Monday, February 11, 2008

Soccer Balls & Knee Balls

At 42, you feel that you are at the peak of your life. You have seen all, you now have power, you have youth and your audacity can be backed up with actions and you aren’t scared of anything. You feel that you have enormous self control and the pain is never shown in your eyes unless it is extremely destabilizing. And then you break your knee. You are somebody else from that moment. You are the one who moved on your feet like a gazelle and in a TV commercial when John Abraham does a body maneuver dodging a bunch of kids off a soccer ball, your legs pain and you tell that guy, just be a little bit careful buddy.

But till it gets destabilizing you don’t accept it fully too. You would fly to all parts of the country, take 150km drives on a single day for customer calls but just look like an sorry a**hole when it is time to climb the stairs of the aircraft with your luggage. Guys who look like modeling for Rice Barn oil breeze past you, throwing a contemptuous glare at you that means ‘you youngsters’. That’s the time you decide you will fix it once and for all and agree to be on the operating table. Now that is a positive move, so you know that whatever incapacitation is, it’s just for a brief period and proceed. Being a creature of habit, you make a list of what all you want to carry to the hospital. It was almost similar to a work trip sans the formal attire and the jackets. You pack your ipod; you carry enough books for the entire stay which includes the time at the table, you carry all kinds of chargers and your bag appears as if that is being admitted for labor.

You start off warm and flirt with the sisters ( sounds like incest, but then they are younger than your daughters which makes it even more incestuous ) and make life miserable for all of them till they utter the word preparation. All of them are trained to say that in a somber voice befitting a British funeral parlor. Surprising they wear white and not black when they say that. They bring a bagful of disposable syringes ( a bag that is bigger than your pregnant one ) and place it behind you, but you know that they are intruders of your body and they outnumber the cells in your body and you start wondering how they will manage to use them all, maybe use some of them on the attendants. That’s the easiest part actually. They just make one big hole and dump everything through that.

But the prep is not about that. A guy turns up ( he is supposed to be brother, ok ! ) and tells that he wants to shave the entire hair of your body. Normally I am given to exaggeration, but this one is not, he left the hair in my head, but suggested that I remove my Frenchie ( ok even that too ! ). You are appalled, a sparse growth at your chin is surely not going to hamper a knee surgery for sure, but he is just an implementer, he just told that he was under orders from the sister to do so. Maybe the sister didn’t like the frenchie or the surgeon has a bad superstition about this. You are categorical that you would want them to reconsider that decision and if it is upheld you would rather use your Mach3 and shave rather than using the skin hair remover that he brought with him. You need to give into this, that guy does a thorough job of shaving, barring a small nick in the shin. Your earlier blood clot test suggested that your blood doesn’t bother to clot soon and you are wondering this new development would set back the surgery date by a day. And then he springs a surprise, he asks you whether you are A1 blood group, you are amazed and reply in affirmative and he casually tells that all A1’s clot late. Fine you think, you should have asked this question before nicking, my friend. But, you turn around and look at your leg and have images of Levers calling you for modeling for their skin removing products. And it sucks to see yourself plain and bald in areas you loved with hair always. The ordeal does not end there, the sister turns up and runs her hand on your leg ( unfortunately only on the leg ) and finds out that there are strands are hair that can’t be permitted. You beg for mercy and promise to be even smoother in the morning when the surgery is about to start, after all hair grows was your logic.

You start thinking whether we make more doctors than what you need because as of then, your life history is just known to a million doctors as they troop in and out for the interview. And at last you manage to shut yourself to get some sleep. You don’t even know whether you slept before a duty doctor wakes you up at around 4.30 am, wanting you to sign a document that bequeaths your life to them. This I know is thoughtful. I have read in novels that the elite special commandos always attack at this time of the day, because they apparently believe that the resistances are lowest then. You don’t give up so easily, you read them thoroughly and later regret why you did it. Because just after you read, you start thinking about your mother, childhood friends and everyone else who is not around you. And decide that the only thing you will regret is the unfinished Dave Barry book. Then you don’t sleep again. Not that you don’t want to, but remember I talked about those million doctors, they have million counterparts for the morning shift starting from that undertaker.

The anesthetist troops in and he gets annoyed because you are brushing your teeth as if you are going out on a date with him. He asks all kinds of questions which your mother would not have known about her mother and you make a honest attempt to reply each one of them. Actually he could have tried this interview for a longer time, because he was anyway making me drowsy and that’s what his mission was. He agrees to add a valium to your drugs, because by then you are anxious and all that bravado vaporizes. And the ritual starts again, the brother comes again and checks the new development in the hirsute areas and tosses a gown to you that could be the skimpiest you will ever get to wear and yet look grotesque.

Then one single shot and you know nothing. You had prepared carefully for the recovery and promised to ask the clichéd question of ‘where am I?’ and your friend who is in an officer at that hospital leaks out a question which the anesthetist would ask showing two fingers expecting your reply. The before surgery you wanted to reply that with a single finger ( you know which one ) , but nothing you remember. You are warned that in the post operative recovery period there is a chance of you blurting out state secrets and leave the nation in peril apart from the names of all your girlfriends leaving yourself in peril. But neither was a problem, as you don’t know any state secrets and you yourself have forgotten the names of your girlfriends. You wake up like a heavily made up hero in the movies and tell that you want to go home. There you go!! Training always helps. You are then touted as the best person who has ever undergone Anterior Cruciate Ligament reconstruction. Then next you talk about the Builder meet and tease a friend. They all know that you are back. But that was a teaser. It takes enough and more time for you talk anything coherently and remember whether your daughters visited you. You are in a state of haze.

Everyone is happy barring me, because the next day the sheets are all bloody and with the leg like what you have, you start wondering what gender you are and what they cut off from you. Someone you manage to take a peep and convince yourself it is only the hair that is missing and go back to bliss. But the doctors and the paramedical have their KRA, the weightage and priority is as follows:

1) Patient should not sleep for more than 10 minutes ( while you understand the ulterior motive about checking whether you are still breathing, you think there were better methods.
2) Patient should not even feign happiness, because they then unleash a physiotherapist on you whose target is measured in the quantity of tears you shed.
3) Sisters should have prior experience in archaeology, as they would be needed to dig deeper into you for placing an IV cannula and excavate for that. ( once it comes out through your mouth and you start wondering that they could orally feed you medicines if this was the case ) and their results are in depth and size of your thrombosis.
4) The brothers on the quantity of urine you pass ( every time I topped beyond 700 ml there was a cry of joy from the brother because it was a new hospital record)


Was a fine bunch of guys who met their KRA always! But then you are used to this ritual pretty much yourself that you wake up every 10 minutes and press the buzzer and report that you are alive or hoard your piss to collect 700 ml plus and quickly cry when the physio walks in.

And after they get used to you as a victim, they quickly bored and wean off from you and that’s when you start missing them. You start realizing what all they did for you and their absence, and lack of smiles around you hits you hard and start waiting out for their arrival. You almost become a baby again and act like a puppy and wag your tail when you see one of the known faces ( not withstanding the fact that they show that you knee looks like a hardware shop and you have a lifetime supply of staples when they are removed and handed over )

And when the D day arrives ( in this case the Discharge Day ) you don’t want to go because you were so very confident about these guys and you are suddenly afraid to be alone without them.

You still wake up at 5 am, but miss the undertaker, you do your physiotherapy much easier, but cry when you realize that the therapist is not around who made a hard job pure fun and showing you birds in the marshland ), your symptoms of thrombosis fades but you smile at their attempt to find a vein in you and you know that these guys out there put you back on your feet. And you start looking forward for the review day and you start preparing another list which reads out the mementos you want to give them.

And you tell John Abraham in the TV, ‘just a couple of months buddy’, just that!!!

2 comments:

supersubra said...

At last you dawned upon us afterdark, a plesant stay at Hospital, Mr.Afterdark.

Anonymous said...

thank god for you it was knee wherein you can show it to whomsoever you want... think someone had to cut his ASS