A daughter-in-law is narrating her father-in-law’s anecdote. Read below how Rinmayee Deka expresses Mr. Deka’s dilemma in words…
I am writing this for my father-in-law who at a certain point in life had been tied between the duty of a responsible doctor and a responsible husband and a father. Dipped in the intense feelings of a father’s heart, the extract is an effort to make the people in general view a doctor’s life which had never, is never and can never be a cakewalk.
The word ‘negligence’ in general means ‘lack of proper care and attention’; it may be towards one’s duty, family, career or education and the list goes on. Negligence is sometimes born out of ‘one’s own desire to neglect’ and at times due to ‘certain unavoidable circumstances’. On speaking about negligence, one such instance is still fresh in Dr. Deka’s memory that takes him back to the day which gave him one of the most dreadful experiences of his life. Being a doctor by profession, the phrase ‘negligence of the doctors’ is a commonly heard phrase framed by people with pre-conceived notion that every inevitable death that occurs in the hospitals are due to the negligence of the doctors or due to the wrong treatment; which is a bitter pill to swallow for doctors like them, who often find themselves caught in a web of duties towards profession and family. For decades, doctors are given high pedestal for being the lifesavers; they serve as a source of hope to the needy, they are the light in the darkness; the service they bestow and the perils of situations they face in the midst of their duties can never be underrated. In the course of accomplishing the duties, the doctors often need to face the trauma and anxiety of helplessness of not being able to serve one’s own family member during the time of medical need and attention. Dr. Deka’s life when he himself had to leave his pregnant wife behind to bear the pain that she underwent. It was a day that dated back in the year 1985, 23 rd November that left an everlasting impact that happened to become an unerasable memory in the years that followed. During that time, Dr. Deka was working in a civil hospital and he was entrusted with the duty in a camp for ‘Laparoscopic Sterilization of Female’ that was scheduled on that very day in a State Dispensary. Being the only doctor to be sent for the camp, with no other options at his disposal, he had to leave at the earliest. His conscience of duty prevented him from having realized the urgent care that his wife needed at that moment who was in the eighth month of her due and she was suffering from occasional abdomen pain since the morning of that very day. Being a doctor, he felt the duty as a doctor to be of highest priority and keeping the responsibility in his mind that his profession demanded, he left for the camp advising his ailing wife to take proper rest with an assurance that her pain would lessen gradually. But things took a different turn and when he returned home he was left numb on being confronted with the news of his wife’s premature labor pain which by no means could be brought under normal state and in consequence to which the baby had to be delivered at the earliest. And on 24th November 1985, they were bestowed with a baby boy, who was delivered in a premature state fighting ten long days of life and death before being declared out of danger. Those ten days were not easy for both Dr. Deka and his wife as they saw their first child fighting for life. Nonetheless, the doctors’ hardcore efforts, proper care and medical assistance aided the baby to revive but Dr. Deka as a doctor and a father still bore the pain deep down his heart – had he not neglected his wife’s pain and provided the necessary treatment, she might not have had to deliver a premature baby, risking the baby’s life. And this instance still makes Dr. Deka keep pondering.
Has that been his NEGLIGENCE towards his wife or his dedication towards his duty?
