Room 23

by Kavita Basi

  It was only when I began canceling lessons with my yoga teacher, preferring to rest and lie down instead, and stopped socializing with my friends, that I knew something was really wrong.

  My recovery in the first days after my operations was much like the movie Groundhog Day. My husband, mom, sisters, and brother visited me—my mom and Deepak massaging me to prevent blood clots, keep my circulation moving, and maintain my muscle tone. I repeatedly pulled out the wires and tubes attached to me and asked the same questions over and over again, some of the answers of which Deepak would go over with me and correct after the doctors left.

  “Oh, right,” I would say.

  But every time I woke up, I tried to pull out the wires and tubes attached to me and was confused all over again. And every time I succeeded in pulling the tube out, I’d have to go back in for surgery again and get stitches. It was hard for Deepak to experience this over and over again.

  “Why won’t you take me home?” I demanded. “I want to go home. Please take me home.”

  “I’ll take you home as soon as you’re better,” Deepak promised.

  “Why don’t you ever come to visit?” I persisted. “Why can’t we buy all the machines and doctors and nurses and just go home? You don’t care about me! You don’t love me!”

  Deepak felt helpless to console me, but he did his best. He was with me at the hospital practically 24/7, despite the fact that I just opened my eyes for a few moments and then fell back to sleep. He only went home for four or five hours each day, to sleep and check on the children. When he did go home he continued to sleep in the chair in our room, wanting nothing to do with our bed if I wasn’t in it with him. He had one day a week where he played soccer to let off steam.

  Once he had the doctor’s permission, Deepak brought the kids to see me. When they got to the waiting room, he stopped and sat them down.

  “Your mum isn’t going to be her usual self,” he said. He described for them what they were going to see, wanting them to be prepared as possible. “You will need to keep calm and not cry,” he finished. “We can’t upset her. If you need to cry, you can come back out here and sit until you calm down.”

  Both of the kids nodded their heads in understanding, and once they were ready, they put on scrubs and washed their hands with antibacterial soap.

  Like everyone else who had been in to see me, they were overwhelmed by the sheer number of wires and monitors connected to each patient in the ICU, but especially those connected to me—their mother.

  Except I didn’t look like their mother.

  I was ill and weak and unaware they were even visiting. They didn’t know how to process what they were seeing, what all the wires and monitors meant. Would I come home to them?

  Both of my children were afraid.

  Jasmine sat by my bedside and held my hand, not wanting to let go.

  Chapter 4

  I wasn’t happy when I was moved to a private room. I didn’t want to be alone. The upside, though, was that I could suddenly see more people at a time, and extended family and friends were allowed to come and see me.

  The day they moved me, the doctor had a conversation with Deepak where they reminded him to control things closely.

  “I don’t want anyone to challenge Kavita,” he told Deepak. “Everyone should be warned. If she says things that are inaccurate or wrong, just play along. We don’t want her brain to get agitated.”

  He should have said more agitated.

  “Remember, no one should challenge her,” the doctor said.

  “Okay, doctor,” Deepak said. “Thank you.”

  I wish the doctor could have written that prescription for life—No one should challenge her.

  . . . In a perfect world.

  Alas.

  My life at this point was like a dream. Everything I experienced was captured in flashing scenes, moments where I saw vivid images and began to realize this wasn’t a dream—this was really happening. My brain was desperately trying to pull itself back together. So every time I said something strange, like I’d just had a baby, anyone in earshot would simply nod and play along, no matter how outlandish what I said was. And no matter how many times I watched the same movies or shows on the television—Superman and The Sound of Music were my reigning favorites—no one said anything.

  I felt isolated and lonely away from the other patients and activity. I waited desperately for people to visit me, and it seemed like the more conscious I became, the more people had to go back to their lives. Sheetal had to travel to Belgium for work. And Sunny had just started a family. Even Mum had a life she had to get back to. I looked forward to seeing Rajni every day after she finished work, and continued to miss Deepak when he left for those few hours early in the morning. I stared at the clock the whole time he was gone, and if he returned even a minute late, I got very upset.

  Soon I enlisted the night nurse to let me call him from the hospital phone. I would call him two or three times every night, at two, three, and four in the morning.

  “Why did you leave?” I would demand. “What time are you coming back tomorrow?” And when he came back, I’d start berating him the moment he came through the door: “Where were you? Why are you late?”

  I was in despair and confused. And I took it out on Deepak.

  And each day it began anew.

  My room filled with photographs of my family and extended family that my cousin collaged together, thinking it would give me hope, make me smile, and feel more at home. Her collages were plastered from floor to ceiling on the wall in front of me.

  Deepak began to take videos in the hospital on his phone to help with my day-to-day memory and so that I would have something to look back at in case my memory continued to plague me once I was released from the hospital.

  Would I ever be released from the hospital?

  Deepak pointed the phone at me one day and began filming.

  “This is Kavita’s Top Ten Wish List.”

  “Would you turn that video around?” I said, sipping on my masala tea. “That’s a horrible picture you’re taking of me.”

  Deepak turned the camera around and stared into it himself and then changed its direction back to capture me.

  “Number one,” he said.

  “Go to the Bahamas again,” I said.

  “Go to the Bahamas again,” he repeated. “Number two.”

  “Deepak will never, ever shout at me again,” I said.

  Deepak photo-bombed the video with his thumb, pointing upwards in agreement.

  “And if you do, I’ll leave you.”

  Deepak gave another thumbs-up. “Number three,” he said.

  I considered for moment, then said, “I need to lose half a stone.”

  “No, you don’t need to lose half a stone. You’re already six-and-a-half stone.”

  “Okay,” I conceded. “Maintain six-and-a-half-stone. Number four’s wish is for Deepak to know how to make this tea,” I continued.

  “I make it nicer than that. I can put Indian masala in it.”

  “Just now?” I asked. I wasn’t sure if he was saying he’d made the tea.

  “No, but I can if you want me to. What about number five?” he continued.

  “Things that used to make me really happy. I was thinking about my childhood—years of singing, dancing, painting. I don’t do any of these things anymore. I would love to be able to share creative hobbies with the kids and enjoy them together. Also, when I’ve been with the kids. It’s got to be about those things. I’ll ask them to help me finish my list.”

  “What about Orlando? Didn’t you use to like to go to Orlando?”

  “No, that’s your wish list,” I said, shaking my head. “You can’t push your wish on mine! I’m going to ask the kids to input my other five wishes.”

  I was finally moved to a ward where I was surrounded by other patients. I was happier being around other people. I began to thrive. I was still incredibly weak, but I talked with the nurses and patients ab
out their personal lives, celebrity gossip, films, and fashion (my expertise). I also liked to quiz them.

  “What are your favorite stores?”

  “What are your best and worst fashion experiences?”

  I would find out what they were interested in and see if I had anything to share. Having these relationships made me feel like I was having a normal day in a normal setting.

  Of course, nothing about what I was experiencing was normal, and not all my experiences were good.

  In the ward there weren’t enough nurses for twenty-four-hour checks when patients were mostly stable, so I’d lost my twenty-four-hour nurse. For the most part, this was okay, because Deepak was with me nearly twenty-four hours a day. He fed me breakfast, lunch, and dinner since I was still too weak to feed myself.

  One day, when Deepak wasn’t with me, I was in a lot of pain—my head was pounding—but I couldn’t take any more painkillers, because I had already reached my daily limit. All I could do was close my eyes and rest. If I could sleep, it would quiet the pain.

  The light through the window was bright and the curtains were wide open. When the nurse walked in I looked up and smiled.

  “Would you be able to close the curtains, please?” I asked.

  “No,” she said.

  At first I thought she was joking. When I asked again she gave me a stern look.

  “Get up and do it yourself,” she said.

  If I was too weak to feed myself, how was I going to get up and close the curtains?

  I was shocked by her reaction and lay there thinking about how to respond.

  “I’m not doing it for you,” she said. “Get up and use your legs.”

  I looked around at the other patients. Most were resting, and the others were too weak to move themselves. I was so desperate for sleep. I didn’t know how long it had been since I’d been out of bed because I was still having issues with my short-term memory, but I knew it had been some time. I moved the blanket away, looked for the bed railings, and slowly moved my legs to the floor.

  The nurse pretended not to notice, watching me out of the corner of her eye, as she shuffled paperwork from her desk in the middle of the ward.

  I was determined to close the curtains, and her refusal to help put the fire in me.

  Standing, I could see I only had about six steps to get to the window.

  I can do this.

  My head hurt.

  My legs hurt.

  I slid my feet slightly forward. And then a little farther.

  Suddenly, my legs began to shake and lost their life. I looked around desperately for something to grab on to—something, anything! But it was either move forward toward the window or back to bed, and I couldn’t do either. I froze, my legs gave way, and I hit the floor with a scream.

  The ward nurse, along with a couple of nurses who ran in to help, rushed over to me. I felt helpless and upset.

  Why did she let this happen? Was she trying to motivate me? Does she not know that I can’t walk yet?

  But she did know. This wasn’t her first shift on the ward. I’d seen her before. She was always rushing around, never smiling, and always seemed to distrust the patients. She clearly wasn’t happy in her job.

  When Deepak came I spoke to him in Hindi and explained what had happened.

  “I don’t like that nurse.”

  “You’re just frustrated from being in bed so long,” he repeated over and over.

  But I had a bruised arm and leg from the fall and my confidence was shattered. Deepak didn’t understand.

  Deepak and I talked about the kids as he fed me my favorite lunch—yogurt with Indian cumin rice.

  “They miss you,” he told me. “It’s not the same at home without you. Jasmine told me that when her friends complain about their parents she says, ‘I’d give anything to have my mum back at home.’”

  As I took my next bite, I started to feel slow and my vision became blurred. I couldn’t open my mouth properly to eat. The left side of my face stopped working and drooped.

  “What’s happening?” Deepak asked.

  I tried to answer him but instead slurred words back to him. I didn’t have the answer. I didn’t know what was happening myself. Fear shot through me. And I could see on Deepak’s face that he was beginning to panic.

  “Nurse! Nurse!” he screamed.

  I couldn’t feel the left side of my body or move.

  “What’s going on? What’s happening to her?” Deepak exclaimed.

  The specialist doctor rushed into the ward and made a few phone calls.

  When he came back, he said, “This is serious. We’re going to have to move her back to intensive care. She has a twenty-four hour window. She may not come through this.”

  Deepak was deeply distressed. We’d been through the big operation and the constant restitching from my pulling out the drain. He had no idea what was happening, and everyone was moving too fast to stop and explain it to him. What were they going to do?

  I was rushed back to intensive care.

  The neurological team realized I was in the early stages of stroke, having a seizure. My brain was spasming. They rushed me back into the operating room, where the doctors injected fluid into my veins through the top of my legs to loosen the valves so that oxygen could get through to my brain.

  After my procedure, the doctor met with Deepak.

  “We got her just in time,” he told him soberly. “Any later and repercussions could have been fatal. Thank goodness you were with her.”

  Back on the ward, after slowly recovering from my seizure, my short-term memory began to improve. My head was still bandaged tightly and the tube was still attached to my head, but suddenly I was aware of what was happening—more conscious. And though I was happier and felt like I made more progress on the ward, the everyday routine began to get to me in a way it hadn’t before. The days felt like weeks.

  I wondered if I’d ever get out of the hospital.

  I knew I had to have a shunt permanently installed inside my body to help my brain function properly—to help it drain— but I had to progress further in my recovery before this could happen. I was still practically immobile.

  At least I’d made a new friend in the ward—Debz—who would come to my bed every day to cheer me up when my family wasn’t with me. Debz had a chronic condition and was in and out of the hospital frequently. She was a former nurse for the Royal Navy and had a daughter five years older than Jasmine and a son in the performing arts. Her husband was a happy and devoted man who visited often.

  I was so grateful for Debz’s bright personality and friendship, especially when I was feeling lonely. She had a motherly nature. Most patients were unable to move or talk, and few had visitors, so having someone like Debz on the ward was a treat for everyone.

  “I can see you’re having a hard day,” she said one day.

  “I just feel like I’m never going to get out of here,” I said, and began to cry.

  Debz rubbed my back and wiped my tears. “You’re going to be just fine,” she said. “You’re going to get better.”

  I was particularly frustrated because my childhood OCD was in full swing and I couldn’t get clean enough. Normally I’d wash my hands at least ten times a day. In the hospital, in contrast, it was routine for the bedpan to topple over and soil the sheets and my pajamas. I had to be changed twice a day by the nurses.

  “I swear I’m going to design a bed pan that’s easier for patients who are struggling like me to use,” I said.

  “I don’t doubt you,” Debz said.

  My arms and hands were purple and blue all over because I had to have a new tube inserted into my veins every day to take blood or administer medicine. This was torture, because my veins were collapsed. Some nurses were better at it than others, but I cried every time regardless of who was doing it.

  One day a young assistant nurse put the cannula in the wrong part of my arm and my arm swelled up to the size of a watermelon as the fluid pumped i
nto my arm instead of the vein. This frightened me, and it took hours for the swelling to go down.

  I also had injections every afternoon into my arms or buttocks to prevent blood clots since I wasn’t moving around much.

  Sleeping helped me pass the time, and my new friends on the ward helped me forget how hard things were and gave me hope.

  “Excuse me,” one woman called across to me one day, “but what are you doing here?”

  “Um, what?” I asked.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Something is wrong with my brain.”

  “No, I mean, shouldn’t you be in the children’s hospital?”

  Children’s?

  I knew I looked young. But that young?

  I realized I had lost so much weight that my frame looked childlike. “I’m nearly forty,” I said. “I have a teenage daughter!”

  Within minutes a couple of patients came over to my bed and started inspecting me.

  “We were just saying the other day, ‘Poor thing, I hope she’s not bored being here with all us oldies, listening to our stories,’” one said, laughing.

  Over the next few days they played a game when their visitors arrived.

  “How old do you think she is?” they’d ask.

  The answers ranged from sixteen to twenty-five. Boy was I happy! I didn’t want to look sixteen, but I’d take twenty-five any day.

  Unfortunately, the weight loss was about to come at a price. I’d lost too much weight for my size. Every day after breakfast I would take my medication and then throw up my food. I couldn’t keep anything down.

  “If you can’t keep your food down, if you don’t gain weight, we’re going to have to insert a feeding tube in your throat,” the doctor said.