"aama paati! thatha ku paal kudithitten!"(translates to "Yes grandma! I gave grandpa milk!":) ) Sorry people, that was for paati. I am sitting next to her bed. I keep asking her to sleep but she never listens. After a series of wild educated guesses by different doctors, she has been finally diagnosed with Parkinson's. She is just lying down after a tiresome process of having porridge. I think today she ll catch some sleep after all all the physio she got.
Well, has been quite a while since my last post. I was also stuck in hospital a few months back. How did the events go ? Oh yeah! Here goes - one painful wisdom tooth, mild fever, no place for tooth, pulled it out and left with a sore gum, headed to citi center the next day for a meet up, sipped everybody's juices to ease the pain, slept through my way back in the bus and ended up at some arbit bus stand, staggered my way back home with high fever, office bunk day 1, office bunk day 2, office bunk day3, doctor, blood test ,rock bottom platelet count!!, admitted in ICU at ****** hospital!! ICU !! I never thought I ll see one!!! And I am going to be IN an ICU!!Are you kidding me!! Machines, real sick people, some at the brink of death.. I asked them why I was here! They said if your condition is not controlled, it could lead to internal bleeding of organs. I already had blood while puking. So, there I was, in the ICU, reading novels, with this whole bunch of packets of platelets being injected into me. I was having fun looking at everybody and chatting with the doctors. The doctors asked me if I was an athlete coz the pulse rate alarms that were attached to me would start screaming in the night beeping a low pulse rate. Apparently, my resting pulse rate was lower than average, like an athlete. They said its a sign of a good heart and is because of my gymming :) Everything was going on well,until, on that fateful day, the head nurse grew impatient. I guess she was bored with me or may be they needed an extra bed. For some reason, she increased the speed at which the platelets were being injected. I just knew that, suddenly, I was jerking, teeth chattering with blood spurting out of my mouth. It wouldn't stop.I thought I would just die like that. There was no energy in me to summon. It was like all my reservoirs had dried out. My mom , who had come to give me a new novel,stood shocked. I can imagine what she would have gone through. She shouted.. blasted the doctor. The doctor freaked out and asked us to move to Apollo hospital. It was midnight by then. I was taken in a doctor equipped ambulance. With all those bottles and tubes injecting fluids and oxygen into me. And I was brought out of the ambulance, you know in that cinematic style, where the people keep running along with the patient screaming out their name. My mom was running along. Just that she was not screaming, she was crying. So, I ended up in the MICU(most intensive care unit). I was apparently in real bad shape. I couldn't move out of bed to do any toiletry stuff. It had to be in the bed. :( More than anything else, I used to be ashamed to call the nurses for that. Those people are the real saints. I know that, most of us, even if paid a million dollars, wouldn't do such stuff. You really need a brilliant atitude and an overwhelming love for humanity to become a nurse. Anyways, next to me,separated by a screen was a young lady on a life support system. She was cheated by her friend who staged her suicide. She was, by god's grace, somehow saved, but she had lost all senses and lost all connection to the world. Everyday, during visiting hours(one hour a day), when my mom would come and sit with me, her husband would come and play their child's recorded crying and try to wake her up. "Look at me, your kid is here. He played with his truck today.See he is smiling." Poor girl :( My problems were nothing. How can somebody destroy somebody's life like that. What the hell are we made of. Like somebody said, you make all the people in the world throw their problems and pile them up, you would immediately feel ashamed and remove your's from the pile. So, I recuperated, slowly. One day, the nurse came and asked me shall i remove the oxygen mask. I said" no! i am not able to breathe!". She said "ok !your wish!". The next day, I said may be we ll try removing it today. She smiled and said I had switched it off even before asking you yesterday. Its just a little bit of confidence your heart should have in the brain and the body. Our body is capable of so many things, if only the heart would it let it be. Open your mind and heart to everything. This is something I learnt and felt there everyday. So, making long things short, I was then moved into the ICU and then to the normal ward and then to the hospital room. Learning to walk, balance, painful physio for my thrombosis hand, eating nice food(apollo food rocks :D ), friends, phone calls,catching up with office, bla bla bla. .. I was well. And then I got out of hospital and was so pissed off with N and messaged him saying "fyi i am alive". And like they say the rest is history :).
Paati will walk very soon. I just wish her heart would believe that.
- V
