This week (which immediately, in real time, follows my Korea trip, which I haven’t posted in blog-time yet) has been very long and boring and tedious with very brief hours of fun activity. Multiple hospital trips describe the former and two visitors comprise the latter.
On Saturday (a week ago) my husband woke with intense pain in his left shoulder and his arm, and especially hand, felt completely numb. Needless to say, he was worried. But I wasn’t. I had the same experience back in 2008.
In 2008 I woke in the middle of the night with the oddest feeling; my left arm was asleep and about to wake up (that intense tingling feeling you get when your foot wakes up) but it didn’t wake up. Being me; I panicked, thinking I was having a stroke. I’m pretty sure arm pain is a sign of a heart attack, not a stroke, and a sign, moreover, for men, not women. But I was terrified and not thinking about anything except Claudia’s grandma who had a stroke in the Baby-Sitters Club. I vaguely feel like half her body was paralyzed. Maybe it was the left half and it left vestigial memories deep in my brain that were only awoken with middle-of-the night arm panic.
Anyhow, I was wide-awake and afraid to go to sleep. More medical confusion, I suppose. It is the concussion where you can’t sleep… I decided to write instead. I grabbed a notebook and wrote stuff like, “3:27 am. I think I am having a stroke” and “3:30 am. I wonder if I only think these sentences are coherent”. Eventually daylight rolled around and I got up, showered (practically one-armed) and hopped on a plane to Cleveland. I was going to watch my mother-in-law’s comedy show. I arrived in the Rock and Roll City and went to the hospital. Doctor Auntie gave me muscle relaxants and rolled a towel up to make me a neck collar. I slept in it that night and, low and behold, my arm was feeling fine the next day.
Fast forward to India 2011 and I wasn’t too worried about my husband’s arm. After all, I had been fine. I tried showing him my various back tricks on the foam roller, and offered to make a neck brace, which he refused. So he mostly slept for the weekend, although we did go out for dinner at a restaurant, which served nearly as nice pumpkin ravioli as the place in Delhi. But the Bandra restaurant wins because you get to rub elbows with all the Bollywood stars. Not that I recognize any of them. But I can pretend.
By Sunday, he was starting to worry when the pain didn’t subside (actually, I started to worry, I think he was consistently worried throughout the weekend). Thus comes the first word of the title, “Casualty”. You see, my husband decided it was time to go to the hospital. I was actually a bit excited about a hospital visit. Friend E had told me a lot about her various trips there in the past year, and we wanted to see the supposed cleanness ourselves.
We called up our driver, who was probably thrilled, because it was a Sunday and thus he earned an extra $10 for driving us on his day off. We pulled up the Casualty door and walked inside. I know it is just a bit of nomenclature, but somehow walking into a door that says ‘Emergency’ sounds a lot safer than walking through a door that says ‘Casualty’.
Now, I don’t know what Friend E was looking at, but the casualty center was disgusting. The curtains to our little bed were thick with dust, the ceiling swirled with black and gray streaks of dust, and the vents were solid black with grime. The light switch covers, originally white, were shaded a light gray as well, except for a small round patch that centered over the actual switch. That small patch was clearly the only part that had ever been cleaned and was a bit whiter in color. I now understand why absolutely no photography is allowed.
Nurses wearing hot pink scrubs placed us in the room. Men, I mean. The only woman I saw was in yellow scrubs. So I thought that was a bit interesting. My mind was quickly distracted from the color of the scrubs, however, to the sound of a woman throwing up, a lot, in the bed/space next to our little cubical. We only had to wait fifteen minutes or so before a doctor came to help us.
That doctor was so calm. I really admired his demeanor. He had people running from here to there and he still sat and listened to us and did what seemed like to me a very thorough check-up. He spoke clearly, too, but the only treatment he gave my husband was a painkiller and the advice to come back the next day during normal hours.
Cost? Free
A few hours later, after midnight, started the second part of the title, ‘Cousin’. Cousin A was flying in, for one day, to visit before he flew off to see family in the Bangalore area. I traveled to the airport to pick him up. It took forever for his plane to land, or go through customs, or something. The TV monitor showing his flight (‘now landed’, ‘now at baggage claim’) had completely wiped off the board, and the flight behind it was gone, too. I had just began to wonder when I could leave if he had missed his flight when he showed up. We drove back home and chatted a bit with my husband, who was wide-awake after sleeping for practically two days straight.
The next morning, Monday, my husband and I woke, left Cousin A asleep, and went back to the hospital. I don’t want to bore you, but suffice to say, his arm did not improve over the night and we went to the hospital for trips on Sunday night, Monday morning, Thursday morning, Friday morning, Saturday morning, and again on Monday afternoon.
On Monday (the first Monday) we were eventually ushered (well we were told to wait outside but went into the empty office anyway) into an office that had me laughing. Inside was a giant silkscreen wall hanging of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. But, much like ancient Popes and Victorian era prudes editing away at ancient Greek statues, a bright red fig leaf (fake) had been pinned to cover him up as though the poor Vitruvian Man had eaten forbidden fruit and become ashamed.
The doctor, I do have to describe a bit. He was visibly burned. His left hand still had spidery scars decorating the surface and his right side of the face was melted like smooth plastic. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone with such burns up close; I felt awful, but it was hard not to stare. He wore sunglasses; either to protect his left eye or cover up his right, which I think might have been missing. I wonder what had happened to him to cause such disfigurement. It must have been horrifyingly painful. His attire, however, had me laughing. We ended up seeing him both Monday and Friday. He wore the same pinkish-orange tie on both days (I really liked the color of it), but on Monday he wore a gold safety pin beneath the tie, at the neck. I guess connecting the collar together. I am fairly certain it was a purposeful decoration, not a button replacement, which is why I found it intriguing. But it was missing on Friday.
Anyhow, he gave us a list of drugs to take and yoga to learn and we headed back home.
Cost? About $15 for the appointment and $10 for the three different drugs
Cousin A had just woken and we treated him to a big bowl of imported breakfast cereals. Yum! My husband took some of his drugs and promptly fell into a deep delirious sleep. I went to check on him occasionally; once, fully asleep, he pulled me down, gave me a huge kiss, and then ordered me to do a bunch of consultant-type things that I didn’t even understand the meaning of, much less know how to do them. He was out for the entire day except for when I forced him awake to drink water or eat dinner. He was pretty much like that for the entire week although his brain was less fried as the week went on.
Back in the living room the two awake occupants, Cousin A and myself, were entertained by playing cribbage and chatting about evolution and books. We were waiting for a repair guy, whom my maid assured me would arrive at 12:30 but didn’t show up until 2:00. I guess I could have had a fourth title, ‘Crappy appliances’, but it sounds sort of crass. Besides the washing machine, the air-conditioner and landline phone also broke this week. The handle of a pan broke, too, now that I think about it. Not a good week for appliances.
Eventually the repairman arrived, gave us a new washing machine door, and simultaneously my husband woke long enough to move from the bed to a chair in the living room before basically zonking out again. Cousin A and I took the opportunity to drive downtown while my husband ‘watched’ the repairman.
My driver was operating on zero hours of sleep. Sure, we didn’t get in from the airport until maybe 3:00 am, and sure, my husband and I went to the hospital at 9:00 am the next day, but what happened during those extra six hours? It turns out his friend, Driver A, lost his mother. Or, as my driver described it, “she is out” and waved his hands like an umpire indicating the player is safe at home plate, which I found rather confusing and didn’t realize she had died until hours later when he broached the subject again. Muslims here have to wake up super early and bury/carry (not sure which) the dead at 5:00 am. I don’t understand if there is a certain rule about it or not but my driver always tells me it happens early in the morning, 4:00 am or so. The rules in India are weird; my driver, being a driver, was allowed to drive the ambulance to carry the body somewhere or other….
Driver A is a nice guy, so I felt bad for him. I’ve seen him around town; he has an awesome yellow motorbike and his face is round and cheerful, sort of like how you’d imagine an Indian Santa Claus.
So there we were, after 2:00 pm, heading downtown. Cousin A is the easiest person (as opposed to my sister and husband, who are the most difficult people) on earth to shop with. He wanted funny t-shirts, cheap sunglasses, and new flip-flops (his breaking at the airport the moment he checked his bag and no longer had spare shoes in his possession). We went to the Colaba Causeway and Bata, an Indian shoe store. He got his t-shirt at the very first t-shirt vendor and his sunglasses at the first sunglass vendor. But he was pickier about the shoes. We went to a few stores for those.
We grabbed a quick cup of coffee (mine had ice cream in it!) and headed back to Bandra to beat the traffic rush. My husband was still sound asleep so we walked along the Arabian Sea for a bit before heading home to wake him for dinner.
We went to the Hard Rock Café. Sure, it was Cousin A’s first day in India, but he knew he’d be eating all veg in Bangalore for the rest of the week and was game for some solid foods. My husband hadn’t been to the HRC yet, so it was a good trip for all of us, though the drive was awful for my poor husband’s back and his brain was still foggy from the drugs.
We all ordered various chicken dishes and Cousin A declared that his Kingfisher Ultra tasted like domestic American beer. Probably not a good sign. I had a fruity rum concoction that was terrible. My husband had water, of course. And more drugs. The music was canned and made me miss America even more than usual.
We headed home. The next morning Cousin A was scheduled to leave and his jet lag caught up with him and he was asleep, sitting up, on our couch by 10:00 pm.
On Tuesday my husband woke up, took his painkillers, and went back to his creepy sleep that scared me and I continued throughout the day to check and make sure he was still breathing. I took Cousin A to the airport, and en route, we learned, again, that my driver had yet another sleepless night.
Driver A’s wife, only 28, died the day before. His mother one day, his wife the next. Can you imagine how awful that would be? She died of typhoid. I vaguely remember laughing about that vaccine. Who gets typhoid today? I am not laughing now.
Bad things happen in threes. So my driver lost two friends to death. His third problem? On Saturday (the second Saturday) he told me his son had ‘fever in the legs’. I didn’t at all understand what that meant, but he eventually told me the doctors think he might have malaria. But by Monday it turns out it was a false alarm and his son was fine. Thank goodness.
After dropping Cousin A off the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday blurred together. I have a vague recollection of watching a lot of The X-Files while playing solitary (I never won) and waking my husband up frequently to drink water. I also gave him massages twice a day with some prescribed ointment. For anyone else, massages twice a day would be a godsend, but my husband actually hates massages so it is roughly equivalent to torture for him.
By Thursday the sleepy feeling in my husband’s hand was still exactly the same and he decided he wanted to go back to the hospital and get more help. We planned to leave that morning, but his drug-induced sleep made it impossible to get him out of bed, coupled with a work phone call that never happen had us arriving at the hospital much later; around 2:00 pm or so.
We were told no one was available. The hospital is weird. We had to go to a certain clinic (ODP or OPD or something like that) and ask for an appointment. They said no one was available, and that we can only schedule an appointment by calling our doctor and personally scheduling one with him. Of course, the doctor doesn’t answer his cell phone. I had tried calling him on Tuesday, in fact, and he never answered. So how the heck can you make an appointment?
Eventually we went back down to the Casualty ward and the doctors sitting there (who clearly had no desire to treat my husband) got on the phone to the secretary of our previous doctor. We got an appointment for Friday, the next day. But the two doctors also told us that more OPD doctors would arrive at the hospital by 4:00 pm. So why couldn’t the secretaries in the OPD clinic tell us that? Just worthless, I tell you. It was so frustrating. So we returned home for an hour and a half and came back to the hospital at 4:00 pm.
The first doctor we saw was focused on drugs and yoga. The second doctor had us get an X-ray, focused on even more drugs, but also ordered some physical therapy and a collar for my husband. We went back across the hospital lobby, down a flight of stairs, through a parking garage that smelled like a dumpster and into the basement PT area. We got him into an appointment right away. It was nothing more than an ultrasound heating pad. No exercises or stretches.
I do have to say the restrooms at the hospital were awful. There was no hand dryer, no paper towel, nothing. So I had to (1) dry my hands on my pants and (2) touch the bare doorknob. Gross. Who knows what germs are all over that doorknob?
Cost? About $15 for the appointment, $3 for the PT, and $10 for the x-ray. More drugs (including the collar) for about $20
We returned home on Thursday frustrated. My husband was still no better, and why on earth wasn’t an x-ray ordered days ago? He slept that night in the collar. It reminded me so much of my 2008 neck issues!
The next morning we arose early and went to his second PT session. This time he learned a few exercises to strengthen his neck and align his posture as well have the ultrasound heating pad.
After the PT we settled down for a long wait. We had an appointment scheduled with our first doctor (the burn victim), but not for an hour and a half, which really meant well over two hours before we saw him. He of course said the exact opposite as the Thursday doctor, told us to ignore the medicines the Thursday doctor told us to use, said the collar was useless, and said the x-rays were fine (when the Thursday doctor said they showed irregular curvature in his neck).
So as frustrating as Thursday was, Friday was worse. Just as long, and now completely conflicting advice as for what to do for his hand.
Cost? The longer PT session was now up to about $8, and the doctor’s appointment we never paid for…. payment is weird here. We just handed the second doctor a wad of cash….
Friday did have one fun moment, the third and final title, ‘clubbing’. Can you believe that we have not even once just gone out for fun? Sure, we have gone out for dinner, and we went to a company party once or twice. But never just gone out to dance or drink. A mutual friend was in town and after a nice dinner (and exchange of granola bars, thanks!) in Bandra we headed over to a third friend’s house (they all went to business school together) and then we checked out the club Trilogy.
I have to say I was disappointed with the crowd, hours, and cost, but the actual club itself was super cool. The crowd was on the dance floor, but no one was dancing, just standing. The hours? It was supposed to close at 1:30 (anyone who claims Mumbai is the New York of India is an idiot) but they gave us the boot by 1:15 am. And the cost was over $20 to get in (1000 rupees), despite the fact we were there for less than an hour.
Less than an hour was good for my husband; he was still on a water-only diet and preferred laying to sitting, as his back was still bad. So it was good, for him, to get out of there quickly. Lucky for him, however, he happened, at the bar, to randomly (how on earth does this happen?!) run into some guys he had already known back in Boston. So he stayed occupied.
The club was very clean, thank goodness. In fact, it was really cool. You enter on the first level, which was basically empty. I tried raspberry vodka for the first time and I have to say it was absolutely delightful. There are a lot of couches to sit on, and little stands with pop in them. Employees stood around with laser pointers. That part was weird. As far as I can tell, they’d just turn them on occasionally to make long green lights in the air. Anyhow, you take a flight of red glitter stairs up to the dance floor. It was a good size, and had a great ceiling. Hundreds of cubes were hanging from the ceiling and flashing in different colors. The walls were silver with a cubic texture. It is hard to describe, but trust me, it was quite cool looking. The music was a bit odd; they played some American songs that have no right in a club because you clearly couldn’t dance to them and left our party scratching our head but some of the music was okay.
Half the Indian women were wearing 4-inch heels, but they looked ridiculous and slouchy because they obviously had no idea how to walk in them. I am the same way; no way could I walk in big heels. SO I DON’T WEAR THEM. So that was a bit amusing. Because it was only the filthy rich who could attend someplace like this ($20 is 12% of my maid’s monthly wages, and she is way overpaid) everyone was healthy and not shrunken in height from malnourishment and for once I didn’t tower over the general population. With money (in India) must also come manners because the males in the bar (despite probably being drunk) were just normal human beings, not creepy guys with staring problems.
All in all, maybe if we’d been going out to fun places with fun people more often and I spent less time on the streets with the creepy guys trying to cheat us, maybe I’d have liked living in India a bit more. Maybe.
Anyhow, the next day was Saturday and July 4th weekend. My husband continued to sleep a lot; we went back to watching way too much TV. I made a fabulous apple pie and we spent the rest of the weekend eating it.
Monday morning my husband woke, decided he wasn’t going back to work, and promptly asked me to make him another PT appointment before falling back into his drug-induced near coma. They gave him shock therapy. It scared me and I almost fainted. I think it scared him, too, because he was really jumpy with all those electrodes attached to him. It reminded me of the shock treatment therapy from the turn of the century. But I hope it worked.
After the PT we had massages. We went to a Thai massage place as I have exhausted the Indian places for massages and they are all awful. A Thai massage is a lot of stretching and acupuncture and this tiny little woman literally crawls all over your body and uses her weight for the pressure points. I loved mine (my knee pain always goes away completely!). Sandeep declined a Thai massage and went for a back massage. He wasn’t too impressed with his. Standard behavior and responses from the pair of us. He decided to fly back to work and I’m excited to start packing for my trip home!
As soon as my husband and his various ailments left, I had new ones appear. It had been about two days of feeling healthy for me, so I was overdue to feel sick again. I have a sore throat (probably due to the near constant drainage of my sinuses since arriving in India) and weird lymph nodes in my armpits. They are so swollen (both sides!) that it hurts to put my arms down. Maybe I should go to the casualty section myself!
