RENAISSANCE - Post Brain Haemorrhage

I love this picture of brain from the National Geographic. Read this piece on brain by them  Brain, Brain Information, Facts, News, Photos -- National Geographic .  Lovely interactive pictures.   While looking at the pictures, remember that it is our father's left fronto-parieto-temporal lobe which is affected.  So was his ganglio-capsular region , but this cannot be seen in the picture. Excerpt from the piece - "Making sense of the brain's mind-boggling complexity isn't easy. What we do know is that it's the organ that makes us human, giving people the capacity for art, language, moral judgments, and rational thought. It's also responsible for each individual's personality, memories, movements, and how we sense the world. All this comes from a jellylike mass of fat and protein weighing about 3 pounds (1.4 kilograms). It is, nevertheless, one of the body's biggest organs, consisting of some 100 billion nerve cells that not only put togethe...

It was five days to go for Deepavali, our biggest festival.   It was the usual busy day, went to the Siddha hospital for a treatment in the morning, followed by physiotherapy, then some cleaning and we were resting for a bit around 4:30 PM when our nurse practically burst into our room saying something seems amiss with our father.  He was shivering like he was out in the snow with summer clothes on and had goose bumps all over.   The temperature reading showed nothing alarming.   I had seen him like this once before in the hospital when he developed sudden shivers and our surgeon mentioned it was a sign of urinary infection.    I was sure it was matter of time before his temperature shoot up.  It did, in the next 30 minutes.   The reading was 104 degrees.   This wasn’t neither unexpected nor were we unprepared.  Since we knew the bacterium Klebsiella Pneumoniae was happily residing in his urinary tract in larg...

All of September and most of October we might as well celebrate as bacteria month.   Usually the first sign of infection is a spike in temperature, and lassitude of body and mind.   That was how the month of September started.   We did the usual tests – a complete blood count and urine culture test.   Yes, he had Urinary Tract Infection (UTI), yay, and the bacterium was E coli .   We start him on a mild antibiotic and wait for the infection to disappear.  It doesn’t.  The urine culture report shows that bacterium has become resistant to more drugs, so we are advised to start on another antibiotic.   That course finishes.  Repeat the culture test.  E Coli is out and enter Klebsiella Pneumoniae .  This bacterium is resistant to even more drugs.  So another dose of antibiotics.  Course completed and repeat the culture test.   Klebsella still swarming in alarming numbers with increased ...

Visiting Bangalore this weekend made me stop at the office of the Spandana Public Trust.   This is the organization that has provided us with two amazing live-in nurses since we got our father home.    Having spoken to them only over phone, thought best to put faces to the empathetic voices answering our calls.  Ms. Sunanda and Ms. Rathna, who always field the calls, were at the office on the crisp and sunny morning when I walked in to Spandana.   The office is a flat in an apartment building located at a quiet and affluent neighborhood of Koramangala.  There were some nurses waiting in the outer office looking for work.  Walls in the waiting area were filled with motivational posters.  Got couple of ideas on what it takes to be successful.  There were Spandana trained nurses sitting in another room waiting to be placed.  In a smaller room past all these room, both the ladies sat with a mobile and a landline each that r...

It was September 10, 2010 when our father had the brain hemorrhage in his sleep.    It was Ganesh Chaturti – this festival marks the onset of Hindu festival season which ends in January with Pongal.     A day of celebration since it was also Eid and Jain Samvatsari.  Also it was my parents wedding anniversary.   Seems like a good day to have the hemorrhage. This year September 10 th was low key.   None of the festivals fell on the day.  It was just the wedding anniversary.   Routine day – night nurse getting engaged, looking for replacement; maid on long leave of absence, looking for replacement; washing lady quit, looking for replacement.  Urinary Tract Infection (again), antibiotics course started.   All of us sleep deprived and running around.  But we are all together and highly grateful for everything we have.  Happy anniversary indeed.  

In July my sister and I went to an expo on Siddha Medicine at the Government Siddha Medical College, which is some 10 minutes away from our house.  This huge government teaching hospital has an array of alternate medicine – Siddha, Ayurveda, Unnni, Homeopathy and Magnet Therepy.   Although this seemed like a treasure trove of resource, we had little clue where to start.  Not knowing anyone who practiced at the hospital, or anyone who knew someone practicing there, we never approached the hospital.  Always looked at it from outside and strategized on how to use it.  This expo turned out to be a good opportunity.   The number of medicine not just for illness, but for a healthy lifestyle is tremendous.   I think we got a breakthrough for one of the treatments at the hospital.  It has been a month since we started it.  The results have been promising thus far.  Will write more when there is something definite.  ...

If I remember correctly, it was in the first couple of months after our father got discharged from the hospital that he yanked out the ryles tube in the middle of the night.   Our stay-at-home nurse wasn’t trained enough to insert a new one.  I called some nurses from the hospital.  No answer.  Since both my sister and mother were as ignorant as I was, thought best to leave them sleeping.   Having made lot of friends amongst patients’ families, called one such patient’s wife.   The only one I knew who would be awake at 2:00am. She assured me the procedure was easy, that she has done it herself and gave me instructions on how to do it.   Well, before I spoke to her, to my father’s great discomfort, I had just tried inserting it couple of times, not confident of the position, removed it.   After I spoke to her, inserted the ryles tube once again and sat looking at him all night hoping he wasn’t in any pain.   In...