After a surgery, I had complications which sent me back to the hospital five more times— once every week, each visit a span of five torturous days.
By the fifth visit, I had become extremely weak. And this time, I had been in pain for 32 hours, and had not slept for 40. The doctors had tried every form of painkiller, through every route of my body, but the pain just wouldn’t stop. But even while going through all this, I was still fine because I trusted my doctor, who had already said that he would not do another painful surgery on me, under any circumstances, because it would be very dangerous.
By the end of the 32nd hour though, the pain defeated my resilience. My heart was fluttering due to weakness-induced tachycardia. I was alone in my ward when he came by to check on me, and I literally begged him,
“I don’t care what you have to do uncle. I don’t care if you have to cut me up again. Just please make this pain stop.”
He looked at me with an expression of mixed helplessness and pity, and quietly said,
“I don’t think the pain will stop, beta. We’ll probably have to take you to the surgery tomorrow like this only.”
All my nerves shattered. I was so weak, all my veins were swollen with two months of incessant IV drips and injections. Somewhere deep down, I just knew I would die if I go into another surgery like this.
…
What happens when you realize you are about to die? At first, upon hearing the news of the surgery, the world spun around me. But then it got progressively quieter. My phone rang. It was my aunt calling to find out how I am. I didn’t take the call. It didn’t matter now. Nothing did, and it a good, detached way. I felt so distant… so above-it-all. The moment was very different from what I had imagined it to be. There was no panic. There was no wailing. There was no rush to meet loved ones.
There was just an overwhelming sense of calm.
I believe that is the moment I experienced an out-of-body experience. That moment when your world comes crashing down but you extricate yourself from it like a silent spectator. I felt this wasn’t my life, this was a movie about someone else. Maybe this was one of those Netflix drama series going on, and much like the season finale’s cliff hanger ending, I wasn’t as horrified about what tragedy had just occurred as I was curious about what would happen next!
That day in the hospital I learnt how important it is that when everything goes wrong, you retreat within yourself, detach yourself from everything around you and just be a neutral spectator. Now I use it to disentangle myself from a highly emotional situation, be a silent observer and just breathe.
If hospitals can teach you something that valuable, then who says hospitals are a bad place to be in?