Around 15 years ago, during a week day at my office, around 2 O’clock in the afternoon, I received a call from my wife saying that one of her close relatives, based at Kolkata, had suffered a major brain-stroke and been hospitalized in a critical condition. She also said that he, being a central government employee, had been shifted to an empaneled hospital and the doctors were carrying our detailed investigations.
Well, within a few hours of our discussion, I, along with wife and both the girls, was airborne — heading for Kolkata. Immediately after landing at Kolkata airport at around 9 PM, we straightway headed for the hospital and reached there by 10 PM.
There we met his wife and daughter, along with a few neighbours. They said, he was in ICU. Despite, trying our best, we could not meet him since the visiting hours was over long ago. After an hour of futile attempts, all of us headed for home with our mind full of anxieties. During our journey back home, I kept on digging out the details of what had happened and how.
Next course of events, spanning over a period of close to a month, was an unforgettable experience of learning to handle a life crisis situation.
Early morning, the next day, all of us went to the hospital and, one by one, met him in ICU. Looking at him, I could clearly make out that he needed the best treatment available in Kolkata and this hospital, obviously, was not the right place for him.
However, none of his family members were decisive about shifting him to another hospital, neither any of his colleagues were keen to do so, may be in view of cash-less facility available here — apart from the risk involved in transporting him in such a condition.
I don’t know why, but there was a bell ringing inside me, warning me that if he didn’t get a better treatment he might collapse very soon. During the next couple of hours, I went through a daunting task of convincing his family members, neighbours and colleagues for allowing me to shift him to “Woodland,” one of the best hospitals in Kolkata.
When they finally agreed, from nowhere appeared another resistance: doctors of this hospital told me, since they felt that the patient was not in a condition to be shifted to another hospital, for getting discharge approval from this hospital I would have to sign a bond taking the full responsibility of any untoward incident happening thereafter!
At that point, my wife asked me, if I was confident about the step I had decided to take against the wishes of everyone.
Well, I said yes, and then shifted him to “Woodland,” one of the most reputed Nursing Homes in Kolkata. Later we came to know that, had he been there, in that hospital, for a few more days, it would have been difficult for him to survive as the hospital had neither the specialists nor the facilities required for handling such life-threatening medical emergency.
I remained there, in Kolkata, for a month, along with my family members, attending to him in the Nursing Home and discussing about the problem with his doctors, reading and collecting relevant information from various health-care sites on the internet and sharing them with the Specialists — all the time ensuring that he was getting the best possible treatment.
A month after we came back to Delhi, he partially recovered and returned home. By undergoing a rigorous physiotherapy for close to a year and half, while demonstrating unbelievable will power, he almost recovered and now leading a normal life.
When, recently, his daughter casually mentioned in a gathering that it was me who saved her father — tears came to my eyes, as I had never thought about such interpretation of that incident.
Well, in this process, I did learn a few important life-lessons and these are:
1. If we are confident and convinced about a course of action, particularly in a life-threatening situation, we must go ahead with that decision — even if it requires overcoming the “Mother of All Obstacles.”
2. Success is always shadowed by an element of risk; less fearful we are, more successful we would be.
3. Taking action in time, is more important than the action itself.
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