CATAR’ACT CALLING…
Hello hello folks…
Ok, I’m not trying to brag here but on the scale of fitness, I usually go from fit to fitter to fittest. My friends tell me I’m lucky. Perhaps I am. But there’s a yuck angle to this luck too.
Because that odd occasion when I do have a health issue, I seem to be afflicted by the most pedestrian, downmarket variety! 🙈
My affinity for painfully humdrum and mundane ailments robs me of the brag factor associated with the more posh-sounding haemophilias and lactose-intolerances of the world.
If the whole world is down with some fancy variety of flu, I’ll come down with Swine Flu! ☹️
If a friend has some glorious-sounding eye issue like retino-ocular-blah, I’ll get the dime-a-dozen, done-to-death-cataract (no offence to all my fellow sufferers… you n I are gonna join hands and push this affliction up the pseudo-medic ladder!)
Cataract surgeries are more common than the name Puja in our country… Puja… a name I proudly chose over the seemingly blah Renu given by my parents. Little knowing that Puja would turn to blah blah blah in just a few decades… 🥲
These days you lift a stone and there’s a Puja sitting under it. Shout the name at a café any time of the day and you’ll have a swarm of Puja’s hovering over you.
Anyway, coming back to the protagonist of this post, Cataract. How am I supposed to brag about being afflicted by something like that?! It’s as common as the paltry price our farmers get for their onions every year… or the number of accusations poor Manish Sisodia is facing in his current trial…😏
Worse, cataract is. said to happen to people who’re over the hill. Can you imagine.. me… over the hill ! I haven’t even set foot on the hill yet! I’m jaywalking somewhere in the foothills… just an overgrown teenager trapped in the body of a sixty year old (at least in my mind!)
The doctor says you have advanced cataract.
Ooh…that’s great… I mentally note down the ‘advanced’ bit.. desperate to add some brag factor to my unworthy affliction.
And then, 16th of March, I finally have my cataract surgery. Left eye first. The right one can wait a month or two.
Excited as a pup being taken for a morning walk, I say let’s do this guys! Hell bent on documenting the process and tattooing it on my brain, I focus on being mindful of all my experiences, my thoughts, my feeling… penning ‘em all down in my diary for posterity.
As a social influencer, my attention-seeking DNA is always abloom…at a wedding, I want to be the bride, at a funeral, the corpse.
So I wear my OT gear, click! I’m wheeled into the OT, click, click. I’m having my post surgery coffee, click, click,click!!
Nervous? Asks the doctor(Dr. Navin Sakhuja) who is such a delightful, affable human being that you want to take him home. No, you actually want to copy paste and distribute his clones to every Delhi hospital that has a majority of doctors wearing official scowls, and doctored smiles besides their white coats.
Ah not nervous doc I say, just terribly excited. He rolls his eyes in part surprise, part delight… it isn’t every day that you get a patient who’s so gung-ho about her surgery.
And there’s a little hack I wish to share here. Never think how your surgery will go… that only stuffs your tummy with butterflies the size of dinosaurs. Instead, revel in thinking about the post-surgery value you will extract when your underperforming organ bounces back to the pink.
Also trust your doctor’s experience and acumen to steer you gently through the choppy waters of ill health. And for god’s sake don’t make his/her job difficult by huffing and ranting. His/her mental well-being is vital for your physical well-being.
Ok I’m in the OT now. Brimming with positivity. Chanting let’s do this baby, under my breath. Loving. the assisting nurses. Loving the doctor who seems to have stolen my playlist and is playing it in the OT… such a huge stress buster!
So I’m injected with some sedative and almost instantly my mind starts its sojourn into La La land.
I feel soft nudges to the corners of my eyes.
An advanced psychedelic laser show begins in front of my dilated pupil.. a light and sound show.. with the doctor’s playlist providing the background music.
Pani Da Rang Dekh Ke plays somewhere far yet near as the lights merge and submerge.
The experience is surreal. Ok now Shaan is belting out Jab Se Tere Naina as my naina is transfixed under the laser gun!
My mind and soul are now doing a slow salsa to Adnan Sami’s Yeh Zameen Ruk Jaye…
I want to capture all these precious moments and tuck them away in my memory vault.
There’s a divine tango happening in that cold but warmth-inducing Operation Theatre… a seamless juxtaposition of man and machine, expertise and knowledge, compassion and gratitude.
And then suddenly the psychedelics subside. The lights retreat. The sounds retract.
And shunya takes their place.
A shunya that connects me to my inner self.
A profound bundle of moments… of deep reflection… of soul-searching…of catharsis.
A moment that floods my heart with intense gratitude for all our health warriors.. our real heroes who take the pain to study, and graduate, and specialise .. and then relieve our pain when we are at our most vulnerable.
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