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I Must Do This, I MUST! (By Venkatesh Arjuwal, M.D.) (Part One) by Karen Lynn Vidra, The Texas Tornado
Saturday, January 15, 2005
Rated "PG" by the Author.
A doctor who lost three of his four children in the recent tsunami/earthquake disaster returns to his former homeland and offers aid to the suffering there. He feels compelled to help, but at the same time, his heart is breaking.
I can't get those eyes out of my mind. No matter how hard I try, they permeate my very being, tear at my very soul, threaten to eat my memory alive. They bore into the very core of what is me.
I am of course, talking about Adhita Roy, the woman who so tragically lost her two small sons (ages 10 and 5) to the recent tsunami/earthquake disaster, and ever since, she has been fighting for her very life. Just yesterday, she had to have her leg amputated because of the beginning signs of necrotizing fasciitis, and she is still very critical. She may still eventually die, not only from the infection that is still raging inside her tiny, feverish body, but also from the pneumonia that grips both of her lungs and causes acute breathing distress. She is still requiring the use of oxygen, and she is too weak, too frail, to be able to eat on her own. She is tied to the bed because she keeps pulling out the tubes in her nose and arms, and she keeps on taking the oxygen mask off her face. It seems all she does is lie there and/or cry helplessly or moan as she relives the disaster in her mind.
Adhita is still hanging on, but by a fragile thread that keeps on getting thinner as time goes by; and it is a wonder that she has lasted as long as she has. I am surprised that she still has any strength left in that tiny body of hers to keep on living; she is a lot stronger than we realize, and her pluck is nothing short of amazing.
I also check on a young comatose victim who is now emerging from the coma. Her eyes sometimes open, and she follows simple commands when we tell her to move her limbs, and her eyes seem to follow the penlight whenever we check her eyes. She is still on a ventilator, and we still don't know who she is, but every day, every hour, every minute, we see small (but gradual) signs of improvement in this small one. It is a little girl not much older than three, and Louisiana Sandusky, the head nurse at the hospital where I work in America, has been busily tending to the child, providing the best of care, and she has been praying over the child, hoping for a miracle. Now it seems that the miracle may take place before too long: the child continues to improve, even as I speak. Maybe, if the little girl keeps on improving, she just may have the ventilator tube taken out, and she will be given oxygen only by mask or by nasal prongs. We can also work towards getting food into her tiny body; she hasn't been able to eat since coming to the makeshift hospital, and she has constantly been fed by way of a nasogastric tube inserted into her nose. Removing the tube and getting much-needed food into the little girl's belly is another one of our immediate goals.
My co-workers are just as exhausted as I am, if not, even more so. They look as though they haven't slept in a week; and they all have that same determined look to keep going, even when all hope seems lost. I am the same way. I may have lost my son Arjun and my daughters Rani and Sita, but I am not about to lose Adhita or any of my other patients that are currently in my stead. They need help now, and they need to know that people are there to help them in their time of urgent need. They have suffered far too much in the way of devastation and loss, and they are helpless as what to do. So many have lost loved ones, and so many have been forever changed; and they will probably never forget of the awesome power in the tsunami as it slammed into their homes and villages, wiping out everything in its path, and they had very little warning of the ensuing disaster until it was too, too late.
But I still can't forget those eyes, the eyes of a grieving mother who now is under my care. Her eyes are liquid pools of teary sadness, and her grief that she must feel inside her heart must be unbearable. She stares at me for hours, and she looks so sad, so defeated; and it worries me.
Karen for sheer emotions stirred deeply this is one of your best writes! Your images are as vivid as a painting, allowing us to see the story unfold. Beautiful and ery compassionate work! Brava!
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I can't get those eyes out of my mind. No matter how hard I try, they permeate my very being, tear at my very soul, threaten to eat my memory alive. They bore into the very core of what is me.
