The clock was ticking. My heart rate was also increasing with the ticking of the clock. Soon I was to undergo bypass surgery. My whole body looked like a marble sculpture having been shaved. I was devastated from the inside. Least these are final hours of my life. I was feeling thirsty but was not allowed to eat or drink anything since last night.
There came a stretcher. I was dressed in the hospital gown. Now I could listen to my heart thumping fast with fear. Even my breathing was very fast. My wife and children were walking with my stretcher. I was very scared. Reciting God's name was not possible. If so, B.P. will still begin to rise. I suddenly thought of a film song and I started playing Antakshari with me.
The stretcher entered inside and The OT door was closed behind me. I was told to take a deep breath and to relax my body. Just while playing Antakshari, it was known by me that another cool air with some medicine was going into my lungs through the nose. I had no idea when I fainted.
Skilled hands completed their work. I heard a very deep voice: "Take him to ICU." I felt like I was being lifted very lightly and put on a stretcher. From between very heavy eyes i could barely open, I tried to look around. I could feel the fast moving trolley, the tall pillars around, the darkness all around in the passage and the blue light on the roof. The stretcher was entered into the ICU. There was a little more light there.
The other patients who underwent the operation were all asleep. I was made to lie down on a bed. My fear was unfounded. I was alive. The operation was successful.
All I could see was tubes all over my body, oxygen mask over my mouth, ventilator on the side, BP measuring clips on each finger of my hand and monitoring screen on the bed.
I felt a lot of pain in the middle of my back because the lying position was not right but I could not speak. The time may be night. Here time had stopped. Day or night felt the same. Lights were off in the ICU and were flashing inside the passage. What if they attach a monitor to what these people wear like jewel rings of planets? This funny idea came to me. Immediately my funny bone got activated. I glanced around. I started naming everyone in my mind. The doctor in charge was given the name "Bhimsen", a nurse 'Bichari Dukhiyari', a 'Fudakadi', even a patient was named by me with a funny name in my mind. Within hours of realizing that I was conscious.
But my mind was active, not the body, which was aching badly. Especially, the back pain due to not being properly aligned on my bed. My brain was running at full speed, thinking mostly useless thoughts. But it worked at full throttle. Body was just unable to do anything.
Excessive pressure by the clips on fingers caused blood to clot on them. Somehow I loosened the clips. I Tried to get my back higher, bending like bending in 'Chakrasan' due to back pain but heavy bags hanging on both sides attached to my stomach by thick wires made my attempt fail. I had to go to sleep. Even if I could not.
Now only dim lights were there instead of twinkling lights. Well, it seemed that night fell. The two doctors in the round stopped and one said "BP is only 40. Get him some coffee." A nurse came in and fixed my clips. Spoke in my ears softly, "Don't loosen the clips, they measure BP and pulse."
Some of the trainee male nurses on duty were shouting in Malayalam, laughing, making jokes, I was disturbed. Other patients would also have been affected. How to shout to them to keep quiet with two pipes going inside my mouth! It was Holi festival night. After a long tine It was all relaxed and quiet now. The quiet night seemed to freeze everything. No clock was around there. The environment inside was the same all the day and night! I couldn't sleep all night because of back pain. I don't know if I had a little sleep. Mask for artificial respiration, tubes all around, BP measuring clips on the fingers of the hands, two strings tied with wire on the abdomen in which the secretion of the diaphragm protecting the heart is absorbed, also a bag for urination. Which part of the body was open and visible? I stopped thinking and closed my eyes.
A vast flood of meaningless thoughts rushed again in my mind. Eventually I tried in vain to chant religious mantras. Then I remembered some jokes and started telling myself. Patients were sleeping all around and only a doctor in charge was awake. Those male nurse people had at last gone. The mind calmed down a bit. I allowed myself to fall asleep.
It would have been 8 o'clock in the morning. I tried to wake up but did I sleep at night? No. I was given medicines along with tea and snacks. Nurses used to apply tilak to each other on this morning of Dhuleti. A nurse saw that I was awake. She gestured to me and I nodded. She applied a light tilak on the only part of my forehead. She said 'Happy Holi' and immediately wiped out the tilak she did to me. I smiled at her. She smiled back affectionately like my mother! I was touched by her feeling.
The nurses in the morning used to look at the monitor attached to me and kept adjusting something. They did not realise that my family was not told that now I gained consciousness. My family was worried a lot outside. Someone finally told them in the afternoon and allowed my wife to come to me. She came wearing a mask and a green jabba. Oh, she looked beautiful, impressive. I have to tell her when I go home. My son did the same- visited wearing a green robe.
The next morning I was given juice with breakfast. Spunch was done to me which means the body was cleansed with a wet napkin. That motherlike loving nurse came to visit me and moved her hand on my face as if I was her son! "You have grown a beard and need to shave when you go to the special room." She said.
'Bhim Doctor' came. He measured my heart rate with a stethoscope around my chest, back and abdomen. I raised my hand to greet them when they returned. He returned greetings and ordered a stool by my bed. It was tea time. He asked for tea with me. They were discussing something with an assistant. I sipped hot tea at a stretch. He smiled and said, "Brother, it is you who has undergone bypass. You raised your hand to salute like a soldier and drank tea fast even before me. You are the patient but I am slower in actions. Now slow down. In all your actions. For ever." I implemented it for six months then as the proverb goes, 'master's advice till the gate'. Where do old innate habits go?
A nurse arrived lately. She put her hand on my forehead and then straightened my dress. She Immediately measured the temperature. I had a fever. Many people develop a fever by exposing their inner body to surgery. Pneumonia is also caused by taking oxygen from outside, the cylinder. The fever was probably higher. I asked how much it was, from my mask. She did not understand or did not reply intentionally. She just gave me a medicine for fever and moved her hand over my head soothening me to console. Then she went to another bed saying "Relax. We are here for you. Everything will be fine".
The third day. Now the nurses came to remove the ventilator. One nurse turned on the oxygen machine and removed the mask. I felt that my heart was under a lot of pressure. Pounding fast and felt great pressure externally. I felt as if my heart was on the verge of rupturing. I kicked hard with my feet. The nurses saw it but did not understand what I was trying to tell them. I grabbed a nurse's hand and wrote "Heaviness" in her palm. Not understanding that, a nurse handed me papers and pens, I wrote ‘Heavy. Slow down Oxygen. ' She slowed down the inflow by turning the knob. I was relieved. Now the mask and ventilator were removed. With some initial difficulty I started breathing without a ventilator.
In the afternoon a young doctor and Bhim Doctor came to me. They removed the tube from over my body. Now I was lifted and placed on a wheelchair and taken to a special room where my wife and son greeted me with tears in their eyes. Here I slept with a sound sleep for the first time after four days. But soon I had the urge to go to pass the stool. Sitting in the toilet with two hanging bags. The bags catch liquid percolating from abdomen, which is a covering of water that protects the heart. It is now pouring down, drop by drop, accumulating in bags of thick wire on either side near my navel. Why didn't the stool come down? There was no release and I had to push hard even if the thrust was forbidden. There came my doctor who recommended this surgery acvompanied by the surgeon who performed the surgery. They came to take the round of patients. How to meet them with half of the stool hanging back like a tail and doesn't fall down? I pushed hard. Finally I pulled my hand back and catching it in my hand threw it down! As I did so I relieved five days of hard stool. You will be disgusted to read this but this was a cruel fact. So I washed my hands and came out. They examined me, measured my pulse, put stethoscope on my chest, abdomen, back and congratulated me on the success of the operation.
I could not sleep here also, even at night. The body was at rest, the brain was running at double speed since my eye were opened in the ICU. I used to Watch Biscope programme on DD, movies at late night. Meanwhile I watched the English film 'Finding Nemo'. I liked it very much.
After lunch that was given at 11 o'clock in the noon, I slept for one and a half to two hours. The rest of the time All the nonsense and useful thoughts roamed freely in my active and free mind.
I started coughing. The general doctor there sent me a machine to inhale medicines. I later found out that this happens when they put on a ventilator for artificial respiration and this outside oxygen causes pneumonia which I had. The coughing continued even after I was taken home. The doctor said there was an infection somewhere in the lungs. Like pneumonia. Cured by his medicines.
The dripping liquid in those bags did not stop. On the 7th day in the special room the hospital sent me home with the remarks "Discharged Under Stable Condition." They removed the two bags tied to my stomach with a thick iron wire.
While Walking slowly for days at home, my head tilted to one side for which I was advised to start walking after standing for a while.
Then it was all over after about a month. I bypassed, maybe, my death and all the pains after bypass surgery in due course. After that, walking 40 minutes a day and taking some blood thinning medicines, I started going to work.
It has been six years. Even today, as I pass by the hospital, I salute the temple in front and the 7th floor of the hospital for giving me a new life.
Even today, I can see the ICU and the surrounding pictures in front of my eyes like a 3D movie, I can feel the heartbeats every time beating like a drum when I recall the experience.
Yes. Then, till today I regularly do yoga and also show asanas to friends. Life is normal. I share the memoir with you all. I wish all a healthy heart.
The day of my bypass was March 6, 2015.
-Sunil Anjariya
