It’s Pouring.

(31 Oct10)

            One member of the family, who has had cancer for the past eleven years, has now been declared ‘terminal’. She’s in the USA, where they recommend ‘have a good time’ for the remaining duration on this planet. So, even whilst she’s on palliative chemotherapy and takes medicines to counter the side effects, she’s out enjoying herself on a luxury cruise. In India, there would be desperate attempts to try all kinds of herbs, to get blessings from various holy persons, or end up with a ‘poor me see how I am suffering’ attitude. Either ways, a time comes when acceptance is the only way out.

            Another member, within days of our return, was detected with the same disease and had to have an early surgery. Just the day she was admitted, a third member of the family got a bad attack of renal colic and had to be looked after by a frail 81 year old in Goa.

            Three siblings in medical trouble simultaneously. Maybe at a certain age these things can be expected. 

            No matter how many years I’ve worked in a hospital, when acute medical distress has to be confronted at home, it’s not easy. No matter how many patients one sees in pain, seeing a loved one in agony causes confusion in the mind. No wonder many doctors stay away from treating their own family and friends when hard decisions have to be taken. 

            In the course of my work, I’ve realized that there are three kinds of difficulties families or individuals face: medical, financial, social. Often, two are clubbed together and the money part is frequently the common factor. Part of it is because the earnings aren’t enough, part because of poor planning. Few keep money aside for hard times. People don’t mind spending on eating out or buying an expensive outfit for a single occasion or giving a costly gift, but will hedge and haw and to part with cash to pay a doctor’s fees or buy medicines. Few cater for emergencies.

Similarly, having a lavish wedding reception takes priority over buying items that make life easy. Or buying a television seems to be a priority over buying a washing machine. Whatever, coming back to the health, finance and social troubles, quite often, when the troubles happen, they happen together. What’s social trouble you might ask? People accusing you of doing something and not believing your point of view. Young persons not getting married. Disagreements with relatives, neighbours.

Holy men, usually good judges of character and human failings, make money out of helping people in trouble cope with the difficulties. Nine times out of ten, no one but no one can really help solve the problem. One knows it’s a bad phase, one knows all times good and bad must eventually end, yet one wants to hear it from a guru, swami, priest. Just before this bad phase happened in my family, at Mussoorie, I met one shop owner, unmarried, pretty young woman, who told me how certain people in that town were forcing her to sell her ancestral property, how much stress it had caused her and how Sri Ravi Shankar had helped. How, I wondered aloud. “Satsang” was her unexpected reply. Singing aloud with other toneless, tuneless women followers was helping her deal with threats? No, she told me benignly. But I know that all of this is transient. That life itself is transient. Why bother about things that happen during the journey. She needed to visit Mr Art of Living to hear that for the first time? A Muslim woman who frequently visits the hospital, who sells clothes on the road outside a busy Mumbai station, told me she used to pray to a “peer” to help her tide over her rough times. Now she’s stopped because the bad times didn’t. She’s left it all to Allah to do what he wanted. She’s fed up. When times are really bad, I guess one of two things happen: either one accepts and bashes on regardless, or one gets fed up and lives through it because there isn’t an alternative.

A third way of thinking is: don’t give up, try try try everything, search search search for a way out. Finally, to each their own. It’s interesting to watch, though, how each human being deals with what he or she is confronted with. And hospitals are great observational posts. Someday I will compile my experiences.  @@@@@