That’s mother admitted in the general ward after her stay at various ICU units of the hospital

 Initial start to my hospital stay experience was rough and tough - ha!!

November of last year has thankfully passed, that month was characterized by my time at the hospital with my mother admitted there for her collapsed mental state after overdose of some unprescribed medications. I have detailed those personal stories here.

- Continuing my hospital life story with circumstances forcing my family to deal with a crisis

- Hard struggles of life admitting a psychic family member to the hospital

My first three days as a part time attender for my mother was damn hard because I had to stay at the hospital premises in the nights with no warm enclosure but at the open public enclosures of the hospital hall. This was because my mother was inside different types of ICUs in the hospital and no visitors were allowed to stay with the patients in the ICU rooms.

Caretaker of an admitted patient of EICU ward sleeping on the grounds of the hospital. The sides here as explained in previous articles are open covered only by monkey proof nets, so chill winds give these unfortunate sleeping or sitting bodies a lot of shivering chills!!

 Compulsion to be in the hospital without doing anything useful but to bear imposed inconveniences

What made me miserable, is my pointless compulsion to be in the hospital premises, listening to snores of people sleeping on the ground, sometimes feeling the cold winds coming from some opening in the hall, not having space to step and walk as bodies of sleeping people filled the floor right starting below the fixed chair I was sitting.

I say pointless, because I had nothing useful to do in the hospital, as mother was taken care of by the staff in the ICU and I was required for useless things like buying soup and toothpaste for the clean keep of my mother by the ICU nurses.

This is the waiting hall where care takens of patients admitted in the main ICU unit wait. At nights it’s filled with them sleeping below the rows of seats, where seated people generally keep their feet. This is early in the morning, when many people have already got up, that’s why this hall does not look that full of sleeping bodies.

 I opted for night stays at the hospital so that Dad rests at home to deal with the confusing state of hospital duties in the midday mornings

My Dad filled in the morning times being in the hospital premises, he was given more useful work to do, like paying hospital bills, see the doctor coming for the rounds. This was ok with me because I ended up messing things up, as the ways of the hospital was such that I was not able to do anything.

On my way to the hospital, my shift was from 5pm evening to morning till my dad came to relieve me. Later, I began using public transport (public bus) to go to hospital, because it’s cheaper as the hospital stay days seemed to be ongoing for a lot more days. This was the first time I began using public transport post Covid pandemic started!!

I have detailed one of my experiences of having missed the chance to see the visiting doctor who came for rounds because I could not get clarity on when and which doctor came for rounds to see mother, although I was waiting to hear from the doctor for hours together that morning.

The ways and procedures of the hospital were very inconvenient for caretakers of the family and I was completely not able to deal with it.

 Stuck again without clear information on my mother’s shifted place of admission in the hospital

After the first day of hospital admission, since my Mother was still unconscious she was shifted to the main ICU unit with a ventilator. My Dad finished his attendant shift in the hospital and told me to check on my mother at the new ICU unit located somewhere on the second floor. This was still a tense time because my mother was yet not out of danger.

I was told that the new ICU ward was located somewhere on the second floor but when I enquired with the watchmen with my broken local language he said no one in the name of my mother was brought in to this ICU ward. I told him look my Dad told me clearly that my mother was admitted here, so you got to let me in or give me needed updates.

However, I was turned away and dismissed by those watchmen and had to go to another floor below to the EICU ward where my Mom was in the morning to enquire about my mother with the nurses there.

This is the door to passage that leads to two ICU units. One ICU unit is with a ventilator and another is without ventilator. My mother was shifted from the EICU unit to the main ICU unit with a ventilator after she did not regain consciousness even after a day. After she regained consciousness she was shifted to the other ICU here which was without a ventilator.

A helpful nurse at the EICU unit clarified that yes my Mom was shifted to another ICU on the 2nd floor. She phoned up and scolded the watchmen there and warned them that if they stress the care takens of ICU patients by misleading them and making them run around needlessly she will complain to some social worker department, and have those watchmen booked for negligence of duty.

 Unpleasant experiences with the watchmen of this hospital ICUs

Obviously I was very confused and anguished, again feeling I cannot manage things in this hospital with things being as they are with no clear information on these happenings. I had to speak in the local language kannada, and since I am not a native of the City I struggle speaking it, but still I can convey things pretty well in the local language.

The problem was I could not scold that confidently in Kannada with the pauses and breaks. However, I managed to do that too, such was my irritation with these watchmen and many others for restricting me from going in and coming out of whatever places Mom was getting admitted in the hospital.

When I went back those watchmen that dismissed me away were civil and apologetic to me, and assured me that they will call me when such instruction came from the ICU staff.

Other times when I tried to get into the ICU place when the ICU’s passage door was unguarded, a guard appeared from no where and reprimanded me and in my state of mind where I felt like I was wasting my time needlessly being here and suffering, I found that rude.

I was waiting all night with no updates on mother and given no attendant duties to do but was excepted to be inside the hospital’s public waiting hall premises.

 Time to shift Mother from ICU to another ward as she came into consciousness and was not in critical condition

On the third day mother got consciousness so she was shifted soon from the main ICU with a ventilator to another ICU unit without ventilator that housed less critical patients.

Eventually, it was time for her to be shifted to an ordinary medical ward. My dad tipped those same irresponsible watchmen that misled me previously so that they would act favorably towards us.

I was allowed to go in and see my conscious mother when I came in the evening. She was conscious but not talking normally, because mental recovery is yet to take place with her thoughts and thinking yet not properly regulated with her somewhat dysfunctional brain. However, medically she had no issues.

That time she looked very frail like a 90 year old women, mostly because she's not eaten solid food for the three days she was unconscious.

 Called early to the hospital for paying the bills and shifting of Mother to another ward

Eventually, after more difficulties due to the way the hospital is, my mother was shifted from ICU to General Ward. It happened that the administration did not allow Dad to pay the hospital bills to initiate Mom’s shifting because he complained to the management that they are troubling an old man by making him hop from counter to counter to pay bills and not giving any updates on the admitted patient.

So, I was woken up by a phone call from Dad in the afternoon to come over to the hospital and pay the bills.

That afternoon, I was fast asleep since I came home early in the morning from the hospital because I was tired of last night’s experience in the hospital, where I could not bear it any longer sitting on the hospital hall as the cold winds blew making me shiver, after trying to subdue my irritation on me being surrounded below by sleeping bodies on the ground.

When I came early to the hospital as I usually come in late evenings, I was assigned a helper to take me to the right counter to pay bills in one shot, so that I don’t struggle paralysed without knowing which counter to pay bills.

I also had an important decision to make relating to where I want to shift my mother as she can either be shifted to the general ward or special ward.

 Had to decide which ward to shift mother - Special Ward or General ward

Special ward has single occupancy private rooms and twin sharing private rooms. My helper took me to check the special ward rooms, where I was given details about charges for the rooms.

Although it tempted me to opt for a twin sharing occupancy room here, as I can work with my laptop and have access to less used toilets by other crowds, I finally decided against this.

This is because I was scared of being alone in a closed enclosure with my mother, knowing that she will be an uneasy character to deal with in the upcoming days. She would nag for discharge and misbehave, being generally unbearable and impossible to manage by me.

 General Ward accommodation for mother was an upgrade for me

I finally opted for General ward which was a modest multi bedded unit with attached common toilets for admitted patient residents along with their attenders. This was a fine set up, an upgrade from sitting on the common hospital open halls with very public relatively unclean toilets. Here although caretakers don’t get a bed to sleep, we get a chair to sit on right in front of the patient.

The place was warm without openings around for cold winds to harass you at mid nights, plus the toilets here were pretty clean because they were cleaned very often by the cleaning staff there.

 A new start to my further hospital stay experience here

This turned out to be the right decision because there were nurses here around the clock and we were surrounded by other people(patients and their care takers), as being with mother was a scary prospect.

She was very unstable for the next 10 days and displayed ugly medicine withdrawal symptoms. Being old (65 years) , she also lost control over basic functions like bladder and motion holding control, which caused a lot of inconvenience.

Besides this, she continued to be a hard person to be with, scolding and saying out aloud ill things about me and my Dad, who had to bear this because we had to care for her, in spite her vile nature. Ouch!!

I will continue this story about my recent hospital stay experiences in my other subsequent articles.

You can read about one of my good experiences in the hospital having got acquainted with a super nice, sweet cat I named Kajal here -

New cat in my life that I unexpectedly encountered at the hospital - Sweet!!

Cat Kajal who I befriended at the hospital in Hatti Kaapi Cafe.

Thank you!!