the orthopedic clinic- thursday consultation

It was my first clinic visit. In fact it was my first outing since being discharged from the National Hospital on Tuesday, February 8th. When the doc saw me and signed off my discharge, he said that my wound namely the stiches were healing well and that I should under no circumstances put any weight on my injured leg for three whole months until the fused bones have time to heal and grow.

I was asked to come to his clinic in a couple of weeks to have my stiches removed and the healing process inspected. His clinic days are Thursdays and Saturdays, and I chose to get there early this morning anticipating crowds. I was not far wrong, as even being there before 8am I was lucky to be able to find a place to sit. Once I sat down and Sagara went to get me on the waiting list, more and more people turned up with various leg injuries in wheel chairs and crutches and the like.

It seemed that he was about to see over 200 patients in the just the morning session. I was wondering what my wait would be, when I was mercifully spared the agony, as my aunt a physician, walked in and got me in straight away to see the surgeon. I saved a wait of hours there. The doc saw me only for a minute, removed the plaster covering the stiches, said it had healed sufficiently for them to be removed, and looked at the xray, bent my leg and found it fully operational to his satisfaction, and asked me to come in a month, with an x ray for him to review the progress.

I was then taken to an ante room, where the nurses asked me to lay flat on a trolley and they expertly with little fuss removed the zillion stiches with little pain and then cleaned the wound area and bandaged me asking me to remove the bandage in 5 days and from that point I would be ok to bathe the wound area.

I got a date for the next visit at the counter and off I went. This seems to be the daily regimen of the clinic as different surgeons have different clinic days here. In the consulting room, the boss was at a desk at the end and a whole lot of other juniors were in a series of about 7 desks all seeing to patients where the level of referral depended on the need of the hour as some patients are not on the first visit like me, but on follow up visits.

What struck me was the efficiency of the patient care, albeit with little bedside time due to the workload, but as there was NO administrative delays for record keeping or payment etc, it seemed a pretty focused affair purely on the patient care and follow up with instructions for the next follow up.

I am glad I have been able to get the services of the physiotherapist who began my regimen less than 24 hours after the operation, to come home to work on me and even the doc was pretty startled at the level of progress when I showed him I could lift my leg and bend it to the same level as the good leg.

Again all this was a free consultation, all part of the expert and highly creditable service of the National Health care service in Sri Lanka. Thank you doctors, nurses and all the ancillary staff for every thing you have done to get me back on track as soon as possible.

I mentioned to the doc that I feel that there is a tendon or muscle that jumps unintentionally, to which he said it should correct itself once I begin to use the leg and walk and get the muscle tone back on the leg.

What a relief to get out of the house being kept cooped in. Now I feel confident to go to the office on Monday, for a half days work at the WTC. Apparently as I will be in a wheel chair, I can use the service lift to get straight up to the 32nd floor from the car without having to navigate any more obstacles.

More for next time.