us and said "oh it's you again" without being unfriendly. We were relieved because we did not want to annoy him. He then put the x-ray against the light and then seemed rather disturbed.

"Oh, it's not recovered yet. You can see the line here," he said pointing to a line on the picture of the bone. He quickly retrieved the reference he wrote and asked us to came back to check it out again six months later. My brother was very disappointed about the delay, but of course, it was the proper action to take.

However, the scary thing was that had we taken the doctor's advice in the first place and agreed with his false confidence and carelessness, my brother would have gone straight into surgery. The doctor, of course, would see the result before the surgery. But, what would he have done then? Would he have stopped the surgery and admitted he made a mistake scheduling it? Or would he have gone ahead with surgery knowing that my brother's arm might break again soon afterwards?

I shuddered when I left. I could not imagine what would become of my brother should his arm be broken again. Would the little light at the end of the tunnel down which he was traveling be extinguished?

I felt disbelief but I could only rationalize why the doctor made the careless decision to skip checking our result until the day of surgery. He was so busy. He had meetings before his appointment with us and was due to perform surgery immediately after. Understandably, he was anxious to finish dealing with the seven or more patients due to see him.

However, I plead with the doctor and all the doctors out there. Please understand that what you mend, cure, fix, attend to - whatever cool verb is used by the profession - is not only an arm, a brain, the measles, a heart, but a son, a daughter, a father, a mother, a dream or even the very reason to be alive.

In your hands lay the future of the patients and everyone related to them. You have huge power, and with it huge responsibility. Please have a heart.

- Mariani Dewi

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