Thursday, May 7, 2009

75) When nightingale came home

I was a typical advt. guy without a care in the world – young, impressionable, brash, and consuming teas and cigarettes like nobody business. One works long hours running around in circles and just when you thought you have understood the product, the campaign is over or worse still the client lost.

One fine day, I turned sick with a fever that left my body shivering all over. Even walking to a restaurant for an idly was more than what the body and mind could bear.

The doctor was a young and gamely chap who kept smoking away. Each day, the body grew weak and I felt death choking on me. The doc waited for a week before he could rule out Typhoid and Malaria and only then order for the tests, it was not a moment too soon for me. The tests showed something wrong in the heart region.

Move over the GP and enter the world of cardiologists. It didn’t take them long to give a name to my ailment- constrictive pericardiactomy. I was advised heart surgery at the earliest for relief.

It is difficult to mentally prepare for such a major surgery for one who is 28 years with just one bad fever doing the damage. The date fixed, payments made and surgeons worked their way through on a Saturday morning.

When I regained consciousness after over 40 hours of anesthesia, I saw my body completely rearranged. There was an intravenous line from the neck; the chest looked as if somebody had played holi. I had an 8 inch straight line cut from the collar bone on to the start of the stomach breaking my rib cage. I later learned that the sternum (breastbone) is cut electrically and it chisels away as in road construction. Then there were drainage pipes which frankly looked like Cauvery pipes supplying water to Chennai; such was their thickness. Then the catheter and add that to your ventilator in the mouth. It is a scene straight out of hell as the drainage pipes are knitted in a black thread. Your body is used as a soft board and I counted no less than 8 holes in the body with pipes and needles sticking allover.

On waking up, I saw the handiwork and cried unabashedly. I couldn’t move my legs and thought they had been paralyzed. I tried to talk but the ventilator ensured that no sound came out. I didn’t know whether it was day or night in the ICU. I saw 3 nurses working on me at full speed and I in a semi-conscious date couldn’t decipher what. Such was my pathetic state except generating active employment!!!

The second day, I see 2 nurses working and I could see them making graphs of my pressure points and heart rates. The vent was removed and I could talk to the outside world.

I was crushed beyond words as I cried like a child without shame. The nurse working on me – they ask you to draw oxygen and then run the nebulizer in turns – spoke:
“Sir, you will be alright. Just a week more, you will be discharged”.

I kept quiet and continued to be sunk in the gloom. Those black threads knitting on both sides of my chest almost made me throw up.

‘Sir, do you believe in God?”

I softly said,” Yes, I have to”, not sure what it meant.

“Do you mind if I say a prayer to the Lord on your behalf?” “Sure, by all means”

“Do you mind a Christian prayer?” I said,” No problem”

She took my hand and looking into my eyes prayed:
Father thy kingdom come
Thou shall be done

Having studied in a Jesuit school, I knew the prayer by heart and I repeated the words as she went along.

At the end she ended up in tears and I felt so much better off it.

The next day, my eyes searched for this nurse but she was on duty elsewhere. With each passing day, I grew stronger but this gesture is never forgotten. I don’t even know her name but hers was a compassionate heart

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