20230321: only in India

-
Couple of months ago, I had written about my amusing experience of my PEG tube falling out. A follow up of that was a write up of my experience getting a new one put in.

Well guess what, I got a new one today as well. It was even more surprising... and amazing I must add.

About 2 weeks ago, my PEG tube developed a leak. Nothing serious, the mouth of the tube and the cap were not closing "water tight". It started leaking at the rate of maybe 1 drop every minute.

I wanted to see for some time whether it will become ok by itself. Wishful thinking - it did not. Very slowly was increasing. Maybe 3 drops every 2 minutes.

So my wife asked her friend (an ex doctor - who had kindly arranged for everything previously at the hospital) what we have to do. She has clout in that hospital. She arranged for someone from the hospital to come home and check it out. 

He came this morning. He said he was in the hospital procedure room when I was there. They all wear masks in the procedure room or when they do house visits - so I can't really make out. I was not sure whether he was a technician, a nurse, a doctor or an onlooker that day.

He checked it. Said yes - there was a leak but everything else was ok with the tube - but he asked us whether we wanted to get it replaced anyway.

I was not keen. It was not a emergency or a big deal. Plus, I had to plan and go to the hospital again and was not looking forward to something like that again. But, we said ok anyway.

Next what happened shocked me and I was very pleasantly surprised.

He confirmed that it was over 2 hr since my previous feed. He opened his backpack, pulled out the implements needed - which is basically the guide wire and a new tube. We already had gloves, betadine, gauze and the gel needed.

He asked my nurses to put on the gloves , help him and got to the job. 5 minutes later I had a new peg tube. He was very good at very fast. No hospital, no headache, nothing.

Of course, we were charged for the PEG tube and his work charges. But it probably was less than ½ it would have been if I went to the hospital and related headaches. 

I paid half the price for the hospital to come home!

I was thinking afterwards, I can't think of this convenience anywhere else other than in India 🙂 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

20231208 : Privilege...

-
  Before my stroke, I had enough and more work to do - both on the work front and home front. I had reasonably ok health, reasonably good eating habits, reasonably good physical activities. Money is not enough for anybody, but it was reasonably ok as well. The only thing I had very less of (almost none) was time! Free time specifically. I keep sharing video recommendations to many folks regularly - most of them,  long talk show formats (1½ - 2 hours sometimes). Very interesting and informative pieces in my opinion. In today's world filled with over information and disinformation, it is almost impossible to understand most things if we don't spend the time and either read and research ourselves (which is a very far shot) or spend time going through secondary sources who have done it for us and can present it in an unbiased way.  Without it, it is very easy in today's world to get biased, subscribe to misconceptions, get misled, manipulated, etc.  However, often I get the res
Read more

20240124 : balancing the equations...

-
It is fascinating to read and understand how muscles work. For all my life, (since I had not given it any thought earlier), I simply had assumed a muscle is 1 muscle. Ex, if we say bicep muscle, it was one muscle in my mind (I don't know why I imagined so, but so it was). The truth is very far from it . Each muscle is made up of hundreds of strands (maybe thousands). And the best part (I have practically understood, not backed by any medical stuff) - is that each strand is connected separately to the brain and not as one.  For mechanical enthusiasts, each strand works like a sort of rack and pinion arrangement, operated by a chemical reaction, triggered by the brain. Each strand has two separate connections to the brain - one to work the rack and pinion arrangement each way (to contract the muscle strand and the other to release it or relax the muscle strand). In short, that's how it achieves any movement. By selecting the set of muscle strands to activate (how many most probab
Read more

20240402 : Transducers...

-
Transducers Came across this word recently when I was reading something. Hadn't come across it for a while. Its a word and concept I learnt in my electronics course (either in 12th or my 1st year engineering course I am not very sure now) A transducer, very plainly speaking, is something which helps bridging the analog world with the digital world.  For example, take the very simple digital thermometer in our homes. They can't directly measure temperature in digital form. They have a transducer inside which converts the temperature from a analog/ real world scale to a digital world scale so it can be displayed. Generally speaking, we can say it helps bridge the real world with the digital world. When I had my stroke and I was told I will struggle for balance, I was not able to understand why. My understanding (based on my school learning) was that balance is maintained by the inner ears. Of course we were not told how and I never bothered to ask. I just knew balance was maintai
Read more