Kala’s Medical History. (Conclusion)

January 8, 2007 at 11:49 am | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

I don’t want to make myself and others of my family miserable by lingering long on Kala’s medical history. I shall run through the remaining part very briefly now. This covers the period from September ’99 till we shifted to Hyderabad in the beginning of 2001, ending with her final hospitalisation for a second time for Lungs complaint, in November 2005 and when her discharge papers showed that she was admitted on the 22nd and was declared as dead on the 25th November, 2005.

When Kala and my daughter moved to Hyderabad to join our son who had already been working in Hyderabad for a year then, I was not yet relieved from my duties. It took me till August to finally bid goodbye to my service days. She was brisk then, using elbow sticks, but free of movement, cheerful of spirits, though she had already started consulting a leading Orthopaedic Surgeon regularly to whom she was referred by an oldtime neighbour and friend from her school days. Things again moved to a head due to various contributing factors, leading to the removal of the knee implant and removing her knee joint completely,  and fusing the bone in a straight line from the hip down. That was the end of January 2002, and her right leg looked like a porcupine, bristling with rods and bolts and braces sticking out through her leg joint through skin, muscles and bones. By and by, the wounds healed and the bolts etc., were all removed. She was made to walk almost immediately after both the surgical occasions, and the doctors were full of admiration for her grit and positive attitude.

She started using walker while in the hospital and then with elbow sticks which became an extension of her limbs. Sometime in 2002, the doctor again felt that another surgery was necessary to correct a bend forming in the bone. That was the last straw. She discontinued consulting doctors for around a year. This proved to be fatal for her, because sometime during the intervening period her lungs started wasting away and she didn’t have any medical consultations when she required them most.

She had however been seeing a consulting physician of and on, and, in September 2005 he advised her to consult a Pulmonologist.  As the Specialist was on a long leave, she reverted to the consulting physician, but when matters worsened, we admitted her in another hospital for over ten days, and when she was discharged on 6-10-05,  she had been on oxygen support at home, 24 hours a day.  Till the time she was admitted for the final time in an hospital again on the 25th, she was attending to her personal hygiene herself,  needing my assistance for commode and a body wash only at the most helpless moments.  She was very hygienic and clean almost till the final day of her rehospitalisation.

When I admitted her in the hospital for the last time on 22-11-2005, the doctor took me aside and made me understand that she had very little time left.  She grew very very affectionate towards me those days, once actually asking me to come away with her to the other side, the afterlife.  She never told me anything then, but confided with my daughter- in -law that she will not return alive from the hospital this time,  asking her to take care of my daughter and to see her marriage.

I still have a lingering doubt that she stopped her intake of food and water on those three days till she breathed her last on 25th November, 2005,  leaving my son uncontrollably sobbing,  and me to start my countdown to be with her again. I informed my daughter that her mother is no more, and she could not bring herself to talk to me for a week because she was mourning away in her loneliness, having nobody to turn to in her pain and misery, not having been able to see her mother off on her final journey. It is now over a year since she left us all.

I cannot eulogise on her enough and words cannot do justice to verbally mourn our loss. For me she is still and will ever be total personification of womanhood and motherhood. She reared three children, our two children and me. Only two of her expectations still remain unfulfilled. We are waiting for a progeny to carry forward our forefathers’ genes, and we will see my daughter to find her station in life and settle down to a happy married life at sometime in her future. For the present she is going ahead with her academic pursuits, and will find a suitable husband when the time is ripe and when God wills it.

My memoirs will continue hereafter on more mundane matters and my observations and my interests. Memory is a wonderful thing that has happened only to human beings of all God’s creations. I will have flashes occuring sporadically which I shall hopefully jot down by and by.