My father was admitted to Fortis hospital under the pulmo team for lung infection. He died on the day he was supposed to get discharged from the hospital. He was admitted to ICU for lung infection. After about 5 days on antibiotics, he was put on ventilator. He made remarkable recovery and was released from ICU and admitted to ward after about 10 more days.
His chest x-rays became clear and he did not require any support in breathing. After about 4 days in the ward, he had a cardiac arrest and was revived after 30 minutes of CPR. He had another cardiac arrest the second day and passed away.
During the stay in hospital he got two new infections. I have got reports to prove it. There were mosquitoes in the ICU room and the water jug has rust or biofilm like contamination on the side walls. I brought this to the attention of the authorities. The doctors had a casual approach towards them and dismissed the new infections by saying that these are common in Indian hospitals. Both these infections were caused by bacteria which was strong enough to decompose petrol and diesel.
My point is this, how will a patient improve if the infection is not controlled in the hospital? What is the use of going to the hospital if you will come back home (if lucky) with worse disease?
On the morning of the day that he had first cardiac arrest, there were indications which the doctors failed to pick up:
Both the hemoglobin and the platelets decreased - an indication of internal bleeding. The doctors ignored it even though I specifically brought it to the attention of the doctors. Although he had required regular transfusions of hemoglobin and platelets, they were stable for past 4 days. This sudden decrease in both the parameters should have made them concerned.
There was a new infection whose reports came that day.
That morning my father was feeling as if his stomach was full even though he did not eat anything.
Due to the medicines, he developed arrhythmia in the ICU for which he was given medicine in the ICU. However, those medicines were not given in the ward although other antibiotics were being given. Couldn’t the doctors think that he could develop arrhythmia in the ward?
It is written in many articles online that there is always a reason for a cardiac arrest. My father who was admitted to the hospital for 21 days under doctors observation:- still the entire pulmonology team failed to identify his deteriorating condition.
My father had cardiac arrest in the ward room. Instead of reviving him there, the nurses took him to the ICU. This wasted about 5 minutes. Every minute decreases the person’s chances of reviving by 10%. In western countries, a cardiac arrest patient is revived first, no matter whether its on footpath or right in front of the hospital and then taken to the ICU. Also, there was no automatic defibrillator.
I miss my father a lot. He was just 65 and did not deserve to die. There isn’t a single day that goes by when I don’t wake up thinking about him. He kept telling me to take him home from the hospital. May be only if I would have been strong enough to listen to him and take that decision, he would have been with us today.