And They Play With Our Lives!

Is there anyone who will heed and enact??

Recently some couple of weeks before, when there was some fault with the electricity setup in the valley and also in some states of India resulting in the miseries all around and perhaps my family was the only family which suffered really a lot. With all this happening all around me and my uncle went to our city hospital (SMHS) to get our oxygen cylinders refilled or exchanged with other filled (with oxygen) cylinders, as my grandfather is an asthmatic patient so he needs the constant external oxygen supply provided by these O₂ (oxygen ) cylinders throughout the day. In other words we can say that he is alive because of this external O₂ provided to him acting as the source of life for him.

Usually we get our oxygen cylinders filled from the a private supplier in the city outskirts whenever needed, but on that unfortunate day when we reached there and asked them (private supplier) to get our cylinders refilled or replaced he straight away declined citing the reason that there was no electricity in the area and we couldn’t run our processing plant over here so we can’t met your requirements. As there was the acute shortage of O₂ back home and we must have to make some quick arrangements as it was the matter of life and death for my grandfather and the situation was same with the supplier so ultimately we decided to head towards the city hospital (SMHS) where we could get one cylinder possibly filled so as to manage the crisis. After reaching there we met a man there who was on duty and asked him that can we get an oxygen cylinder showing him all the prescription and all that on which it was written that the patient needs oxygen supply 24×7. But he declined citing the reason that we cannot supply oxygen cylinders to the outsiders, we pleaded him that there is the urgent need as our patient cannot live without it. We did all what we could do that time but there was no impact of all this on him visibly. But after sometime he agreed as we didn’t left the place as it was the lone source of that what we needed. He agreed to provide us with one cylinder saying that “…I am providing this on humanitarian grounds otherwise it is not permitted at all….” Indeed we should have thanked him and that’s what we did and left.

We took the life box (Oxygen cylinder) and headed towards home where my grandfather was waiting for us that they will bring the cylinders refilled and I may get some relief, unaware of the situation. As soon as we reached home we tied up the cylinder and tried to supply the available O₂. But when we tried to release the content, what we found that the oxygen cylinder which we brought from SMHS hospital after lots of pleading and all that was empty, rubbing salt to the injuries. My eyes remained wide open; our entire family was in shock. The only question which was perhaps in the minds of my family members was that “What is going to happen now? And what the hell is this?” Fortunately my another uncle was also on the hunt to get an oxygen cylinder from anywhere. As we all were sort of paralyzed, in the mean time my uncle opened the main gate with a filled oxygen cylinder in his hands, he came running all along. Alhamdulillah he has managed that from somewhere, I actually don’t know and I didn’t ask him where from you had this one. The reason was that I was in the deep shock that if he (uncle) would not have managed to get one filled cylinder on time what could have happened? My grandfather could have died and that too due to the unavailability of oxygen and that could have been a strange thing.

The reason which compelled me to narrate that entire incident was to ask that who have given them the right to play with our lives. It was the matter of life and death for an aged person, how could they be so callous and so careless?? Obviously the answer is needed that how they can do this? And who is actually responsible for this? This is the one incident which I have narrated, there could be many other incidents happening everyday in these hospitals which usually get unnoticed….