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So long, Tokyo
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/fb0vQbVYcc0
The call came early this morning.
“Tokyo has died and we are all distraught.”
What? Dead? How did that even happen?
Tokyo was a starling chick that had fallen from its nest a week ago and was being looked after by her human carers “until she is strong enough to fly and join her flock.”
Though I am thousands of miles away and had never seen her, but for a small video, I felt the pain instantly. Losing a pet is always painful, whether it’s a bird or a dog or a cat, no matter how much time it has been with you. The pain – and a feeling of helplessness, is immense. Tokyo was the life of the household in the last few days, oblivious of the family pug, who wasn’t all too pleased with her constant chirping. The “little lady” followed her carer around the house and even sat on the kitchen shelf, making high-decibel sounds throughout the day, and slept in a customized basket at night. However, she woke up gasping this morning and soon stopped breathing.
Though we will never know what happened, and it’s not important now, what we do know is the immense void it has left in her carers’ lives. It’s a feeling only a true pet-lover knows and can appreciate.
I was told Tokyo’s mother came regularly to check on her and was seemingly happy at the progress the chick was making. What would she be thinking now?
Pets bring so much joy in our lives and help us stay sane. I would know as a ‘dog dad’ to a 15-year old in the twilight of his life, and a seven-year old who makes sure there is never a dull moment in the house.
Tokyo is gone because that’s the way it was meant to be but the very short association makes us once again feel life is so unpredictable whether for a human or any other living being.
May she keep singing across the Rainbow Bridge.
Amen.
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‘It’ll never be the same again’ – Covid took more than just lives
When I recently made my way to this old traditional coffee shop in the back lanes of Muharraq, Bahrain, I expected to find the place as bustling as ever. Instead, there were only these three gentlemen sitting there waiting for the place to open.
Why is it like that, I asked? “Most of those who came here earlier have died – many of old age and many more have succumbed to Corona,” said one of them. “The last two years have been very traumatic,” he added.
“We have been coming here for years,” said a second gentleman. “We are retired and gathered here to talk, have coffee, the sheesha and exchange notes. The pandemic shut down such places and by the time restrictions were eased, we realized many of our friends weren’t around any more.”
The third gentleman said the opening hours of the shop have been severely curtailed as well. “We come here and wait for it to open – but it’s certainly not like the old times – the zing is missing. People do come but it’ll never be the same again.”
The unoccupied tables and the looks on the gents’ faces tell a story, of course – and it’s not a happy one.
I dug out a “happy” picture of the same coffee shop taken before the pandemic disrupted our lives and found so much of life, energy and vigour in the shot.
Hopefully, this Muharraq icon will be “reborn” one day and come back to its old glorious days.
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India’s unsung Florence Nightingales
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Why do we not look to relieve suffering?
Walk with the Weary
– Dr. M. R Rajagopal
Dr, M. R Rajagopal’s ‘Walk with the Weary’, is an autobiography – a memoir packed with stories wrapped around human suffering.
The protagonist is a doctor, who became obsessed with patient suffering even before pain management became a specialty – popularly known today as Palliative Care.
A compilation of shared experiences from his years of walking along the road of illness with people suffering from life-limiting illnesses, the book holds many lessons on living and dying well.
The author has put together stories showcasing love, faith, hope and grief in the backdrop of illness, sharing his own life story on the side.
The story of a young anesthesiologist, who entered the scene of caring armed with persistence and a will to remove the burden of pain from seriously ill patients he passed by on his way to the operation theater, has more drama than one would expect.
The stories are told in a chatty style initially, possibly due to the personal nature of the parts, but changes to a conversational yet ruminative in the latter. Though his palliative care adventure and that of India runs parallel, they blend effortlessly at crucial turning points.
The author unveils a path he curiously staggered into rather intentionally through stories of thirty plus patients who allowed him into their suffering, often trying to relieve pain by trial and error, error being not successful in easing agony.
Some of the patients who stand out are Ramesh, who suffered enormously even after a failed suicide attempt; a college professor who succeeded in taking his own life due to hopelessness; Rahmath who had the saddest smile and the children who taught valuable lessons about accepting the inevitable, refusing the vague and smiling when there was the slightest pain relief.
The author, at times, makes fun of himself, admitting his mistakes, misunderstandings, or misadventures. He is not shy to admit his naive entry into the world of pain relief, or his amateurish attempts at nerve blocking, even before he had a clue that his now specialty palliative care was more than the art and science of relieving illness related suffering.
He names one and all of his fellow travelers, from mentors to colleagues, magnanimous donors to supportive family caregivers.
He acknowledges every doctor, nurse, philanthropist, mentor and patient he met and walked along during his formative years as a palliative care enthusiast and later crusader. Among them Yusuf Hammed, Dr. Robert Twycross, philanthropist Bruce Davice and British nurse Gilli Burn are some of those who the reader will come to admire.
The memoir of this trailblazer doctor works like anesthesia for the reader, allowing one to negotiate the sufferings in some of those stories with ease.
The book advocates the health sector combined science with compassion and made lives livable for people nearing the end of life.
In the writer’s words, “I believe I have a right to a compassionate and responsive medical system that will not reject the human being in me simply because my disease is incurable. I will consider it the greatest outrage on my person if, at that time, I am subjected to the ultimate indignity of a tube in every orifice, the agony of a suction catheter in my lungs and the horror of a friendless, cable-covered, electronic inhumane death.”
He says it is a paradox that people have to protect themselves against the medical system by signing “advance medical directives”.
“Can we not integrate palliative care into all healthcare as recommended by the World Health Assembly in 2014 so as to relieve suffering along with treatment of diseases?” he asks.
MANDEEPSINGS 