Discovered Feelings!

He has been ill for the last 2 months and was diagnosed with a rotten gall bladder. Not withstanding the pain and delay of slow-medication, he went on to a premier hospital in the city for a check up, which later turned out to be an emergency situation.

Being a person of crowds, he couldn't adjust to the hospital environment, where he was confined to a small cozy room. He is familiar with living in groups, in a palace like house with numerous relatives scurrying in and out every week and now he is in a secluded room, with visitors limited to one at a time on any given day and time. More than the physical sickness, he was unable to take the Hospital psychosis that kicked in, as he is deprived of people around him.

After less than 2 full days of hospitalization, his mind started wandering relentlessly; tiring him and making him vulnerable to neurological disorders. He succumb to the fear of pain, death and orphaning his people. After consciously battling with Amnesia, Dementia ..he finally gave in for Parkinsons.

Yes, he was well aware of what he is getting into and hence made deliberate attempts not to loose his memory and social behavior. I could see both the shades creeping into him one after the other. If he failed to recognize his people at a stage, he strained his memory to recall the names the very next moment and strangely could spell out their surnames. He recalled bits of his life details and finally gave up.

He lost his words, his thoughts, his actions, and finally his senses. To control his aggravated behavior, physicians have sedated him heavily and they could succeed only after the 3rd injection. He lay still on the bed and his mind was (in a way) force-stopped to think and act. His vitals started depleting and so did our hopes. He was taken into ICU and the life was on the digital boards. We were more than anxious and the entire family came together to face the situation. The beauty of family had then surfaced, to stand for each other and support in every possible way. Every minute mattered and every night was a nightmare as the doctors had called it a Danger-zone with bare minimal chances of survival. He neither responded to medicines nor to the pricks of needle for blood test. He lay still on the bed for 2 days now and then a miracle had to happen.


His youngest son who lives in a distant foreign land arrived and barged into the ICU. He saw his dad lying dormant, living on artificial limbs. He couldn't take it..and shook him in vain, in a hope to respond to his teary eyed plea. After repeated trials, a slight trace of eye ball movement was noticed by his son, which was deep-suspected by everyone. The night passed on and never seemed to end for us, who were simply awake imagining the forthcoming times.

Few youngsters tried to lighten the grim face of the entire family, but nothing could help until the next day morning.

It seems, the patient had shown some stimulus that night and the life boards started beaming the readings with pride. A group of attendants were waiting outside the ICU, in a hope to catch a glimpse of this suddenly recovering phenomenon.

One of this is me, a granddaughter of the Him I've been ranting about. My taatha (Grandfather) is an 83 year old walking encyclopedia, who replaced my Dad a decade ago. Since then, I grew special bonding with this noble man and this write-up is a narrative of the very recent tragic incident that had blown the family.

Flying back to the ICU, we bribed the security guard to let us inside one after the other and my turn too came by. I walked in to see an extremely tired human figure lying on the bed with hands arrested to the bed. He had his eyes partially opened and an oxygen mask against his mouth. When he saw me, his eyes gleamed and the face tried a faint smile. He was trying to convey something vague, but I could connect my dots with "UK, Oxford, Visa". Bang! he recovered his memory and has definitely come back to us. I saw him nearly dying the previous day and now he started being a (little less than) normal, and each one of us were found in a pool of relieved tears that the person is gonna live. At that aha-moment, I did not want anything but my grandfather to breathe normally. Each one of us came out only to find out that tears were certainly rolling down our cheeks and all of us sighed a deep relief!