First person: Hospital hopping, Hyderabad resident\'s COVID nightmare

I first experienced a fever and cough on June 23. I decided to get a test at a private diagnostic centre at Karkhana. It took me two days to give the swab and another day to get the result. I tested positive for Covid-19. I was terrified, but it seemed I was fine. I isolated myself at home, keeping away from my elderly parents.

On the midnight of July 5, my father developed breathing difficulty. I panicked, because I might have infected him with Covid-19. I called the state helpline numbers 104, 108 and 180059912345. On every single call, I was told they couldn’t do anything since my father hasn’t tested positive for Covid-19.

My father’s condition kept getting worse. I frantically started calling my friends and family, who, at around 2.30 am helped me get a nebuliser to help my father breathe. At 5 am, I was able to convince a 108 ambulance driver to help me. He told me that going to Gandhi Hospital would be useless without a positive test report. We went to a private hospital in the neighbourhood. The doctors refused to treat my father. After negotiations, they agreed to conduct a CT scan. They told me: ‘If the CT report tells us your father has a lung infection, we won’t touch him’. It turned out my father did have a lung infection. We had to leave.

We went to a large corporate hospital in Secunderabad. They made us wait for nearly two hours. When they realised I had tested positive a few days ago, they shooed us away. My father was fighting for his life in the ambulance.

We went to another corporate hospital in Secunderabad. They made us wait for half an hour and sent us away. They apologised and said they didn’t have beds available.

The 108 driver had left by this time and I rented a private ambulance, whose driver said we should try our luck at Fever Hospital in Nallakunta. When we arrived there, we realised how bad things were. There was a huge line of patients hoping to get admitted. After waiting for some time, I confronted a doctor and begged him to help me. He told me: ‘Who told you to come here? Your father needs oxygen to live and we don’t have any. We can’t help you.’

Dejected, and terrified, we decided to go to Osmania General Hospital.
When we got there, I made my father wait in the ambulance and ran to the casualty ward. The situation there was horrifying. A security guard told me there was one empty bed but I would have to bring oxygen if my father needed it. Just then, I saw a police constable walking toward me. I thought he could help and told him my problem. After listening to me, he handed me a slip with a phone number. He told me he was there for his mother, who needed oxygen herself.
He asked me to call the number if I wanted an oxygen cylinder. I realised that even policemen were as helpless as me.

At around 5 pm, after many hours of running around the city with no lunch or even water, a family doctor, who was guiding me through the day, told me to return home. He told me to get a large oxygen cylinder with a gauge. My father would have to stay on oxygen and take some general medicines. He promised to guide me through the process.

Over the next 10 days, I sat by my father’s bed, carefully monitoring his blood oxygen levels, pulse rate, temperature and fed him whatever he was able to eat. It was touch and go. On some days, he would sweat profusely and looked extremely weak. But today (Sunday), he is all right. He is able to sit up. He still needs some oxygen supply when he sleeps, but he has largely recovered.

I don’t want anyone to face the trouble I faced during those few hours. Not a single government hospital or helpline number helped me when I needed them. Only my friends and neighbours did; they checked up on me and my father regularly.