It was the first time that I heard such a long explanation from my usually calm and smiling younger daughter. I had to ask her, 'do I also do that'?
She hesitated just for a few seconds and replied, 'yes Amma. You do sometimes......' She must have noticed the horror in my face because she corrected herself immediately. So sorry, Amma. I didn't mean it like that she said as her face hung. I reassured that she had nothing to be sorry about while I should the one to apologize for my assumptions and I was transported to a time when I assumed she was totally well and treated her just the same way as any child. Then she became ill. Again my assumptions about how to treat her changed. Now she is nearing adulthood and again how my assumptions maybe stifling her, trying to control her unpredictable future.
Ramya asked about how it was when she first became ill. Those days are like a bad dream and days and nights I would rather not remember. Yet, I cannot forget them. My beautiful, laughing, smiling child was transformed. She cried in pain. Became fuzzy and difficult. She refused to eat and drink. Then the worry set in when her body became stiff and she was unable to bend her legs or her arms, she could no longer walk. She said her body was in pain and she felt her body was on fire.
I remember the frantic search for the best pediatrician in town. Blood tests. Grandparents (my parents) totally devastated by seeing their granddaughter go through so much pain. The first doctor said - childhood tantrums. The next was an ayurvedic doctor, the next was a homeopathic doctor. None helped. There seemed to be no cure - no help as we watched her breathing becoming more laborious. My father finally saw a bill board - let us go in here he said. Its a pediatrics clinic. As little Ramya lay in my sisters arms - stiff and barely breathing, in the waiting room, he doctor came out. Within minutes he shouted and said - ICU now!!! He brought her back to life. Brought her back to me and I will be eternally grateful to him.
Dr Radha Krishna, he said to me she will be awake and normal within 6 hours. Even my gradfather, who had undiagnosed cancer at the time, slept on the floor that night - for the health of his great grand child. I just sat at her bedside and exactly as told by that God sent doctor, Ramya woke up and showed me - a drawing. Look, amma. I am drawing! Please don't worry any more, she said. And I remember how my parents, my grandparents, everyone heard her and hugged her and kissed her and left saying she needed rest. I myself sent a silent plea to God. This is the second time, you have tried to take her away from me I cried in my heart. I promise to guard her with my life. I promised all the Gods. Everyone of them I could think.
Within the next few weeks we made all the preparations to return home with intravenous calcium and we made it home in one piece before I collapsed.
The real story began then. The diagnosis. The uncertainty. The doubts. The questions. Why? Why? Why? Why? There were no answers. I stopped sleeping in our bed and moved to Ramya's room. I woke up every hour to check her breathing, convinced that God has decided He needed my good, beautiful child with him.
Right now, to continue will take much more will power from me than I feel I have.
I also have to mention my older daughter. She is an incredible young lady. Within days her life too changed and yet she remained strong, supportive and at a time when most teens would have acted impossible due to the lack of attention she stood my us, beautiful and stoically. Today she is a doctor. Today is simply a support from afar and the moment she arrives sunshine arrives with her. She is Ramya's inspiration.
You can read Ramya's version of the initial diagnosis......
Let me link to my daughters blog. Because that is who she is today. And I am proud of her. She is an incredible child.
Www.actually-ican.blogspot.com.
Love and peace.... More to follow.
Prasantha.
