Evolution of love

Lifes Uncertainities

Yesterday was one of those days.  Can’t categorize them as good or bad. They come and go; and when they’re gone, you sit and wonder - what was that? It’s like driving really fast with the windows down, head thrown out, the wind beating you till you’re senseless and numb. But such days always leave you with something: an experience, a learning, perhaps an insight. For me, yesterday was about all of the above. And more.
It started off like a normal day. We had it all chalked out: take Sundae to the vet for her post-op check-up, drop Peaches off at the parents for babysitting, head home and work. But I was feeling morose and stressed on two counts. One, Sundae’s incision wound was oozing some fluid, which is usually not a good sign and paranoid parent that I am, it had kept me worried a long time. Two, I was experiencing an annoying ache in my lower abdomen since the previous night. It came and went in waves and though not debilitating just then, it was a massive source of irritation. Anyhow, we went through the usual morning chaos of a house that homes two animal babies and two human adults and were finally on the long commute to the vet after dropping Peaches off.
But nothing felt peachy. Traffic was unusually heavy for a Saturday afternoon. Sundae was unusually irritated in her crate and began mewling plaintively from the get-go. And, to top it all off, my pain had worsened. So much that I found it hard to breathe, talk, move even.  Pain and nausea raced through me, fighting for attention, rendering me totally helpless. The seconds went by and it became obvious that we would have to do something about it.  As is with any medical emergency in the family, I reached out to my parents on the husband’s side and mum advised we go for an ultrasound immediately. We made calls to some diagnostic centers and realized it would take too much time, through which Sundae would become more and more uncomfortable in her crate. So we stopped at the first chemist, bought painkillers, which I dutifully popped and we resumed our journey to the vet. Within 45 minutes the pain had ebbed and Sundae was priority again.  An hour later - when the vet visit was done and Sundae, we were told was recovering well - the pain had subsided entirely and I decided we’d push the scan to the evening, within which time we’d drop Sundae off at the folks. But by the time we reached, a massive storm was brewing and so the scan was pushed to Sunday noon.
Back at my folks’, the husband and I caught a quick nap while the parents watched over the two babies. But I woke up in a short while to pain again. Though mild, it had me worried. I realized then that postponing the scan had been foolish. We lived too far out to get to a hospital quickly enough in the case of a possible emergency and I didn’t want my family going frantic in the dead of the night.  So the husband and I stepped out again to battle the traffic and the rain-battered roads to get to the nearest big hospital that would perform an emergency ultrasound at 2130 hours.
The pair of us, tired, hungry and somber, soon found ourselves in the emergency 24-hour ward of the Apollo on Bannerghatta Road.  It was like walking on to the set of House or Grey’s Anatomy, only less glamorous and more chaotic. There were people being wheeled in on stretchers with all kinds of instruments attached to them, worried family members milled about, nurses and doctors in whites and blues moved about busily and a cloud of medical jargon permanently hung in the air like an ominous presence. And there we were in the middle of it all, lost, wide-eyed and awestruck.  We were ushered to ‘bed no. 6’ and I was promptly made to lie down. In characteristic style, the husband pulled out his phone to lighten the mood by taking photos of me lying flat on a hospital bed, looking all forlorn and sorry. A doctor attended to me shortly and recommended an ultrasound and a blood test. 
The husband went to pay up and I found myself alone on the bed for a few minutes. Since the curtains were drawn, there wasn’t much I could see, but the surrounding cacophony floated to my ears – patients in pain, concerned relatives, reassuring doctors.  My eyes moved to the curtain on my right and I noticed a small blood smear, still reasonably fresh, probably belonging to the person who’d been on this bed before me. All of a sudden, I felt completely overwhelmed. Emotions surged through me - perhaps because everything reminded me of the frailty of life, or perhaps because I dreaded what lay ahead - anyhow I didn’t have much time to ponder as I could hear the nurse outside - ‘patient on bed no.6, please take her for an ultrasound’.  Bed no.6 – the number reference made it seem cold and impersonal. Prison-like, or even law-school-like, where your number becomes your identity. The husband helped me off the bed just as the nurse arrived with a wheelchair. It took a few seconds of staring at her stupidly to realize that the wheelchair was for me. “Oh, she can walk,” said the husband. The nurse and the doc looked skeptical but let me walk to the room in any case.
What ensued was a fairly stress-less, mildly entertaining scan, for the doc had pulled an intern into the room. And as he poked about with the cold head of the scanner, he asked the intern – ‘what is this’ and ‘what is that?’ The intern was as clueless as me it seemed, because he answered almost everything incorrectly and the doc kept up a steady stream of disapproving grunts through the scan. So save one heart-stopping moment where the doc seemingly saw something interesting on his monitor and sent the intern out to fetch ‘Dr. Himanshu’, which in retrospect seems like a move to get ignoramus out of the room for a bit because ‘Dr. Himanshu’ was unavailable, the scan went pretty smoothly. With all the major issues ruled out and a normal WBC count, they discharged me with – ‘If the pain returns, pop painkillers and come back to us, we’ll do a CT scan, madam’.
And with that, the husband and I walked out of the hospital, hand-in-hand, Bangalore’s cool breeze gently kissing the planes of our face, lighter by a few worries and a few thousand bucks. I’d been given a clean bill of health, for the time being, and walking to our car in the hospital parking lot, I realized just how important that was.
I take good health for granted everyday. It took nothing to shatter that illusion. Yesterday’s experience left me with an intense desire to celebrate every day, every moment of being hale and hearty. Tomorrow might bring with it something else; something that is sure to relegate yesterday’s experience to the lower layers of life. But at least this will ensure that any time I want to revisit and appreciate the blessing of good health, all it will take is a good read.