Infected Humanity

Perhaps it is my recent trauma after fighting for the tiny baby to be admitted into a hospital, and then the continuing fight to find out the real diagnosis (first it was pneumonia, then bronchitis, then an enlarged heart requiring open heart surgery), but my spirit is heavy with disappointment in our humanity; our united lack of care for individual suffering.

For the last two months I have been working in a small dispensary in Sealdagh station, which is ran by the Missionaries of Charity. The dispensary is incredibly basic. It contains an assortment of medications, but no one qualified to know what to do with them, so the most common treatment is the cleaning and bandaging of infected wounds. The most common 'medication' which is administered is a placebo multi-vitimin which patients eagerly line up to collect. Most of the patients live in or around the train station. Without the dispensary it is unclear what course of action they would take, although I often wonder if we are providing nothing more than false hope with our mask of treatment. The dispensary is only open for three afternoons in the week. This in itself is a disability, as on the streets clean white banadages quickly turn brown and the encased infections put up a vicious attack for total dominance. Regardless of this, there are patients who religiously attend the clinic and others who attend only sporadically, prompted by the increase in severity of their afflications. Most nurse wounds which have become so severely infected that no amount of drug abuse would be able to mask the pain and leaves me unable to pass any judgement on those who walk into the little room glassy eyed and thankfully mentally far away.

Yesterday I saw the hardest 'case' yet. One of the men who had been keeping regular attendance, was already leaning on the entrance long before we arrived. Once inside the Pain-Filled-Man slouched in the corner, with his head in his hands. The pain which he was consoling was seeping out with each juttering movement of his body. Many times I have had tears in my eyes when watching patients not even flinch as I scrap infected flesh off their body, drugs or no drugs, their pain threshold is super-human. But yesterday, the Pain-Filled-Man used his shaking hands to pick up his leg and place it on the low wooden bench for re-bandaging. For several months he has been coming to the dispensary to have an infected ulcer like wound cleaned and dressed. Two days ago he had attended the clinic and although the large wound had not improved, it did not appear to have grown worse. I have no idea what happened in the intermediary time - perhaps nothing more than the loss of the dressing, or a collision with dirty water - but the result had transformed the infection into a deep hole, black in colour, filled with rotting flesh which was falling away to reveal the remaining tendons close to the bone. My first response was to turn away. Turn away from suffering. But it was a reality check – this was far beyond my capacity, in fact it was far beyond the dispensary's capacity to treat. How was it possible to surive such a pain? I could not even begin to imagine having the same cannibalistic hole burning into my own ankle.

It was clear that the Pain-Filled-Man needed to be in a hospital – immediately. From inexperienced eyes it seemed like it would need a miracle for him just to keep his foot, but the pain he was carrying inside his body was too extreme to be delayed. With a line of patients waiting to have their bandages changed, the majority of which housed identical wounds with varying degrees of severity and size, we asked a loittering Sister if she could take him to the hospital. I am not sure exactly what her reply was but it was definately negative. For the Pain-Filled-Man to go to the hospital by himself was totally unrealistic – firstly he had not already gone. What his reluctance was to attend the hospital when his condition was so extreme can only be guessed, but without a home and without money it would probably be accurate to suggest that he presummed it would be futile. As was the case with the little street baby, for a patient to be admitted they first need to be registered and to be registered they need a home address – a platform number will not suffice. Secondly, even though there are no doctors fees for a patient to be treated with drugs, the drugs first need to be purchased. Thirdly, the hospitals are already bursting at the stairwells with patients who have both a home and the necessary money. It is not difficult to guess that such patients would be a priority. Fourthly, working conditions are horrendous; the facilities are filthy and working hours multiplied beyond humane. Perhaps even the most committed and compassionate doctor would struggle to provide adequate treatment to all who stumbled through the doors. Ultimately, the the Pain-Filled-Man was left with a festering wound eating into his flesh and in desparate need of proper medical treatment, a fact which no amount of bandaging would be able to cover up.

Two foriegn women working with street kids walked in. They brought with them a boy with a severe burn on his calf and another with a left forearm full of self-mutilated knife cuts. They left the little warriors with us and agreed to take the Pain-Filled-Man to the hospital. I found out later they had alternatively taken the man spilling over with pain to the Mother Teresa home for the Dying and Destitute; which is most definately not a hospital.