A Painful Lesson

My father had been admitted to the hospital this evening. I don't know how to say what happened to him; it's a long story, and it all started because of a numbness on his toe.

You see, my father has got a very bad habit of using his own methods to cure himself of illnesses. Many a times, these so-called "methods" are just what he think will work and had never been proven to work, like purposely taking twice the dosage of medication prescribed by the doctor, claiming that it would speed up the process of recovery. Anyway this time round, when he got a numb toe, he didn't visit any doctor, but got himself some plasters. Not only did these plasters not work, but he got a "hole" in his toe, and that made him in bad pain for a long time. It was so bad that he couldn't sleep at night. He then went to visit those regular clinics and tradition Chinese medical practitioners, and none of the medication worked for him. Instead, it only made the condition worse, and all in all he'd already spent hundreds for the past weeks on his toe. I persuaded him to go and see a specialist at the hospital, but he simply refused. "What use can an x-ray do for my numb toe?" was his reply. His stubborness is frustrating, but I can understand his situation. He has got diabetes, and he's afraid that if he were to go to the hospital, the doctors there would certainly want to amputate his toe. But then again, visiting the "wrong" doctors is not going to make his condition improve, and as proven, it only made his toe even worse, and now had to be hospitalised for further checkup. If he had gone to the hospital for checkup earlier, maybe he won't have to be hospitalised already.

Although now my father's been hospitalised, I believe his condition is still not very bad. The initial examinations at the hospital showed that his blood circulation around his toe is not good, but since he could still feel pain in his toe, it means that his toe is still not totally beyond cure yet. I just hope that after this painful lesson my father will stop trying to use his own ways to cure himself. He is no doctor, and life is not a playing matter either!