N. Raghuraman's column: We need training to take care of the elderly at home and office

Sharad Kadam, a 73-year-old retired businessman, lives alone in Versova, Mumbai. His wife and son are in Canada. On July 25, at around 9 am, while driving the car, he suffered a stroke and reportedly lost control and collided with another car. Hearing his faltering voice after the accident, the people around thought he was drunk. The policeman present there also believed their words. Local media reports claimed that he was allegedly kept at the police station for five hours on suspicion of drunken driving. As a result, the most critical hours of his treatment were gone and he was partially paralyzed. It is said that his treatment was delayed by 12 hours and since then he has been in the ICU. According to the law, in cases of drunken driving, the police have to first take the suspect to a hospital for a blood alcohol test and not a police station. On the one hand, the police claim that after the FIR was registered, he was taken for a blood alcohol test to the Government Cooper Hospital, where doctors told him that he was drunk. On the other hand, when one of his lawyer relatives reached the police station, he saw that the steps had fallen. They heard their faltering voice and sought medical help, but the police kept saying that they were drunk. Due to this argument between the relative and the police, the medical assistance was further delayed and his right side was paralyzed. Then at 8 pm, Kadam was admitted to Nanavati Hospital. In the second test there, it was revealed that there was no alcohol in his blood. The report of Cooper Hospital is yet to come. The incident sparks a debate about a state like Maharashtra, where the number of people above 60 years of age is on the rise. While the authorities do not know how to handle the elderly population, ordinary people are equally unaware of it. If you look at the statistics, falling in the bathroom or anywhere else after a medical emergency is the biggest reason for the injury of the elderly. "Some bathrooms are killer bathrooms because they're wet, slippery, full of germs, and the fixtures are life-threatening," says Toronto architect Lloyd Alter. When asked which fixtures? So he said that free-standing bathtubs are one of them. They look very attractive in the magazine and are fine for fit people, but can be dangerous for the elderly. That's why I've avoided using a bathtub for decades after the accident at a hotel in Frankfurt, Germany. The edges of the bathtub there were extremely thin and round, and I slipped on the way out. If you have elderly people in your house, then there should be a stall shower, but the tap control of the shower should not be under it. Because, if they slip, their head can hit the controls. But in any home, these controls are right under the shower. The number of deaths by falling in the world is very high, even if it is not as high as stroke or cancer. Bathroom floors are also another major cause of such accidents. Slippery floor is a major cause of many accidents in the house. The third reason is that when an elderly person suddenly gets up from a sitting position, he gets 'orthostatic hypotension', that is, when he suddenly gets up from the toilet pot, the blood-pressure drops rapidly. "When the bathrooms of the future are shown in magazines, they are today's bathrooms," Lloyd said. Just a few gadgets and connectivity are added to them. The bottom line is that when people are getting longer, it is our responsibility to take proper care of our elderly, be it at home or on the road.