Your skin like dawn
Mine like musk

One paints the beginning
of a certain end.

The other, the end of a
sure beginning.

-Maya Angelou

As I mentioned in the last post, yesterday was a good day. He had asked for the first time to be taken out in his wheelchair. Normally, I have to coax him to agree to it.

We spent about an hour thru the streets of Kalyani in the evening hours. Because he was more alert, he and I spent a long time talking about small things and me trying to ask him questions about the past and see if his neurons, dendrons and synapses can start re-firing (or whatever it is that they do for a normal person). Surprisingly, he could recollect the addresses of all the residences we had lived in (each took about a couple of minutes and you could almost sense his brain cells churning thru). But he still cannot remember my brother’s house in Kolkata.

Numerous times, we had people go past us (mostly in bicycles) and then on second thoughts, they would stop. Invariably, it was somebody who realized it was my dad as they went past us and got down from their bikes to come back and talk to us. Many of them were not aware of what dad has gone thru. My dad explained “Porey gechhilam” (“I had fallen down”).

That gave me a chance during my one on one time to explain to him that he had a brain stroke. We found five different spots. And that is why he fell down. And why he is not being able to remember things.

He seemed to be very surprised at this revelation.
“I had a brain stroke?”
“Yes”.

A couple of minutes of silence later…
“Which hospital was I in?”
“2 nights in Kalyani nursing home and then 2 weeks in Peerless Hospital in Kolkata”
“I was in Kolkata?”
“Yes”
“How did I get there?”
“Pinku brought an ambulance from Kolkata” (Pinku is my younger brother)

A few minutes of silence again.
“Eto shoto hoye gechhey aami jaantam na” (I did not realize so much has happened)
“I know”

A minute later, I realized he was trying to raise his neck and look back towards me. Sensing he wanted to ask me something, I lowered my head as I kept pushing him along. Fully expecting the next question “Kobey bhalo hobo baba?” (When will I get better?)

Instead he said “Tor onek poisa khoroch korey fellam na?” Not sure whether I was more irritated or found it to be too funny or something else that at this juncture, he first reaction would be to be apologetic that his illness cost his son a lot of money. But I knew that was the clear marker, the “old” him was trying to come thru and that was a great thing.

I lied thru my teeth. “Insurance is giving all the money back”.

For half a minute he shook his head very satisfactorily.

The evening, much like the wheelchair, rolled on…

Dad continues to have some good days and some bad days. Last night was just terrible for him. He kept both mom and me awake with his discomfort. The trick, we have realized, is how much sleep he is able to get. We have not been able to narrow down yet how to get him to sleep (including prescribed medicines).

But before last night, the whole day was a great day. In fact, the best day, in my trip so far. When he woke up at 1PM after a marathon 14 hour sleep, his brain was very active. Surprisingly, he could remember things he had forgotten and could speak coherently more words than normal before petering off into a drawl.

You know how we knew he was in good spirits? The three tell-tale signs were:

(*) He has started worrying about costs!! “How much money did we have to spend?”, “How much insurance will give back?”, you know the typical questions that used to consume him during normal times 🙂

(*) He started cracking jokes!! Somehow, thru this illness, he is obsessed with my shaved head – “Why do you shave your head?”, “Do you do it yourself?” and all that. Yesterday he kept telling the attendants “Matha aachhey chool thaakbey na?” and then followed up with a humorous analogy “Pa aachey aangul thaakbey na?”. (His point being if you have a head, you will have to have hair just like if you have a leg, you are going to have toes!) Go figure!!

(*) He wanted to go our for a stroll in the evening in his wheelchair!! Last few times, I had to coax and cojole him to get out of home. Yesterday, he asked for it!!

We will take as many of these days as we can possibly grab…

It used to be that as the sun rose from the far end of dad’s balcony, I would pace up and down waiting for him to wake up. It used to be that we would have the first cup (or two) of tea together sitting in the balcony and watch the morning unfold.

Not any more…

Now I just want him to sleep peacefully as long as he can.

Perhaps, sensing the void this morning, my mom came and sat down quietly beside me to have our morning tea.

The new normal!!

A few Nazrulgeeti songs from my sister and myself on the tabla…

Sisters in bright clothes…
Brothers in kurta-pajama…
Myself in shorts…

It is all about time honored traditions 🙂

I am pretty sure this part was not part of the plan… 🙂

Last time I had “bhaiphonta” with my sister was when I was 17 years old. (This is a ceremony where sisters celebrate their brothers).

And today, at 51 years, I am exactly three times as old. After a long time, finally, I was able to keep a request of my sister…

One of the challenging aspects of going down with some of these eventually-life-consuming ailments is that everybody – the patient and others around have to go thru a sharp and excruciating learning curve getting used to the new normal. One usually does not get trained for these kind of phases in life. Sometimes, the best training you might have is what you recollect having seen happening with your grandparents or other elders while growing up.

Yesterday, most of the day we struggled with that learning curve. Dad was clearly uncomfortable. He was being very restless the whole day. Kept us on our toes trying to figure out how to ease some of his pain. The problem is that patients cannot always describe what their problem is. Of course, with his speech severely debilitated, he had his own challenge even putting words in his mouth

At around 11 at night, my brother theorized “I think he is having difficulty with his breathing”. Among all other complications, my dad is also a COPD patient. His lungs are very weak and only a fraction of it is functional. My brother then gave him a treatment to boost his lungs – I guess some kind of medication that you inhale thru a nebulizer.

In about 45 seconds or so, dad went off to sleep From his facial expression, you could see that he was much more comfortable. It seems his challenge was he was not getting enough air, but obviously, a patient like him cannot self-diagnose it. We had to learn it by stumbling upon it.

At the time of writing this – and it is past 6:45 in the morning, he is still knocked out. In fact, I can hear him snore. No other sound can be as reassuring as that right now.

Going back to last night, we then finished up dinner, got mom to sleep off and then spent some time knocking ourselves out too 🙂 My brother, sister in law and myself. Finally, we were relaxed enough to open that bottle of vodka that I had gotten after fighting thru the rains last evening 🙂 Whipped up a quick cocktail late at night…

Stacy Roy Roderman, you had wisely advised in a prior comment that I should remember to take care of myself too. May I submit this picture as Exhibit A in support of that 🙂

The morning was relatively better and then it quickly deteriorated from there. However, on the brighter side, he slept well last night. Which means, we all slept well!!

In the morning, I had put him in the wheelchair and wanted to take him out. But we got completely stalled by the steady and heavy rains. We were all rained in for the entire day. I had brought him out to the living area and had him sit around with us.

In a glimpse of his old self, he asked for the newspaper. Between my sister and myself, we folded the newspaper and turned the pages occasionally for him. I could see him intently and slowly read the words. And then he would lift his head up and stare at space like he was thinking something or trying to remember something from the past.

Eventually, he slept off in his chair with the newspaper in his hand.