On the summer of 2009, my maternal uncle passed away due to kidney and liver failure. He was only 63 years old at the time of his death. During the summer of 2008, he was completely fine and preparing for his daughter’s grand wedding, paying attention to every detail from what font to use in the card to what colored tie should the men wear. He made my family and I go to Bangladesh from New York to attend the wedding as he wanted every member of his family to be there. He wanted a perfect wedding for his daughter. Well, he fulfilled his wish of making the wedding day perfect, but the coming days brought in a lot of sadness in our family. Unfortunately a week later he was hospitalized and diagnosed with a liver failure. He was being treated by the best doctor in Bangladesh. Unfortunately, treatment in Bangladesh is as poor as the country itself. The best liver doctor in Bangladesh prescribed a medicine to my uncle, which caused his kidney to fail too. Then he started going for diagnosis three times a week for kidney failure. After four months of diagnosis, my uncle passed away in the diagnostic center.
The doctor, who prescribed him the wrong medicine, wasn’t affected at all by this incident. It is us, his family, who felt the loss of a very important person in our life. My mother, who was very attached to my uncle, is still not able to get over the shock. Even now when I come home, sometimes I find her sitting in the couch in the dark living room, looking at the pictures we took when my uncle visited us in 2004, crying and cursing at her for not bringing my uncle to New York for treatment. I asked my parents several times about why no one sued the doctor for that mistake. They should file a case not because they want money, but so that people in Bangladesh would be aware of how ignorant he is as a doctor. My father’s answer to that question was that for doctors in Bangladesh, patients’ lives mean nothing and that if the best doctor in Bangladesh makes...