GMC eating out anew…Yoo canteen food versus Sodexo food for patients. Excellent food for patients but patients waste food and prefer home food! Surprisingly, the Sodexo caterers do not offer such things as tender coconut water or fresh fruit juices to patients (one has to get these from outside the hospital). In the private ward No 121 if one has a flask one may get someone coming around to offer hot water in a kettle…otherwise it is a case of buy your own potable water bottles. Pictures show Yoo canteen and inset… patient’s Sodexo breakfast and lunch!
By Tara Narayan
IT’S one more time at the Goa Medical College and more déjà vu. A dear patient is being treated this time for of all things spinal infection (or is it spinal TB, I’ve discovered that that there are all kinds of TB which can afflict body beautiful), nobody is quite sure when it comes to diagnosis and very often there is something confusion called differential diagnosis (may you never be a victim of differential diagnosis when the medicines a bad doctor puts you on masks the real symptoms of what’s causing all the damage).
This patient (hubby dear actually, my better three quarters) has been in and out of public and private hospitals over the years in Goa and has been on a hunger strike lately, ever since covid lockdowns happened and for some more unfathomable reasons — not least of arriving in one’s 70s with continuing troublesome health issues – the end opinion being “I don’t want to eat because I don’t want to shit…I don’t want to shit do I don’t want to eat.” It’s a very poignant statement coming from the viewpoint of a patient who has spent half-a-lifetime paying for the sins of politicians, newspaper employers and indifferent doctors – the good, bad and ugly mix together and I will say the GMC deserves so much better although it has come a long way vis-à-vis patients’ healthcare.
IT continues to be one overcrowded public hospital (which doubles as a college for students to cut their teeth in learning modern medicine now rooted in drugs and surgery more than anything else, it’s quite an absolute stuck in the mud reductionist science viewpoint according to many in our times) with packed wards with their twin side rooms for critical patients in need of their own washroom (never mind how much in need of refurbishing they are, but I’ve seen worse days at the GMC wards in the past when it was more or less like a vast cavernous bhootbangla).
As night falls and post-10pm, if one is wandering down its corridors one may still pick up notes of the old eerie feelings of the old world. The hubby treats the GMC as his sasumai and I always wish him safe return home for another one of his cat’s nine lives…well, this around it is time for a series of antibiotic treatment for infection because his spine is in serious trouble for it has been collapsing slowly on him with attendant pain of nerves and muscles in a sorry state for want of …er…I always say, good nutrition full of vitamin ACE and B, but one should also be able to digest the meals served to patients. It is not what and how much you eat but what you eat and how much of it you digest which makes all the difference, I’m constantly reading in all the alternate healthcare systems now threatening to steal the thunder from modern medicine.
The Sodexo meals served to patients at the GMC are still good but some things make for waste of food! Fro one thing few patients I noted like this most obnoxious Goan poie of heavy duty – poie can be terribly constipating, most of the Hindu patients just ignore it and have a preference for the chappaties (which are also constipation food). I see many patients returning their meal plates including the one I’m with – or sometimes I relish the dal-rice-sabzi while he condescends to eat the two phulka-veggie dal I bring from home and even then it’s a story of “You don’t know how to cook anymore!”
(Sigh) Food can always be a bone of contention with a patient who has seen better times but is fighting failing constantly. Ward No.104 is the male orthopaedics ward and since Goa’s roads are not worth writing home about there’re always accident patients here with legs or hands strung up in plaster and one say hello to 25 to 30 plus, plus patients in recovery mode here at any given time.
I only wish the sanitation was as good as the food delivery and some philanthropic organisation or philanthropist would donate better cabinets and a hand faucets in the washroom-toilets block for patients’ use! If you have money to burn, burn it on say donating nice light warm blankets for patients’ use only (emboss them with GMC patients!) for many senior patients are not fat-padded and feel the cold pinching them on cold nights. In the old days I remember a ward side room with rafter spaces overhead where bandicoots partied all day long…then the late BJP’s Dr Wilfred Misquitta came visiting the hubby and afterwards both water availability and the empty spaces overhead were fell silent. It was so funny, all it takes is for a politician to visit a patient and give advance notice for some good things to happen for otherwise long-suffering patients…
Okay, don’t gift things; if you have money to burn get something repaired…as a GMC well-wisher. I hear the Rotary Clubs are doing good jobs. Aam aadmi people’s hospitals always deserve better, that’s my theme song this week here. I don’t see why there should be no fresh fruit juice bar set up at the Yoo canteen of the GMC – where there’s tender coconut water available, fresh orange juice/pineapple juice is best for patients to heal faster and my all-time favourite is beetroot-carrot-celery, can’t find it for love or for money except in my own home of course when I take the trouble to do it…
ONE may sit all day long squabbling with a difficult patient or sit out at the metal series of chair out at the foyer watching life in a public hospital go by, in between visits by the resident ward doctors; consultants come morning times, residents come more often. The orthopaedic ward is different from the other wards for here the beds have a ropeway put up on them and patients may take support from it to haul themselves up and down while adjusting their bodies on the bed (since various parts of their limbs may be in plaster).
One evening I went looking at the official Yoo canteen for some fresh tomato-garlic redolent soup (garlic being a super food) but there was none, no soups. Indian patients don’t like soups! Okay, they have some good batatvada, samosa, something new is bread pakoda (maybe this has replaced the Kannadiga “buns” of old) and combo meals like rice and paneer gravy sabzi or rice and chicken curry or biryani, etc), the machine elaichi flavoured tea is good and not over-sugared. No good soup for love or for money.
And last but not least of all my patient is in starvation mode currently and in search of nirvana – may he get back home soon for home is where we grumble the most but are treated the best!
ACTUALLY, I have learned that when it comes to smart public hospital care in the US of A nowadays and my niece Dr Nisha Patel who is based out in Chicago, tells me, “We treat a critical patient with bacterial infection aggressively with IV antibiotics and appropriate medication for a couple of days and then get them home at quickly as possible – then we have a home team which visits patients at home for follow-up treatment of any kind including completing the IV antibiotic course, say once or twice a month….” In India and Goa (which boasts of a good healthcare system in India) mainstream medical homecare still has to come of age! The concept doesn’t exist and if doctors come home the charges are pretty steep.
In my grandfather or dada Sakarlal Patel’s time in the village of Karamsad in Gujarat, I have memories of a local general physician dropping by at home to say hello, have a cup of tea and check his 90 years old patient going on 100 years on his vitals, he knew all family members, and I still remember those days and the doctor-kaka (uncle)! I dream of perfectly small neighbourhood hospitals and sanitoriums for senior citizens to get well in modern-day Bharatdesh with a futuristic vision! Less hospitals, more sanitoriums, please – for the common working people of India who’re having such tough times currently!
