Medical Treatment to Old men and Old women

It is really sympathetic to see old men and old women suffering from diseases. More than the sufferings, their misunderstanding about the nature of their diseases is awful. I could make this statement from my own experiences with the ailing old people.

My experience started with my own grandmother who was very old even when I was a boy. She had perpetual swelling in one of her legs but however she managed to walk and do household works. She was not taking any Allopathic medicine. She used to eat moderately, as I remember, sometimes skipping her dinner or having just a bun for her supper. Only when she was down with fever I used to bring in a doctor to our home. Unlike today, doctors those days were service minded and could understand the difficulties of elderly people. The doctors used to analyse the symptoms. They were using simple instruments like thermometers and the stethoscopes and with that and by their knowledge of observing pulse rate they treated their patients with very little medicine and with abundance of love. They liked to be respected as doctors more than being respected as rich men or women. With that kind of treatments and food habits her journey through her old age to death was smooth. She suffered only briefly before she died as an octogenarian.

Then I saw the old age ailments of three of my septuagenarian friends. Two of them were government officers who knew very little about medicine. They thought doctors can treat their diseases and medicines can cure their ailments. They were never bothered about the foods that they ate. No doubt they were diabetic and their understanding of diabetes is that they should not take sugar or sweets made out of sugar. If they felt like taking, they ate the sweets and gulped down an extra dose of the medicine for controlling the extra load.

One died of complications in angioplasty after a heart attack. The complication gave a block in the blood vessel in the brain that lead to paralysis and he died daily mentally and one fine day died physically also.

The other one died in his late seventies after a prolonged illness though he had lot of hope that he will recover since some astrologer had predicted that he will live beyond 85 years of age. He had faith in medicines and astrology but never understood what he had to eat for food.

Now it is the turn of my parents. The ailing has already started. I have consulted a dozen Allopathic doctors all with masters’ degree in medicine and surgery. One Homeopathic Doctor and two Ayurvedic doctors were also in the list of doctors who were so far unsuccessful in treating.

The obvious problem that I see in them is that they don’t accept any moderation in the food they eat. The ‘Stomach-full’ eating habits could not be changed. They challenge that eating doesn’t cause any disease. The excess that they eat aggravates the diseases and the quality of their daily life is becoming worse day by day.

They only complain that I am not able to spot the 16^th doctor. I am really confused because I could not logically make out how a doctor could ever treat if my parents don’t want to change their food habits. However just like everyone else I follow the myth that the doctors can cure in spite of the bad food habits.

The whole purpose of writing these stories is to bring in awareness to the readers that they need to take active steps in understanding what healthcare is all about. The modern hospital health care system is damn good in overhauling and plumbing works. They have also started doing spare parts replacement jobs. Plenty of money is there with us and so we absolutely do not mind spending a portion of the fortune that we have accumulated.

However we must be concerned about the quality of daily life we will have. We will live a long life but with lot of ailments and dependency on medicines.

So it is high time we start understanding our body, mind and the foods that we eat. We will have to devote time to understand what kind of daily exercise will keep us in good health. We will also understand the role of mind in our physical well being.

So do not wait for the day to start the learning process. Nobody is going to confer you with a university degree for doing this but you can be of least trouble to your kith and kin when you are old.