Why I am so afraid of visiting a hospital

06 March, 2013

Hospital phobia is something I am born with. I am afraid of those building complexes with white dusty ambulances parked in the busy compound. The white interiors with the smell of dettol irks me. May be it is because of this, I never visit hospitals until and unless it becomes highly unavoidable. And recently, my persistent ill health compelled me to step into the world of capsules, wheelchairs and stethoscopes.

I went on a Saturday morning. It was very crowded. There were more people in that small hospital than you would usually see in a side way restaurant or a park. Are there were more people with ill health than the healthy or it is just the monsoon taking its toll on health?

I stood in the queue silently to take the token. My token number was 29 which meant two hours wait. I walked up through the crowded stairway to the outpatients ward. Long wooden benches with silent men confronted me. I located the doctor’s room and sat on the bench nearby. I forgot to carry a book along and hence I did not have anything productive to do. People moved in and out and my eyes followed them. Most of them looked sad. Majority of them were elderly. Some in the chairs were dozing off. Babies were crying or running about. Once in a while some good looking or well dressed men and women passed by for a change.

On the walls, there were big photographs highlighting the areas the hospital specialised in. It showed disgusting snaps of varicose veins and other diseases. Photographs of types of mosquitoes with blood in their tummies were neatly shown. It was silently conveying that you are lucky that you are here today. Any second you might get any of these scary diseases and then don’t forget these photographs and our hospital.

Above all, in hospitals I get a very negative feeling and the smell of the dead. I imagined the number of people dead in this hospital and the spirits that might be wandering about. I was stuck with the reality that at the end of the day most of us end our lives in these places and that how small our life is.

The nurses were calling out the names of patients one by one. As though from sleep, they jump up to meet the doctors. Whenever the nurse comes out, people look pleadingly at her. The mean faced nurses throw their attitude as they know their demand very well. After two hours my name was called. I got up and my walk to the doctor’s room was followed by many envying eyes. The doctor looked beautiful in her crisp cotton sari and warm smile. It was such a relief. But after two minutes of diagnosis, the prescription she wrote was lavish. May be she is telling me that she knows the name of many medicines or just that the hospital wants her to do so.

The prescription was not handed over to me, but to the nurse. I had to collect the medicines from the hospital’s pharmacy. How easy. How tactful. But nothing matters! I just wanted to get out of this weird reality of illness and death. So, I simply thanked the doctor and the pharmacist and ran back to my small room in the hostel. How satisfying it is to be in our own little world of fake reality.