Isolated but introspective

To the infinity and beyond,

When Earth revolved in its season gradually, dancing and prancing on its daily rhythms, a weird virus brought the world on a stand still. 

Words like Lockdown, shutdown, social distancing, 6 feet apart, sanitizers and hand washing became fresh vocabulary in our day to day life. 

Never could have imagined that a new word will be added to my personal vocabulary and that would critical care, ventilator and intensive care of my ailing father from acute bronchitis and pneumonia. Few more words became added as each day progressed without any progress in his condition like hallucinations and psychotic pain and severe anxieties.  Yes, all of these words apart from coronavirus are being hummed by me regularly because my papa, who is 73, is right now admitted in intensive care in a local hospital in New Delhi, India, where the whole country is on an extended shut down due to severe coronavirus cases!

In a time when exposing oneself to virus can turn fatal, my remaining family of mother and sister are going to and fro to hospital for doc visits and patient visits. What a tragedy when I'm afar in California and cannot do anything to relieve him from anxiety that he gets or depression that my family is going through.

But is to live in a constantly guilty state of mind and self-anxiety will be of any help to me or to my family? I do not think so! 

My papa who has always been a fitness enthusiast and lived a good life with occassional pitfalls and throwing caution to the winds on some days, must have not considered his future days to be hooked to a ventilator. He is a non smoker but has friends who smoked. But am I accusing, no. He started losing interest in eating when in 2018 my mom came from New Delhi to help with my baby boy. She stayed with us for 5 months and went back to her normal routine in New Delhi.

After another 6 months I called my mom again as my hands were too full with anxiety and somewhat PPD and when she came along I started taking interest in so many things specially gardening in my new house. That topic is reserved for other blog posts to come. 

Well, we celebrated my son's first birthday in 2019 and then mine on 4th July and then my mom's on 3 September and then she left again for New Delhi. In October she started observing that papa's life style has immensely changed and he lost couple of pounds which were not a shock but later became the same and he started losing his voice too. 

His voice started showing signs of choked up words, so was his food and liquid started to get choked up. He started loosing the quality of his voice, and became more and more scratchy with days. In January 2020 when I wished him belated happy birthday, I felt I couldn't understand what he was trying to say. 

Though he didn't have cough and never a fever, my family back home including my father in the entire months from October to January didnt feel that something could go off so fast. 

Well his blood works came good and one report got ignored that said, he could is having acute bronchitis and mild pneumonia. 

This report along with many others didnt show up interest to doctors and due to coronavirus emergencies, doctors suspended taking patients for general check up. 

The problem in India, with Indian people and Indian medical professionals is that action is never taken on time. It is often delayed thinking that this too shall pass. Or it might be something common that doesn't need urgent attention. 

I dont think I should be ranting here, so I will stop doing that and continue to clearly tell as to what happened next.

In February, my papa started to feel shortness of breath. And everyday it would increase and increase till a point on April 5 when he thought with other family members to go to urgent care and get checked out because no doctor is giving appointment! 

His breath on 6th April was this short that while going to the hospital he passed out couple of times for couple of seconds. 

The moment he went to the urgent care, he was immediately admitted and in 40 minutes he was taken to Intensive Care Unit ICU and next 2 hours he was moved to Critical Care Unit of the hospital and hooked to a ventilator for 48 hours. 

That was how bad it was. That was how sad his life turned out to be.

If I come to think of this now, so much of pain had made me numb. 

From 6th April, till today 18th of April, 2020 he is on and off ventilator and shows some signs of progress some days and then dont show anything on others. 

So mild Pneumonia turned out to be major cause of collapse of 1 lung. Now that one lung is congested, have calcified nodes because of earlier tuberculosis in 1970s.

So expulsion of carbon dioxide is a work for lungs that they can't do. He is losing the act of breathing. He is loosing the act of digesting food. He is very anxious, hallucinating that everyone in hospital is conspiring against him.  He is very sad when ever he is conscious and he wants to break out from hospital. In fact, his endoscopy showed gastroenteritis as well. And he recently had gastric attack, he passed out for 13 hours. 

He writes questions on paper and asks my mom to answer those, like whoever family members have been informed and when they will come and how is it outside like how much is the virus spread and who is financially helping our family right now as he isn't medically insured. 

Well, all this and so much more. 

I will never forget the coronavirus epidemic ever because I have almost lost my papa and who knows will i eventually lose him amidst all this and he hasn't yet seen my son in person. Who looks so much like him. He is 2. 

Though the virus had nothing to do with my family tragedy but our relatives and people who can cheer him can't come and see his welfare or wish him luck because of the lockdown, for this I blame the virus. 

I'm clinging to hope. As I am always hopeful.  If you Come across this post and read it, then wish him well. Send your prayers and good thoughts his way, the way to recovery. 

Ciao