My Back Pain

Hi All,

I was having back pain from the last two weeks. I am not sure what was the reason but somehow there was no improvement in spite of using common pain balms.

I went to hospital couple of weeks ago and it was the biggest hospital in Trivandrum. Since my company was making payments directly to the hospital it was automatic choice for me and my friends. We all know that the hospital was very expensive compared to other hospitals but we still went there as there was less headache for settling the hospital bills.

I reached hospital and met a physician. As I mentioned last time, he gave me paracetamol tablets. It didn't do me any good. Also I didn't like the doctor and hence I didn't want to meet the same doctor again. Luckily for me that doctor was not available at that time and I met another doctor, this time another physician. The new doctor was much younger than the first one and I had met him once. He did a very short analysis and he asked me to take blood test and X-rays. I was actually little tensed when doctor told me that he was not ruling out the possibility of Spinal TB. He said that the chance for Spinal TB was very less and he will be able to rule out the possibility of Spinal TB based on results of blood test and X-rays.

The doctor was on leave for the next couple of days and he told me to come on third day with the results. I collected the results for blood test on the very same day and I was quite relieved to see the results of the blood test. The report said everything was fine and I thought doctor would rule out the option of Spinal TB as he promised last time. How wrong I was!

Achan had come here for the extended weekend and he also come along with me to the hospital. We met the doctor and I thought he would suggest some exercises to get over the pain. But doctor told me that he was not able to rule out the possibility even based on results. He suggested me to take MRI scan to completely rule out the possibility. Since we trust doctor's judgement most of the times, I decided to go by what doctor has advised. Another reason why I decided to go by what doctor had advised was, treatment was free for us in that hospital.

We went to take MRI scan in the hospital and the place was not crowded. In fact I was the only patient there. They told me that it will take 20-30 min for scanning. I was asked to change my dress and they gave me a pair of dress to put on while doing the scan.They told me that it will be little hot and loud sounds inside. It was little frightening for me. The whole thing was little suffocating for me even though they told me to relax.But once you are in there's no way out of it. Hence only thing that I could do was to close the eyes and pray. I some how managed it, thats the best that I can say about it.

Once the scanning was completed, I was given the bill. It came to Rs. 8,000. It was bit too much for me to digest and I did not expect bill to be that high. If I was aware of it, I would have taken opinion from couple of other doctors before doing the scanning. Poor company who's going to pay the bills for me.

Next day, I went to the the doctor and as expected he said everything is fine. He told me to meet physiotherapy department. So I went to meet the physiotherapist and he advised me to do few exercises. I think I am going to do few exercises in the coming days and just hope that I will be alright soon.

I heard that doctors are paid commission if they bring income to the hospital. So I made my doctor richer by doing MRI scan. I am not sure if he could have avoided the MRI scan. I feel he could have avoided and as results were more or less evident from the X-rays and blood results. I was also told that, that particular hospital while taking new doctors told them that they had to increase the business of the hospitals. So what will happen to the poor patients who go to such hospitals?But poor people normally don't go to such hospitals. Even if they go there couple of times and doctors refer them for some expensive scans or operations, then they might not go there again. But will I go there again? As long as bill is not paid by me, I will be going there. What about the common man going there? Are any authorities looking in to it? If they have not started, please open your eyes soon.