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Saturday, July 15, 2006
[Full circle...]
I talked about my grandma in a recent post (2nd half of that post). She's been admitted to the hospital, and we visited her today.
Apparently it wasn't as bad as we first thought. Due to some mis-communication, we were lead to believe that she broke her hip in two places and one of them "slipped". As it turns out, all she had were fractures (and nothing slipped). In a normal person, they should heal by themselves, no problem. But in a 92-year old, it takes longer.
My grandma has a peculiar habit. She won't sleep on her back, only on her sides. She fractured both sides of her hip when she fell down last month, the left side being more serious. So she couldn't sleep on her left side, only on her right. She's bedridden until the bones heal (which would take exceptionally long due to her age), and sleeps almost 20 hours a day. As time went by, the right side of her leg started to swell, and she had to be admitted for the doctors to insert something into her leg to ease the blood-flow.
There were two things that happened in this whole episode. I shall talk about the funny one first. The second one....Not so funny.
Since she was bedridden, my aunt called for the nearby GP for a house call. I wasn't there, by I was told that after some initial apprehension (he wanted them to check with the doctor she saw when she was first admitted to the hospital to see if it was okay for a GP to examine her), he gave her a very thorough examination, and charged a very fair price.
The doctor told my aunt that she needs to be operated on. The blood-flow was clogged in her leg, and if left unchecked, could be fatal. This GP then recommended a friend of his in TTSH, but my grandma could not be admitted because the wards were full and the only available beds were in Class A (the most expensive ward). They waited a day for a ward in B1 to become available (and they got it only because of the GP's help/influence) before sending my grandma in.
My grandma was admitted on Thursday, and was operated on today morning in a 2-hr operation. It was regarded as a "small"/"routine" operation. On Friday, she received a fruit basket.
Here's the funny part. The one and only funny part about the whole episode.
Of course, they were shocked to see a fruit basket. I mean, who would be sending my 92-year old grandma a fruit basket? They checked, and it wasn't a mistake, it was addressed to my grandma. Attached was a letter which explained everything.
Apparently the GP expressed his unhappiness that my grandma could not be admitted ASAP, and had to wait for a free bed to open up. I'm not sure if he wrote in or called in, but he made his feelings known. The fruit basket was from the hospital staff, their way of saying "sorry" for making my grandma wait a day. I'm probably not telling it right, but it was pretty funny, and we had a laugh about it because it seems my grandma is sort of a VIP now. The thing is, we were not mad that my grandma couldn't get a bed, because TTSH is a very popular/busy hospital. They had to temporarily close their A&E department recently because they couldn't cope with the influx of patients.
Here's the less-than-funny part.
One of my uncles was there keeping watch on my grandma when we visited today. In our conversation, he actually brought up something along the lines of my grandma was already 92, it was time to go, and it might be better if she just went.
What the fuck?
I can't believe he said that. It's not like he doesn't have money for her medical bills. He owns two private, landed properties and recently spent S$400,000 renovating one of them. He'd be renovating the other one next year, knocking down the current single-story house and replacing it with a 3-story building.
What goes around, comes around.
^^^ by Locksley @ 8:38 PM.
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