BEDFORD GARDENS CASUALTY – WHAT A VILE, NASTY DOCTOR!

Alfredo, in his seventies, awakens at three in the am. His wife rushes his to Bedford Gardens Casualty. He is sent home, with instructions to take oxygen.

At seven am, we receive an SOS from his panicking wife. Alfredo can’t breathe.

We race to their house, collect the elderly couple, and drive them to Bedford Gardens Casualty.

All goes as expected, until the casualty doctor arrives.

The moment she does, the experience degenerates into that of meat arriving at a wholesale butchery.

Gushing vinegar and throwing her hands up like an albatross taking flight, the doctor demands a deposit of R100 000.

At 3 am this morning, patient Alfredo’s wife couldn’t raise R100 000. Could you, at that hour?

By now, 7 to 8 am, the airwaves have been abuzz between Africa and Portugal, and plans have been made to procure the R100 000.

However, the R100 000 has now ballooned to R458 000 (four hundred and fifty eight thousand rand). The news is delivered with the empathy of a prison warder warning an escaping prisoner to halt.

“I spent three hours on the phone trying to get you into a government hospital!” lies Bedford Gardens Casualty, with an unpleasantness that needs to be seen to be believed.

Alfredo, in his 70s and struggling for each breath (having received zero – none, nada, absolutely zero – help from Bedford Gardens Casualty), is carried back to the car and driven to Roseacres Clinic, 10 minutes’ drive from Bedford Gardens.

Within thirty minutes he is in a ward in Roseacres, having been received with a compassion utterly alien to Bedford Gardens Casualty. We are asked for a deposit of R28 000 (twenty eight thousand rand; proof available).

From the moment of the patient’s arrival, Bedford Gardens Casualty treated him like an enemy.

And if turning patients into enemies is what she wanted, that’s what she’s got.

Get well soon Alfredo… at Roseacres.