Stoned

Recently I had a renal calculus. This pea-shaped object actually upturned my whole life. I found the pace of my life transitioning from break-neck speed to a full stop.

I was going about my usual hectic life, planning my kid’s birthday, going to office, cooking and doing chores when suddenly I found myself bending over backwards (literally) in the bus. Then a shooting pain seemed to radiate from my lower back to the front. We, in the medical transcription business, like to believe (secretly of course) that we can diagnose any illness ourselves and so my colleagues and I embarked on an animated discussion about the origin of my pain, which at one point, I think actually included vitamin deficiency. When my employer’s maid remarked that it could be a “urinary problem,” we scarcely gave it a thought before continuing our sagacious theses. Of course a day or two later, when the urine was coming out in a bright red hue, there was no doubt who had hit the nail on the head.

In the month that followed there was a spurt of medical activity with my husband and I running from pill to post. As I wriggled in pain, a couple of visitors would drop in, empathize with me, and regale my mom with their own Stone-Ache stories. My mom, no doubt wishing to provide me with the best medical care would then toy with these new-fangled treatments that she just heard. No stone including Ayurveda was left unturned. So as I drank these exotic (polite term for horribly bitter and awful) concoctions, I would be filled with gratitude for my benefactors and new hope pervaded my stoned soul.

It was around the time, I think, when someone began to extol the virtues of poison extracted from a scorpion as the next big thing in stone cure that I ran to the nearest urosurgeon. I was quite comforted by the thought of having a stent put in my kidney and my stone powdered away via multiple shock-wave sessions.

As I drifted away slowly into the anesthetic daze, I dreamt of the next 40 days I would spend doing lithotripsy and drinking tomato juice but it was not meant to be.

At the postoperative ICU, I awoke with a start and gazed lovingly into my husband’s eyes (cut, cut … this is no Bollywood story). Ahem! I blinked and stared stupidly at my doctor’s face as he pronounced with great elation that he had done a laparoscopy and taken the stone out. I blurted out something like “cool, you are the best surgeon ever.” Then I thanked (Yes, I am one of those compulsive thankers who miss not a single opportunity to say the magic words – thank you and sorry. The legend goes that I thanked mom right after she breastfed me and thus got my first whacking.) the operating room staff including the anesthetist as they in turn gazed at me stone-faced. But soon they were hilarious as I finally caught my husband’s eye and went on to profess my eternal love to him and adamantly demanded that he kiss me. He, as usual, muttered some excuses for not doing it in public, quite illogical I thought, like “too many tubes going into you” and so forth. Then I noticed my father and did not spare him either. Alas! I was soon drifting away and when I awoke next they were gone.

This time, I was quite amused by the sensation that my right hand had become bigger than my whole body. I have often been told that I have good hands, so I was not altogether put off by it. Every now and then a nurse would come and ask me why I had covered my hair (they were very concerned about looks in the ICU as they mostly dealt with plastic surgery). I would explain pleasantly that it was for my prayers lest they thought I was dressing up like Osama Bin Laden. Sometimes an odd surgeon or two would venture in and ask me whether I had just had liposuction. Perhaps they could not reconcile the chubby face to the flat stomach that I had after fasting for 48 hours. Thus the night passed uneventfully.

With the advent of daylight came new occupants to the ICU. The first one was a 3-month-old baby whose mother was trying to surpass its ability to cry when finally a doctor came in and put an end to the competition. The young man who was in the next bed (who helped the night-duty nurse stay on her feet all night) was replaced by an 8-year-old. This boy obviously was not thrilled by the level of honesty with which everyone dealt with him. He constantly called the entire nursing staff and his parents, “a pack of liars!”

By mid-afternoon, the attending nurse had already told me her entire life story and confessed her sins. (She was much impressed by the ‘thank you and sorry’ obviously. Ha! Take that mom!) My surgeon strode in and asked me to sit up. I was wearing the latest in drain fashion and did not want to be cut off (this was my fetish) but he was not to be persuaded. I worked my biceps and soon was on a stretcher to my room where I would finally have a chance to meet my tormentor.

It was yellow like a ray of sunshine, its origins eclectic, and its dimensions the work of pure genius. I never knew I had such an amazing talent. Tête-à-tête with the magic (more like witchcraft!) pebble at last. Over the next few days, it became the jewel of our mantelpiece as Zak and mom competed with each other to display it to whoever cared to visit. Not to be outdone, I would show off my staples. The funny thing is that when you say staples, people choose to think it would be different from the ones that you use to hold paper together. They are really horrified to find out that it is the same thing that holds my skin together. I grossed out a lot of my relatives that way. Some even had nightmares (bless their little hearts for visiting me). Mom started calling me Frankenstein and avoided eye contact.

The nurse had just come in to take the drain and catheter out and I was quite thrilled to be able to walk unattached and independent (the first time I walked the euphoria was so much, I almost fainted). The phone rang and I picked it up with some zest. It was my boss. Obviously thrilled to hear me so hale and hearty, he asked me when I would like to get back to work. He must have caught the hidden (so hidden that I did not pick it up myself) desire in my voice to be working at that blessed moment.

After a tumultuous week in the hospital, it was now time to go home. As I handed the stone over to the analyst, did my lips quiver, my heartbeat fasten? (Of course not, good riddance!)