Why cannot parents listen....at least sometimes? Or is it the case only with my father!!! My father was recently taken to a hospital as he was complaining of chest pain. He was taken to a civil hospital to get the BP and ECG checked. As he is a hypertensive, doctors advised him to be under observation for 8 hours. As that may have costed him 8-10k, he decided to go to the Research and Referral Hospital in Delhi, which serves personnel of the armed forces. The only reason driving this decision was that my father was trying to avoid the "unnecessary" cost!!!

What did he get in bargain? I spent around 12k to fly down and be with my father. Good amount of money was spent on boarding, travel, food etc. But that is okay and am not complaining as it needed to be done. The things that are annoying me are dirty loos, rooms full of rubbish, food which has cockroach crawling in it...overall a totally unhealthy environment. To add to the woes, admitted patients are made to wait in queues for hours before they undergo any test. The reason is that there is no management. Can you believe that in this hospital a person cannot get discharged on a holiday!!! Then next day, he/she will have to wait for couple of hours before the duty clerk, who as expected is not efficient with computers types the records of all patients getting discharged on that day!!! After the agonizing wait, one finds that the Brigadier saab, who seems to be the sole authority to discharge patients is missing from his office. Everyone waits for him to return, which can take an hour or more!!! When all the papers are signed and are in place, the patient is asked to return to the ward and wait for the discharge slip to come to him/her. This is taking ages (This is the current status and me and my dad are waiting for the discharge slip to arrive). So a person who was recommended for discharge at around 10 am yesterday is still waiting for his discharge at 3pm today!!!

But nobody can blame the hospital. an officer cannot complain as he may be court martialed!!! In any case, the hospital is meant to (a) provide free of cost treatment to defence personnel (b) punish them for getting sick/injured (c) make them feel sorry for joining the armed forces. You want something better, go to a pay-for-service facility. Fair enough.

That brings us back to the issue that my father does not listen. I am not suggesting that he does not listen to others at all. But when it comes to such matters where he has to pick between comfort for himself at a cost and zero comfort for himself at zero cost, he always picks the later. Whats the use?? After that he sends his blood pressure soaring over all the bad points about the facility he chose for himself!!! Moreover, he will pick the best for me and my sister...wont worry about the cost at all. I just want to tell him that papa, we can afford it and.....nothing matters more than you. So going forward, please listen to me.