What two weeks in the hospital taught me…

Meeting her grandson after a whole 15 days in the hospital

My mom took seriously ill two weeks ago and spent a week in the ICU and ventilator. Besides contemplating life and circumstances, these two weeks gave me a lot of time with my thoughts. Some just endlessly waiting on doctors for updates, some just because I had hours where I just wanted to be by myself and not talk to or see anybody. I learnt many things, but some deserve to be documented. This will be a note to self in the future. 

1. Grief is very equalising. It doesn’t matter if you arrive in an auto, a bus, a BMW, you still are at the mercy of the doctors and nurses watching your loved ones. You all will likely pause at the Ganesha on the ground floor and pray. Grief is probably the most unifying, humbling and equalising force there is. 
2. Caregiving is lonely. Very. I had post natal periods of feeling terrible empty and lonely because I felt like my baby needed only me, I wanted to catch a break and some sleep but there wasn’t any to be had, I constantly worried over him and obsessed over every small sneeze even. It’s the same I’ve felt for my mother. And through all the endless waiting times, trips back and forth, I’ve not felt lonelier before. 
3. Grief also has a very long shelf life. I relived the accident in which I lost my dad a hundred times, continued to be able to smell the tar from the crash and a feeling of emptiness when I remembered how I went back home and had to move on with real life shit. I thought I’d have forgotten the little details after 25 long years. But turns out, not. In retrospect I also thanked god sometimes that he went through none of this suffering. On the first day of my mom’s hospitalisation, I had nightmares of the build up to the accident. It was unreal. Like someone opened Pandora’s box and Pandora had a bloody good memory all this while. 
4. Marrying right is one of the best things I’ve done. Knowing I have someone I can go back to, eat my Dal chawal with and someone to throw a blanket over me when I pass out on the couch is what real love stories are made of. 
5. There’s a life out there in the real. Outside of laptops, Teams, Outlook, Bellandur metro traffic, office dramas. There’s a world that exists parallel to mine. Where doctors, nurses still scribble vitals on a large folded A3 with a Reynolds pen. In unfortunate circumstances like this, we meet.
6. I watched an entire terribly trashy K drama (16 episodes of 1.25 hours each by the way) over ten days on my way to the hospital and back. Sometimes in the waiting space of the ICU, where I waited for two hours on some days to see my mom for one hour. I coped, I survived, I found a way to cut myself out of the people around me, some of who were with much more serious patients than mine. I sometimes amped up the volume, on full noise cancellation when someone would receive bad news and break down sobbing next to me. I did whatever I could to just exist and not fall apart. I’m probably never going to judge someone in a hospital waiting room watching shows on their phone (maybe if they’re very loud, but I won’t roll my eyes at them I’m sure). 
7. English classes about sympathy vs. empathy become real. There’s always going to be people to pretend to care and those who really do. Events like these make this distinction even clearer. It hits home hard but in retrospect it’s everything your heart always knew but didn’t want to accept. Also, having friends like family who ask me everyday HOW ARE YOU means the world. 
8. Some people mean well but just don’t know how to show it. They’ll try to guilt you about not answering the phone when you’re probably contemplating existence. Some of them mean well. Some, well. Okay. 
9. Medical insurance is horribly under-rated, under-discussed and misunderstood. 
10. In times like this it’s easy to beat yourself up about making certain choices which might seem like a bad daughter, a bad wife, or a bad mother. But I want to write my own affirmation here, that being a good enough person is grossly under rated. Fulfilling all roles par excellence is great but even fulfilling them just above passing marks is fine - as long as you are able to be your own hero, your own warm cup of hot chocolate, your best support. As long as you can wake up the next day, with the same hope that it will be a better day than yesterday, be the very average person but be there for yourself.