The Medical Council of Guyana is investigating the case of a West Coast Berbice man, who had his stomach cut open to remove a hernia but was stitched up almost ten hours later without the surgery.
“I coulda dead, I didn’t know nothing from 1 o’clock to 11 o’clock dah night and imagine he didn’t perform the surgery,” Duryodhan Jaikaran, 36, of D’Edward, West Coast Berbice told Stabroek News yesterday.
The father of two said he rued the day he visited the office of Dr Shiv Kumar Ganesh in November of last year, with the hope of undergoing what he was told was a simple surgical procedure.
Stabroek News yesterday confirmed that the council has launched an investigation into the incident. Efforts to contact Dr Ganesh, who is an Indian national and once worked with the government and the New Amsterdam Hospital, were unsuccessful.
Jaikaran said after he experienced what he called “dead and coming back,” he decided to complain to the council. He said he first approached Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy but was told that the man was no longer employed with the government and that he should take the matter up with the council.
The young father said he did so and while the council wrote him a letter and informed that it launched an investigation, he is concerned about the length of time it is taking to investigate the matter. The man said he has not been called to give further information to the council and he has only been told that the investigation is continuing.
Jaikaran, who said the incident has changed his life forever, explained that he first visited Dr Ganesh at his office in the Sigma Lab, New Amsterdam early November last year. He said the doctor diagnosed him as suffering from a hernia and told him that he would have had to undergo surgery. “I ask he. I say, ‘Doctor you could do the surgery?’ and he tell me how he could do it and I trust he,” the man said, adding that he paid out a $15,000 down payment after being told the procedure would cost $40,000.
The man said he later returned to the office, where the doctor administered anaesthesia around 1 pm. He said he was out of it for some ten hours, until around 11 pm the said day. While Jaikaran was unaware of what was happening, his wife and mother, who accompanied him, were forced to witness what his mother termed a “botched operation.”
Sita Jaikaran said she had already started to mourn her son, thinking he was going to die. The woman said when she accompanied her son into the room where the procedure was expected to be done she observed that it was only equipped with a bed and just a few instruments. “I start worry since before because I hear things and I tell meh son but he say he still going and when I just see deh bed alone I get frightened,” she said.
The woman said the doctor later cut her son but stitched him up without removing the hernia.
“He come and tell we dat he cut he and stitch he up back and he nah do deh surgery,” the woman said. She said the doctor nevertheless requested the remaining $25,000 that was owed to him. According to Sita Jaikaran, the doctor washed his hands and said he was going home to return while her son lay on the bed “like he dead, dead.” The doctor later returned but then around 4 pm informed them that he was closing his office and they should take the man home. “Now me son lie down like he dead and I had to ask de taxi driver dat come with we to help fetch he in de car and me son ent wake up or nothing,” the woman said. “He eye bin a close and he mouth open. When me meet home me a slap he on he face, kiss he up all kinda thing fuh he wake up. Imagine me son coulda dead. Why de doctor do dat to he?”
Jaikaran and his mother also said when they returned the following day for the doctor to “dress” the cut, he was told to return the next day. He did so and was told to return another day and “is den I get vex and tell he to give me de receipt and I went to another doctor to dress it and remove dem stitch.”
He later had the hernia removed at the Woodlands Hospital and the man said four hours after the procedure commenced he was awake and able to leave for home.
“I don’t know why deh doctor do something like a dah, is kill he wan kill me child,” his mother said.
Last evening, Jaikaran said he hoped to get some justice from the council but pointed out that while the investigation drags on the doctor continues to practice. “Somebody else life could be at risk. I don’t know why it taking dem so long,” the man said.
He said he contemplating moving to the courts against the man but lamented that he knows that would be another drawn-out procedure. “I just want de doctor to pay fuh wah he do and to mek sure he nah do it to anybody else,” the man said.
