I thought the ski­ing course was really rea­son­ably priced at Rs 4500. And then I went and slipped on the snow and hurt my knee. I ignored it for a few weeks, think­ing it was yet another small injury. But that was not to be. The knee now has already cost me a few thou­sands to repair already :)

My 10-day phys­io­ther­apy started yes­ter­day and I must say I rather enjoyed it. Ear­lier, I would feel phys­i­cally sick when­ever I had to go to the hos­pi­tal for any­thing — usu­ally to visit someone.

But Mani­pal where I thought I’d get my knee treated is nice and clean (and mighty expen­sive, I might add). There are user-friendly boards every­where (and cash coun­ters too :) at every cor­ner. Last evening, they put this machine over the injured knee and let it get all warmed up. It felt rather good actu­ally, as I nearly dozed off. The phys­io­ther­a­pist, a young peppy woman who joined a year or so ago, kept me busy with her chat­ter. She promises that all my bones and joints are intact and I just need rest to let it heal. I was rather scared about a per­ma­nent injury.

Get­ting back to my point, I am not fond of vis­it­ing hos­pi­tals at all. I guess most of my dis­taste comes from the state of some of the hos­pi­tals I have had the mis­for­tune to step into. I have one par­tic­u­larly bad mem­ory of the Guwa­hati Med­ical Col­lege hos­pi­tal where every­thing is so depress­ing, you’ll fall sick even if you aren’t!

The beds are creaky, the sheets are dirty, the walls are cov­ered with spi­der webs and falling apart, you can hardly step into the loos (they’re so dis­gust­ing), there are peo­ple sleep­ing every­where (beds, floors, cor­ri­dors), syringes thrown care­lessly in cor­ners, over­flow­ing bins. I won­der how any­one gets bet­ter there! I had to go there dur­ing a fam­ily emer­gency and I hope I never have to go there again. I’m just amazed at how doc­tors man­age to work there despite all of this.