You are Still Alive?

It was the second week of Dec 2009, the last day of the conference that I was attending in Delhi. Just as I reached the topmost step of the entrance to the building where the conference was being held, I could not go any further and had to immediately sit down. Fortunately I had finished my talk the previous day and so I was lucky not to be a cause for any disruptions to the schedule of the conference.

SK (my wife Saraswathi Krithivasan, also known as Ranjani) insisted that we immediately rush to a doctor, which we did thanks to my ex-student MB who was working in an R & D Lab of a US company in Delhi. MB took me to the doctor that he goes to for his own needs. Thanks to him I had some quick blood tests done and was also seen by a couple of doctors. When asked if I had any recent problems, I mentioned about my Hs and they said that the resulting loss of blood may be the reason for the low HB level. They suggested immediate surgery which we were reluctant to accede to before consulting our regular doctor in Mumbai. Sensing our reluctance, they urged us to return to Mumbai immediately to take care of the problem; so we rushed back to the Hotel to pick up our luggage and then head for the airport.

I could not go up the steps at the hotels’s  entrance and so sat down right there. SK, as she always does, thought beyond the luggage. She went to the restaurant at the Hotel and had them prepare a batch of dahi bath (what more does a Tamilian need?) for the flight. Meanwhile MB rescheduled our return flight and even today I consider that return trip to Mumbai a foolish and dangerous mission considering what the Mumbai doctors had to say the next few days.

As soon as we returned to Mumbai we had contacted my doctor and had set up an early morning appointment with him. Looking at the numbers in the blood reports from Delhi he remarked, “I am surprised you are still alive and even withstood the flight from Delhi”. My HB level, as per the Delhi reports was 3.8 the normal expected value being above 10.

The first order of business was to take care of this, he said, and once that was done, perform the procedure required to take care of the Hs.

A few days after the surgery, my doctor dropped into my hospital room.

“The Pathology report of the samples that were collected during the surgery appear normal", said my Doctor, but the blood parameters show some abnormalities.

Those words heralded the beginning of the almost 3 year roller-coaster ride.