Can money buy someone’s life?? This question has been troubling me since the time I met that family in the hospital.
Today morning I went to City hospital. I had to handover some papers to Mohan. My husband Sameer is the financial advisor to Dr Mohan Mehta. Mohan has been like family to us more than my husband’s client. He is an awesome human being.
When I reached there, Mohan welcomed me with a broad smile. I handed over the papers to him, chatted for a little while and left.
While going downstairs I heard someone crying. When I walked towards the place, I saw a lady and there was a man besides her sitting helplessly. They seemed to be in their 40s. I could not stop myself from asking them about what the problem was.
I went near that lady and asked her “What is wrong?” She didn’t reply. I could understand that she was very depressed at that point of time and was in no mood of talking to anyone about what she was going through. But I wanted to help her if I could. So I tried asking again “Ma’am listen, I have a very dear friend working in this hospital. May be he could help. Please tell me what happened?”
Hearing this she immediately stood and looked at me with lots of hope in her eyes. She asked “Can you really help me?”
Frankly speaking I got a little scared with this question of hers because I was not sure whether Mohan would be able to help. I replied “I will try my level best”
She introduced herself as Meena and her husband as Mayur. She took me inside the ICU and I saw a girl lying on the bed.
Meena told me that girl was her daughter Raima.
Raima was studying 2nd year engineering. She met with an accident and had been in coma for almost ten days. After ten days, the doctors said “We will have to keep her on ventilator”.
Meena continued “All our savings are over. We have spent over lakhs of rupees in the last 3 months. Raima’s friends had also collected some money but that money could buy only one day of my daughter’s life. And now we are not able to afford the hospital charges. But once we stop paying money the ventilator will be removed and with that I will be taking away my daughter’s life too. She will die.”
I was shocked to hear this. How could such a young girl suffer from all this?
I had read about Ventilators in a newspaper. It is also known as Life Support System. It is a medical equipment that assists or replaces important bodily functions like breathing and so enables a patient to live who otherwise might not survive.
I called for Mohan. He joined us in a few minutes. When he saw Meena crying, he told her to calm down. He knew about their problem.
“Is there no way out of this problem, Mohan?” I asked.
On this he replied, “NO.” He turned towards Mayur and said, “I have already told you Mr. Mayur, your daughter died long back. The ventilator cannot bring back her life. You have kept her on the support system for more than three months now and you have yourself seen that there is no improvement.”
“I understand”, Mayur replied.
It was the first and the only thing that Mayur spoke.
Meena was annoyed with Mohan. “So Doctor, you think I should kill my daughter, don’t you? I should ask you to remove the ventilator and see my daughter die in front of my eyes.” she screamed.
Then she turned to me and said “You said he is a dear friend of yours and will be of my help. Tell me madam, what you would have done if you were in my place. Would you have removed the ventilator and allowed your loved one to die only because you don’t have the money to buy that person’s life?”
I didn’t have an answer....!!
This is a story but there will be many people who might be actually facing this. I sometimes think about this problem. In some cases, the doctors are pretty sure, that the patient will never get their life back. On the contrary, in some cases there is a little hope.
But keeping a patient on life support system is a costly affair. What if we are left with no money? What if we were in the same situation in which Meena was?
I still don’t have an answer...!!
