RENAISSANCE - Post Brain Haemorrhage

Although our father could swallow food in small quantities, he was mainly fed through the ryles tube.  With repeated episodes of him yanking it out due to discomfort and given his chronic cold, we were advised to have a PEG tube inserted in his stomach.    Apparently ryles tube is a temporary solution, not recommended for more than couple of months, if even that.   So we decided to have the PEG in place.  It's a fairly simple procedure, does not take more than 20 minutes.    There was a gastroenterologist in our hospital, whom I will hence forth refer to as Dr. G.  He seemed friendly and we zeroed on him to perform the procedure.  Dr. G, recommended that we get our father admitted a day before the procedure, then stay for another couple of days to monitor him.   Although the expenses for such a stay at this corporate hospital seemed daunting, we opted for it given it was for the greater good! Incidentally in Jul...

This is the second birthday for our father since the stoke.   For the first one we were still at the hospital.  Coincidentally some of his friends showed up the hospital, the staff had arranged for a cake, apart from which I had picked up a cake and some decorations.  So his hospital room was full of nurses, duty doctors, cleaning staff, family, friends and two cakes.   He wasn’t too alert, seemed like he knew something was up, we couldn’t tell for sure if he really understood.  This January 4 th was different.   There was just one cake and the room was decorated by our driver under the supervision of our nurse.  My sister and I put some balloons up and our physiotherapist showed up as we were getting ready to cut the cake.   A dear cousin sent a bouquet of red roses.   Our father looked around the room in amusement, cut the cake with enthusiasm and gave us a piece each.  A Happy birthday indeed.  

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.