“I really can’t take this thing. Is like I sick and all and should take a bed in the hospital. I know is for we own safety and so but this lining up in this hot sun is not easy and by the time you meet up is almost time for you to come down back. It is really heart rending,” she said to everyone who could hear, pain evident on her face.
I was in a long line of more than 40 persons, mostly women, in front of the Georgetown Public Hospital, waiting to be processed in order to be allowed to see our sick patients. We stood six feet apart, washed our hands, had our temperatures checked and then identified the patient’s name. The nurse then went through the names of patients written in a book and sometimes it took a minute or more before the name was found.
“Somebody done went and visit that patient you can’t go,” I remembered one woman being told. Tears were in her eyes as she turned to go, but not before indicating that she had in her possession a change of clothing, linen, and food for the patient.
The precautions and measures are for everyone’s safety because of COVID-19 but knowing this does not make the process easier.
“Sometimes I feel like we don’t have any freedom…,” one woman said in frustration and I understood how she felt. I felt the same as I joined the line one midday, the sun beating down on all of us, as we waited to enter the hospital compound.
“My mother in the hospital. She can hardly help she self but is just one person they allowing to go and see her every visit and when is time to clean she, does be a problem because me alone can’t do it. I know they say how the nurse them would help but it don’t always be that way and it does be really hard,” another woman said, as we waited.
She later attempted to have a man accompany her just to assist, but the nurse denied this request.
“She telling me that the nurses does clean up the patient but that don’t always happen. We all does want we relatives to feel comfortable and I can’t go and see my mother in a state and don’t do nothing. But the last time when I finish is like me back was breaking,” she later told me.
“This is real stress and you see the night when I bring she here? Is whole night we had to stay and even though she really couldn’t help she self or can’t even give she name, nobody couldn’t stay with she in the emergency.
“We had to wait outside the hospital gate, even though I trying to explain to the guard, he said we have to wait outside and come back and check from time to time. Waiting outside was more punishment—nowhere to sit and you just standing up in the dew. Tell me how you could do that for hours?” she asked not expecting an answer.
“You know that is the part I can’t understand. Once the patient can’t help themselves why can’t they at least allow one relative to stay with them?” she continued.
I had raised that very issue with a doctor during my relative’s admission and she explained that the place would become too crowded.
“You know how many patients we have at the emergency [ER] who really can’t help themselves? If we allow a relative for each one of them we would be defeating the purpose of these measures because the place would then be crowded,” the doctor had told me.
“How can you as a human stand in the dew or sun for hours waiting on you relative?” the woman asked.
I told her we really don’t have a choice, is either we do that, or we leave our patient in the ER and then return the following day for them. I knew it was not an option because there are times, as was in the case of my patient, they may need to have a procedure done that requires payment. A CT scan was needed for my patient and if I was not there to pay, she would have remained in the ER until the following day.
“You just have to keep checking,” the doctor had told me at the time.
“You check every hour not before, you can’t come in and out as you please,” the security guard later told me.
This resulted in me later being told by another doctor – my relative saw four doctors in one night before she was finally admitted hours after I took her to the hospital – that he was waiting on a relative to visit to pay for the CT scan and if I did not do it quickly I would have to wait until the following day as it could not be done after midnight.
“You were here all the time?” he asked me, and I looked at him with enquiring eyes before responding.
“Well I was outside where I was told to go,” I responded.
My phone number was given, as my relative was being triaged, and I felt that the least they could have done was call me if I was needed urgently. After all, I was told to wait outside the compound.
“Every time I went and check, my mother is like she just on that stretcher lying in the same position and nothing was being done for her,” a tearful daughter told me one morning as we both waited to see the doctors caring for our patients.
We were discussing the issue of not being allowed to be with the patients even if they are not mobile or cannot speak.
“Let me tell you, it was hard. I cried, and I said my mother served this country all her life, paid her taxes and this the manner in which she is being treated.
“Now don’t get me wrong,” she added. “I know about the coronavirus and everything, but I believe more can be done, people must not be made to feel that they are less than or that their relative is less than. Look, I coming here to visit my mother it was not a good state I found her in and if you attempt to speak to the nurses is like they giving you attitude.
“Eventually we were [forced] to leave her in the emergency [unit]—because how long we can stand outside the compound? We leave her bag well packed with everything but yet when we go back to visit her she was in her same clothes drenched in urine. I couldn’t do nothing but just cry because was me alone and it was hard to clean her, I had to call the nurse.”
As she spoke, tears ran down her cheeks and I felt her pain because I had experienced it and I see and hear about it every time I visit the hospital.
“We have to do better than this, from the doctors to the nurses to the security guards. They need to understand that people are at their most vulnerable when they come to this hospital. Treat us like humans…,” she pleaded.
These experiences are not being shared in an attempt to beat up on the GPH. But maybe this can reach someone in authority who can implement some changes. I can only hope. I suppose we cannot run away from the long lines. COVID-19 has upturned the entire world, but perhaps something can be implemented to make it a little easier for those patients who are not mobile and who are unable to speak properly. Their relatives should be allowed more access to them, especially if they may need other procedures to be done. In the case of my relative, her time in the ER was extended because I was not there to pay for the CT scan, but I was right outside the hospital compound.
Relatives are even more emotionally distressed because of the fact that only one person is allowed per a patient at every visiting time. The least that should be done is that they should be tidied; no one wants to visit their patient and find them in an unkempt manner, or those who cannot help themselves lying in urine-soaked or defecated-in diapers. It is heart rending to say the least.
“I can understand the COVID-19 worry and precautions but not at the expense of our humanity,” one sister told me as she worried over her mother who was in the ER all by herself.
Let’s not forget our humanity, GPH. You save lives, no doubt about it and I know you have many hardworking doctors, nurses, and other staff but sometimes just a little humanity can go a long way.
