Recently my father was operated in Sagar Hospital, Bangalore for a Prostate gland surgery. It was a PVP green light laser( 80w) operation. But after the surgery we lived in a state of fear and now that time can only be described as a nightmare. So here is how it started. On Feb 2013 my father underwent angioplasty( a surgery where they put a pipe/stent in the main arteries of heart to avoid the blockages/heart attack).
The operation was quite successful but after he went home we identified one more problem with him i.e. called BPH( Benign prostatic hyperplasia) . In this disease patient gets the urge of urination very frequently but cannot urinate because of the enlarged size of the prostate( an organ connecting the Urinary bladder and Urethra) and this occurs in most men at the age of 60. So the doctors initially put a catheter and told us to continue with that because they couldn’t advice him for a second surgery due to couple of reasons.
My father was on high medicines called blood thinners which he had to continue for one year and they cannot be stopped and the problem with those medicines is that, it will not allow the blood to clot/coagulate. So if any second surgery happens that had to be a bloodless surgery.
One more risk was, in every operation they give anaesthesia which is very bad for the heart as heart rate becomes very low( especially those with angioplasty recently) .
So there was no way we thought of going for a second operation until one month after the first surgery my father started experiencing huge pain in Urethra. Even with the catheter he was unable to urinate. He had to take round trips to the hospital just to empty the bladder and due to this he got many UTI( urinary tract infections) which was spreading from prostate to urinary bladder to kidney. This was a kind of life threatening situation for him as he was suffering through a great deal of pain.
So we had to rethink about the idea of going for a second surgery with so many conditions such as the blood thinners not to be stopped and the use of anesthesia have to be minimal. And we came across many articles which showed that Green Light PVP laser surgery is the most reliable one which can fit in this situation. So I consulted doctors from Fortis, Apollo and Sagar Hospitals, explained them about the situation and asked them whether this operation can be done with the above two conditions or not?
Doctors from Apollo told us not to go with this operation as there can be lot of post-complications and they can manage this with medicines. But the doctors from Sagar and Fortis told us that it’s okay to go with this operation. So we took a risky decision and decided to go with this operation in Sagar Hospital under the supervision of Dr Dilip Dhanpal. The operation happened successfully on Mar 2013. He got discharged and the doctors said he can live life like a normal being( they didn’t tell us about any precautions we need to take after surgery) . But then his period of suffering started. Soon he started getting blood in his urine and there was huge blood clots coming from his urethra.
The doctors suspected that it’s because he is walking, not taking enough water etc. and this got continued for a month and finally they asked us to stop the blood thinners( which was very important for the heart to function well) . We even did that without being worried about the consequences. But that even didn’t solve the problem. It was like the day he was starting the blood thinners he was getting blood clots in his urine the next day. I forgot to tell you the worst part. It’s the money we were spending. First for the laser surgery we spent around 1.5 lacks but after these complications of blood clotting he was taken multiple times to OT for removing those clots through cystoscopy and every time it cost us around 50k.
So with a general ward over all we spent around 3.5 lacks in Sagar Hospitals without getting any results. It’s like we were trapped by the doctors as we didn’t know where to go and the blood clot was not stopping and the doctors were out of their reasons. We were still hoping for the best even when we didn’t have any reason to believe the doctors and we were out of money and finally in a stage when we told the doctors not to do any more cystoscopy as we were not getting any results and it involved use of anesthesia and again 50k more. But our patience broke when the doctors told us that they don’t know what the reason of the bleeding/clotting is and they want to do an open surgery to solve this.
That’s when we decided to take him out of that hospital as we wanted to save him. Between we were consulting with other hospitals to know how this complication can be solved. But we got the most satisfactory answer about this problem from St. Jones( a missionary) hospital. So once we admitted my father in St. Jones it’s like our good time started again. It feels like as if my father got saved from a disaster. The problem identified to be the medicines given to him in Sagar were wrong. He stayed in St. Jones for 2 weeks and got cured properly and the cost was only around 20k. I will praise this hospital for rest of my life and especially to Dr. Suryakant Chaubey, Assistant Professor, Urology. He is the best in what he does.
The doctors from Sagar Hospital did a good job in the operation but they didn’t know how to save somebody if a complication happens. So after I learned a lesson I can tell you that beware of such doctors( specially in urology and cardiology) and always make a close observation of what’s going on and if things don’t work out then always have a second opinion from other hospitals/doctors. In St. Jones you may see long queues or you might have to wait a long time for your turn or you can see long processes to get something done but believe me it’s worth it. Just describe your problem correctly and you will get a definite help.