ICU Diaries

                                           View from the window

“...water, stories, the body

all the things we do, are mediums

that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them,

and enjoy this being washed

with a secret we sometimes know,

and then not.”

Rumi

ICU Diaries- I

Javed! Chai piyega!

PHONES ARE NOT ALLOWED INSIDE THE ICU. I still managed to click a picture. A good one. Even when I’m struggling with scant (so it seemed, then) breaths, I couldn’t compromise on aesthetics.

Curiosity killed the cat!

No!

My sister forbade me from keeping any memory of that ‘bad dream.’ That ‘nightmare’. I deleted the picture obediently.

See, there I contradict myself. 

Most of the time, my eyes are closed. There is nothing pleasant inside an ICU. Nothing, you would like to ‘see’ against the will of your weakening body. And there are sounds you couldn’t avoid. The irritating beeps of the monitors, the strangely Aurangzeb devised alarm systems that would go every 45 minutes torturing my ears—reminding the nurse to check the BP, and the incessant chatter of the nurses.

Overriding these noises, is the loud call for Javed, I keep hearing all the time. Javed! Chai piyega! Javed! Aankhen khol! Javed! Dekh kaun aaya hai!

I wonder who are these people?

Mostly, no one talks to the patients. Most of them, I presume, are like vegetables. Never heard anyone complain or call for help.

Except the shout out for Javed.

I am curious!

I’m struggling with my breathing which is getting worse in the absence of a proper diagnosis.

Then I hear one more patient being talked to-- nervously, feverishly. “Everyone is waiting for you at home.” “See, who’s come with me” “Open your eyes for once”. After a few hours, it’s followed by loud shrieks of a lady, accusing the doctors.

The nurses know, I’m the only one conscious and awake. Quickly the door to my isolation ward is shut.

Yes, I’m in isolation. They aren’t able to figure out what is my ailment. They suspect H1V1. I ask the doctor, isn’t it the work permit for USA?

He’s serious type. He says, no, it’s known as Swine Flu.

God! Don’t hit me with such a bad sounding disease. Please!

The sounds I get to hear are not encouraging. I’m unable to sleep.

The nurses won’t tell me anything about Javed.

I’m happy, I’m curious about something-- even here, even now.

I ask my ex, when he visits me. In his next visit, he gives me all the details. Once the prefix ‘ex’ is added, they become conciliatory.

 Javed is a 26- year- old boy from a village near Saharanpur, whose liver and kidneys are failed by a mosquito called Dangue. His family has borrowed money to pay a whopping Rs 6 lakh bill, which is still rising. The doctors have begun to counsel the family to take him home.

I will miss the only sound that resonates with some life-- Javed! Chai Piyega.

 I’m beginning to get apprehensive about my life.

Somewhere between struggled breaths, I tell myself, I’ve lived a good life.

No one has to shout out, “ Vandana! Aur jiyagi!”

ICU Diaries-II    

My myopic eyes recognise a friend

But the noise within! How do you listen!

The nurse on night duty tells me, you call someone in your sleep. Then she adds, “You’re  angry, you shout at someone, you’re very angry.”

I feel like I’m caught cheating.

I’m cheating on life.  

I slip into deep silence. 

Everything has become monotonous. My suffering too. I’m growing stoic. Indifferent. Cold. The worst, it robs me of dignity. My personality. Personal and private turn out to be mere notions; to be dropped.

I’ve no resistance left.    

The only unpredictability here is the most predictable closure-death! Rest is the same everyday—day after day. It seems like eternity. I’ve lost track of days and dates. And I’m not interested.

It began with one doctor. She was joined by another one. Then another. Now, a team of doctors visits me around noon. They discuss my ‘case’, peering through files, more being added with each passing day and more blood sucked out of my veins. I’m unable to decide what hurts me more—breathing or the swollen, aching arms.

I FEEL CHAINED, TRAPPED AND HELPLESS.

I THINK OF EUTHNASIA. (I had written editorials favouring it. I’m entitled.)

But, in my moments of clarity, I look out at the window across the ward-- visible when the door to my room is left open. Sometimes I get to see a beautiful sun set. For few days, it rained. My sun was eclipsed.

Right next to the window, an old sardarji is in coma, on ventilators, he’s being fed on tubes. My mind registers a lot going around that bed-- the way nurses treat him, the way he’s given a sponge, his sheets being changed, even a physiotherapist comes to move his limbs and beat his back. I see it all, without reaction. Sometimes a nurse pulls his beard. As a reflex, he raises an arm. Nurses laugh.

A hundred shades of humanity!

 A young boy—of about 23-24 is taken out with his bed, he’s never conscious, a doctor pumps something shaped like a heart while his bed is moved.

Then, I don’t see him.

The nurses look like Donald Ducks, with their funny mask they wear when they enter my room-- fearing contagion. I feel amused. 

My other moment of liberation is-- when I’m taken out for X-Ray. The nurse forces me to wear an ugly looking cap (ugliness is the rule here, not exception) because my hair is too dishevelled. I hate it. I remove it anyway, on the way. The wheel chair is attached to an oxygen cylinder—my lifeline. I like this tiny window of liberation—turning right, then the lift, then again a right turn and left. Even though this exercise leaves me weaker and with laboured breathing, I like it. I slip into sleep after each visit.

I’m without my glasses, wheeled out for X- Ray. I spot a familiar figure--all white hair and that huge paunch! Yes, even without glasses I know, that’s unmistakably my friend!

He’s not allowed inside the ICU. He just stood there, hoping to get a glimpse.

I forgot, I could infect him. I clung to his paunch like a child.

He walked with my wheel chair to the X- Ray room.

It made my day!   

I felt alive.

ICU diary-3

God comes to ICU

Finally, the lab report declares, it’s not swine flu. The Donald Duck masks are removed. I can see their real faces. 

It’s not good news for me though. Its viral pneumonia and type one Influenza, and my body reacted to all but one anti -biotic. The ‘case’ if now transferred to a chest- specialist, who turns out to be a pleasant person. And he talks to me as well as with the files.

The blood-sucking team comes at 4 in the morning. At 6 they give-- what they call-- ‘caring’, which is insensitively  uncaring. They haven’t figured out in so many days, what to do with my hair so that it doesn’t hurt. The caretaker pulls my tangled hair, my head hurts. Against all my protests, she disciplines them into two plaits, to make her job easy for the next morning. My head and hair both resist tying up. I undo the plaits.  

The striped hospital uniform suffocates my skin. I feel like prisoner no 9, shifted from bed No. 6. This is how they talk about you. Bed no.9.

 The next round of blood suckers visits at around 12, then at 4. In between there are nurses, senior nurses, supervisors and few doctors, looking for the elusive veins in my thrombiotic arms where they could insert the cannula for IV injections. Sometimes they prick 7 to 8 times. It’s the best way to get lessons on being stoic. You bear pain, look at the arm as though it belonged to someone else. The suffering is yours though.

And any Indian worth her salt wouldn’t avoid wondering about the karmic connection of it. 

I call it pooja ki thali—the tray with instruments used for sucking blood—for sacrifice. These are Navratras. After all, Goddess Kali likes offering of blood!

The person I could not manage to humour—the dietician—must have been a rare find by the HR. They must have worked extra hard to spot a person like her in a country of 1.3 billion--so unpleasant that her mere presence could prolong a patient’s stay in hospital by a few more days.

Sometimes I hide my face under a sheet to avoid her irritating presence.

“ Aaj aap kaisa feel kal rahi hain,” she repeats a 100^th time.

“Preparing for a marathon,” I say, piqued.

  She is also thick skulled.

“ Oh! That’s good. You like the food.”

“ No, I hate the mere sight of it. Can you use some imagination!”

She wears a smiley on her scarf along with her queasy smile that she wears like a tattoo.

And she visits me twice every day.  

I complain to the doctor about the lack of silence in the ward—the irritating alarms and beeps and incessant chatter. I feel sleepy but can’t sleep.

He allows me to get my phone—only to listen to music. I shouldn’t make a call or take one, he warns.

I agree.

The nurses, the supervisor doctor, no one likes this breach of rules.

I don’t care.

After the last injection of the day is given, more blood is sucked, medicines swallowed, temperature recorded- that refuses to come to normal- the nurse turns off the light.

And I eagerly wear my ear plugs, to play Chopin’s piano on my phone.   

It feels, music rains. It feels, this is for the first time that I’m LISTENING.

 I listen to a presence.

There is god in ICU.

I cry for the first time. And it just doesn’t stop.

I cry breathless. I cry embracing life, embracing death.

And so much in between.

My breath is strung. It is released slowly.

Like a breathtaking-- musical note.

ICU Diary-4

A white bird spreads its wings

The oxygen supply is reduced to 2 litres, from 4 litres per day. These are signs that reflect improvement.

From nowhere a butterfly comes to the window. It could be an insect. I see it as a butterfly, from the distance that lies between my bed and the window.

It’s been ten days, I feel dirty and smelly. I scratch my head all the time. I ask half a dozen nurses to cut my nails. They ignore.  

I cough all day, at nights its worse. After the doctor told the nurse to nabulise me, I had to wait for six hours—coughing all this while. That took away my Nirvana state of mind.

I shouted at the first doctor that came in the room.

I really gave him a piece of my mind, not sparing liberal use of the F word.

It shocked them -- brought them to senses—for a while.

Within no time, nebuliser was found. I got some relief from the incessant cough.

 How could I shout when I could barely speak? I still wonder.

Survival, I guess.

I care for each breath inhaled—it’s laboured, hard earned. Each breath taken is life renewed. It’s poetry. Music. A possibility. Of a universe...of a narrative.

 The suffering has taken me to that haze, where boundaries melt, where the unfathomable touches to leave you in a state of untranslatable bewilderment.

As I gather my sense of the world (I’ve to return to), I think of ‘pollution’ and ‘environmental degradation’ in a different setting. Writing editorials in an office, I thought, I understood the issues. Struggling for breath in an ICU, from viral chest infection brought me to the knowledge of its true horrors. What we unleashed in the name of development is-- annihilating us. There is no stopping. No wisdom. So many young lives are wasted causing so much suffering.  

 Outside the ICU, does anyone care?

The next day, the doctor asks the nurses to perambulate me. Two nurses hold me, I take a few steps with great difficulty, soon, I’m breathless.

The next day, I ask the nurse to walk me to the wash room.

 There is a mirror!

The mirror doesn’t mirror me.

I’m not looking at my overgrown chin and upper lip hair. Strange!

Who is there? I get closer. It moves farther away. This girl without a soul in her eyes and a beaten up face! I force a smile to get her back. She looks accusingly at me.

What did you do to her?

I turn away.

Self deprecation is worse than self-pity.

I think of the fastidious girl who picked only red toffees from a box full of sweets!

She must be hiding somewhere.

Scared. 

Its evening and I think, I spotted a white bird perched on a tree in the backdrop of the setting sun. The sky is ochre, painting the window pane in its colour. It’s beautiful. I ask the nurse for my glasses.

It’s indeed a bird, the kind you get to see in the fields (often perched on buffalos in village ponds). I don’t know her name.

She spreads her wings and flies towards the sky, ablaze with hope.

The sun is setting.