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1409
Mid-April, one morning, as she got up from her chair with her empty cup in her
hand, she got dizzy and fell to the floor. She had been pacing the compound of
“Promesse” earlier, in full sun, trying to arrange for the proper disposal of all the
plastic waste. When I came to see her, a little later, I thought it was because of the
exposure to the strong sunrays that she had thus fainted.
She rested that day. She complained later of some pain in her abdomen.
The next day it became worse. She made me touch the swelling in her right side.
She did not want her sons to be informed. She wanted to try and regain her
balance.
She was vomiting. Then she seemed to stabilise: she would tease me before
Shantidi or Bittiben that when I gave her myself some fruit to eat, she would
already be 50% recovered, and so I had to come twice a day without fail if she had
to get the other 50%.
Then one day she called me: she informed me that she had called our doctor friend
Vijay Oza, and taken an appointment with him that same evening, so he could take
a scan and decide.
I arranged for a car. We went late afternoon. We had to wait, as night fell, by the
laboratory in a crowded street, while all the electricity had failed in that part of the
city. It was very hot; she sat there with me in the car, curled up, quiet; she had
pain, but it was bearable.
Then Vijay called us, and told us to drive to a private hospital where he had an
office as well, and there he took the scan. He found a very large swelling on the
lower intestines, which was agonisingly painful to the touch.
He couldn’t say what it was yet. He said we must admit Kusum in the Ashram
Nursing Home at once, so he could get other doctors’ opinions and run some tests
under Datta’s direction.
So we were back in the Ashram clinic, and it was like coming home too.
Kusum slept there.
Vijay is from Gujarat too. He had met Kusum’s elder son a number of times. He
must have persuaded Kusum that Madho must be informed. He himself talked to
Madho on the phone.
Vijay told us there was one surgeon he trusted, who would normally do surgery at
Cluny Hospital, and had his own private cabinet besides. This surgeon was a gruff
man, who perhaps had some dislike for any foreigners; he examined Kusum and
declared she must be operated at once. But Madho apparently could not come so
fast, and asked for the operation to be postponed until his arrival.
Much of the communication was taking place in a language I did not know, Gujarati,
and under the “normal” assumption of family ties.
On the 24
th
, the operation took place: we were all there to see her in and to wait
for her to come out. When the swelling had been removed – one and a half foot of
intestine was cut off – Vijay came out into the corridor where we were standing, as
he had done during my operation, and showed us the contents of a small bucket,
while explaining to us that this was actually a case of appendicitis, infecting the
neighbouring parts of the intestines, and not at all a case of tuberculosis as had
been diagnosed for the past ten years or so! This meant that Kusum had lived for
more than ten years with an inflamed, chronic appendicitis, which could have been
fixed with minor surgery a long time ago!
The chief surgeon and Vijay seemed to be happy with the “procedure” when it was
over.
Kusum was then kept in an isolation ward in Cluny. Madho was with us since the
previous day. He was impatient, and worried about the lack of sophisticated
equipment and facilities.