Just another day

 

THE CHRONICLES OF A TEENAGER

PART 1:  REPULSED

A note to all the readers : this might become a little series because writing funny and descriptive stories is fun. 

For what it’s worth, I detest talking about medicinal procedures or any medical topic especially if I am on the dinner table. It has got nothing to do with my hormonally imbalanced body and mind since I’ve always been awkward and I have had a psychological terror of blood and hospitals since I can remember. I mean I literally start bawling and arguing if I have to visit the doctor even for a simple fever and cough. The irony is that I’ve had the most hospital visits compared to my sisters, but this still doesn’t waver the fear in me.

During the entire Quarantine, I’ve heard so much about medical related procedures and what- not that I might as well start talking about the different types of ventilators; the invasive and the non-invasive.

One of my Paternal uncles had gone through Covid around July 2020, the time when everybody had started including anti coagulants in the remedies for Covid. He was discharged one month later as his lungs had practically suffered the worst form of punishment ever known. Apparently, his infection was so bad that the pleural membrane which protects our lungs was swollen, hence he had been on oxygen and heavy drugs the entire period. After a good gap of 4-5 months, our uncle started to visit us often to check up on us and our grandma. So one of those days he had come around for lunch and we all were seated at the dining table, talking about this and that when uncle brought up his story. I was all ears, hearing his ghastly version of the miserable state of hospitals during this pandemic and the shortage of doctors when the conversation swiftly turned to his treatment and diagnosis. He pointed at his collarbone and said that the Heparin injections were administered through the vein present near that particular bone (or that was what he said, readers please help me out). The diagnosis included another world of nature’s horrifying realities which I will most enthusiastically elaborate;

‘But what was so wrong with your lungs that you were admitted for like an entire month?’, my elder sister wanted to know

Uncle widened his eyes, almost disbelievingly, ‘well look here, none of this would have happened if I had gone to the doctor at the right time. My symptoms were aggravated simply because the lockdown at that time was national and it included hospitals too.’ As if to punctuate the seriousness of the situation, he paused eating and looked squarely at my sister, ‘The lungs had patches on them which is an obvious sign of pneumonia, but the infection had gone further than that.  Kid, my lungs felt like collapsed balloons. My chest used to feel so strained and stiff that I was unable to sit up straight.’

At this sentence I was reminded of the many times I’d fallen victim to regular bronchitis. The constant coughs, the ever-present fever and the most annoying of all: A wheezy chest. I have lost the number of sleepless nights that I had every time I was struck down with wheezing. Why, oh, why did it have to make breathing such a tiresome task? And the ticklish presence felt deep inside my chest which used to give me morbid ideas…for example, I used to think a snake was buried inside my lungs, that used to stir every time I coughed or took a deep breath. My chest used to feel so strained and stiff that I was unable to sit up straight. A kind of nausea rolled up in my stomach at the very thought because I was able to relate very minutely but surely to the pain.

Uncle continued, ‘Since I was infected so badly, it became necessary to be hospitalised for as long as possible…just to give my lungs a little more energy to heal themselves as well as me.’ Then he said that the Bipap Ventilator was pressed so tightly against his face that it literally dug into the skin of his nose,

When I looked up at Uncle, sure enough, a red scar was present on his nose. The scar was furiously red and I could only imagine how hard that mask had dug itself to have left that scar.

I looked back at my food and realised there was no appetite left inside me. Collapsed lungs, heparin injections, white gloved hands, pipes down your throat, pulse rates dropping, patchy lungs, bloody mucus, masses of dead bodies…. these words danced around in my head for the entire day, making it impossible for me to snap out of that horrible monotony.