Thanx,Malini

[Guest guest]

Thanx Malini,for ur kind words of Welcome.

I hope to be more regular.

I was on FB trying to reconnect with some of my schoolfriends and my

relatives..and guess what??!!,I soon discovered,there too,I have more MGIMS

friends on my list than my other set of friends..and many of them, would often

comeonline and share a few lines..

 

I then realised....

U may leave MGIMS group(for a brief while)..

But

MGIMS group,will never leave U(Even for a moment)..

 

Feels good already to be back into the fold..

Bye

Shyam(84)

From: op gupta <gupta_op@... <mailto:gupta_op%40hotmail.com> >

Subject: RE: Dil se Bill tak

To: " mgims sewagram " <mgims <mailto:mgims%40yahoogroups.com> >

Date: Monday, 13 December, 2010, 10:14 AM

Excellent narration, with Kishore's usual style .Sporting always, all

situations.

Best wishes

OPGupta

To: mgims <mailto:mgims%40yahoogroups.com>

From: kshahsky@... <mailto:kshahsky%40gmail.com>

Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2010 20:10:41 +0530

Subject: Dil se Bill tak

First of let me thank all of you for your immense love, which pulled me

through these difficult days. My son kept reading out the emails to me and

that is what cheered me up. Now let me cheer you up: here goes my account of

what happened....

Heart Attack

As I was rushed to the Cardiac ICU, I just had this sinking feeling in my

heart. Just like the one before you enter the Viva Voce hall and see the

most khadoos examiner in place, only worse.

The resident there was quite courteous, “Sir, How are you feeling?â€

I looked at him groggily and whispered, “Just like Rakhi Sawant!â€

He looked at me perplexed. I continued and said, “I feel an unnatural weight

on my chest.â€

The resident didn’t know whether to send me off to the Psychiatry ward or

not. I said, “Aare Baba, ECG nikal, nahi toh main nikal jaoonga!â€

The funniest part of my heart attack, or “cardiac event†as the doctor there

insisted on calling it, was that there was no pain. That would come

afterwards when they presented me the bill. But for now I was painless.

“Do you smoke?†persisted the resident.

“I have never tried burning myself, but probably would.†My wife nudged me

and intervened, “He does not smoke or drink. Just keeps cracking these

pointless PJs.â€

The resident promptly scribbled something on the pad. He probably wrote that

the patient was delirious. After peering with screwed eyes at my ECG he

said, “Q wave changes.â€

I said, “I give up. You tell me.â€

“What?â€

“I don’t know Kyon wave changes. You tell me.â€

The resident stopped telling me anything else. He turned to my wife and

said, “It seems to be a minor infarct.â€

I don’t know what it is with doctors. How can you call any heart infarct

minor? If there is an infarct, it is a major thing, at least for the

patient. There was also some depressing talk about ST depressions. Here I

felt as if an ST bus was driving over my chest, who bothered whether that ST

was depressed or happy?

I was immediately admitted to the ICCU and posted for an Angiography the

next day. One piece of advice to all Cardiac care units: If you do not want

your heart patients to have any further attacks, do not appoint such lovely

young nurses. Most of the nurses in the entire world are from Kerala. If all

the nurses return home, all the hospitals in the world will come to a stop….

And there will be no standing space in Kerala.

There were big notices posted outside the door of the ICCU. “No Visitorsâ€

and no “No Mobilesâ€. Okay, so there would be no breaking news dispatches

from me. Soon a pretty, young Malyali nurse came and told me “Gaana Gaaneka

nai.â€

This came as a shock to me. Not that I wanted to break out into a song and

dance routine. I could understand that visitors might disturb the patient,

or even the mobiles. But songs? How could anyone be so unmusical? I said

Okay but was a bit miffed.

After many pricks and monitors on my body, half an hour later another pretty

young thing came and told me “Gaana Gaaneka nai!â€

I was a bit angry. I said, “Yeah! Yeah! Someone told me before also.†But

this really intrigued me. Why were they so strict about songs? If they had

said that I could not dance due to my heart condition, I could have accepted

that. But never in my long medical education had I been warned that singing

was bad for cardiac health. I wondered if this was a new advance.

The mystery was cleared when the next Malyali sister, who appeared to be

their head nurse, came and explained to me, “Doctor Shah, Aap ka blood

samble subay saat ko hai. Toh abi Gaana Gaaneka nai. Phir Kaali pet samble

lene ke baad Gaana Gaaneka.â€

I immediately added an interpreter to my mental suggestion box. It must be

really tough to interpret Gaana as Khaana. But the Mallus can’t help their

accent.

After a relatively painless night, mainly because relatives were not

allowed, and also due to the various drips and things, I woke up to the

prick of a blood ‘Samble’. Then I was allowed to ‘Gaana Gaaneko’.

All the tests gave worse and worse news. There was an inferior wall infarct

which the Cardiologist insisted on calling minor. (I hoped he would remember

this while billing me.) My Trop T was raised. In short, this is a help call

from the heart. I was posted for angiography and an SOS plasty the nest day

after stabilization.

On the morning of the procedure, I got the shock of my life, when a grim

looking man entered my room and sent my wife out. He then locked the room

and took out a large and sharp glistening razor. Omigosh! This was not how

they performed operations, at least not during the last century. Or was this

a scene from an assassin movie? The man then turned to me and smiled and

said that he had come to shave me for the procedure.

I sighed with relief. One always wants to look nice and presentable for

important occasions even if they be the gallows. I smiled back at him and

jutted out my chin at him for easy access. But he ignored my chin and pulled

down my pajamas. I shrieked, “Hey, Its my heart that is amiss.â€

“Yes Sir. We need to shave your groin!†Groan Groan!

Five minutes later, I was all spick and span and presentable for my planned

procedure. Calling it a procedure, reduces the fear factor from it. If you

call it an operation, which it is, you might suffer a further attack. If you

call it a butchery, which it sometimes can be, then you need not go to the

procedure. I proceeded with a sinking heart, if it could sink any more, to

the operation room, which they call a cath lab. It’s all about euphemism.

When I entered the ‘Cath lab’, I found it extremely cold. Was the AC at

full blast or was I frightened or was my heart not pumping enough blood?

Probably all three. There was soft music playing hindi songs in the

background. The nurse told me to remove all my clothes and lie down on a

narrow table. I have already mentioned the weather conditions, so it did not

help that here I was completely nude like a fresh plucked chicken, lying on

a table, with half my respective buttocks spilling out of the respective

sides of the table. The AC vent was directed towards the exact centre of my

body. Now I regretted not taking all those ads on the internet about

increasing the length of various body parts seriously. If I had, today I

would have been a proud man. But sadly, as of now, I think the OT staff

there will remember me whenever they eat dried dates.

The Hindi song playing was “Haste Gaate yahan se gujar, Duniya ki tu parwa

na kar.†That was very kind of my namesake Kishoreda to remind me how to

face this ordeal. But I was very frightened. His next verse also told me,

“Maut ani hai ayegi ek din, Jaan jaani hai jaayegi ek din, Aisi baton se kya

ghabarana, Yaha kal kya ho kisne jaana?†I almost burst out yodeling along

with him . OOdle di OOd le di Ooo oo.

The anesthetist approached me and saw me smiling. He was confused. Was this

guy so frightened that he was smiling? How could I tell him that I was

marveling at Kishoreda’s accurate advice to me, a smaller Kishore Kumar.

Then came the good part. Many layers of warm clothes were laid on me. I was

shivering, but no longer like the Antarctica. It was more like Shimla now.

The Cardiologist told me that I would now feel a little pain in my groin.

Most appropriately, the song playing now was “Dil hai kaha aur Dard kahaâ€. I

smiled and said, “Yes Boss. Go ahead.â€

I won’t go into the gruesome details, but what was visible to me and the

entire team there was that my Right Coronary artery was nearly completely

blocked. The doctor said, “Yes, a stent will be required. Dr. Shah, should

we insert an Endeavor drug eluting stent?â€

I felt ashamed to admit to him that I didn’t know a thing about stents.

Being a Gynaecologist, I only knew about stunts. So I asked him, “What is

the difference between this one and the other one?†I didn’t know the name

of the other one, so I cloaked it in the anonymity of ‘the other one’. He

said, “There are many differences, but the main one is in the price.â€

“Then I think you should ask my wife, because she is the one with the purse

as well as the purse strings.â€

After a brief consultation, my wife decided that her husband was after all

worth a bit more than this costly stent. But the effect was magical. In

front of my eyes, I could see a withered autumn tree of heart vasculature

suddenly burst out in full spring glory of new tributaries.

Thus I came out of the ‘lab’ a new and reborn man. It seemed as if I had

thrown off my school shirt and worn a new comfy and roomy one. It was as if

I had exchanged Adnan Sami’s new shirt for his older ones. No more tightness

around the chest. The song playing in the lab when I came out was

appropriately “Aaj Main jawaan ho gayi hoon. Gul se gulistan ho gayi hoon.â€

When I returned home from the hospital after paying the bill, I realized

that the old proverb was probably coined by a cardiologist. Which proverb?

It’s the one that says:

Jaan bachi, Lakho paye.

Thus my heart tried to spring me a surprise. So I surprised it with a spring

into my heart. Now I walk with a spring in my step and one in my heart too!

Kishore Shah 1974