The Recovery

Does one ever fully recover from something ...of course we do ....however this jan i have started driving class for the second time ..... and yesterday was particularly bad ...specially because i had bunked class on thursday and friday ...... i panic like crazy on the road ...totally close my eyes when i feel too many vehicles are near by and going to crash the car ..... when the very young instructor kind of yelled at me about the left leg being on the brake and the speed not being enough ....i wanted to get out of the freaking car and never sit in one again.... i told him i am not responsible if the car gets a dent or two if he does not help me ....the nerd said it is my hands on the steering .... he kept making me drive on roads i do not like coz of the heavy traffic ...when i was getting out after thanking him ...he suddenly remembered and told me no class on a sunday ...he sounded relieved, happy almost !!! .... and i wondered to myself ....what a sad state i was in ....nothing is making me over come the panic attack everytime someone comes near the car i am driving ....sigh ....i had written about the accident and thought i was getting it out of my system .... so now trying to get recovery out the way ..... lol  

when i woke up after the surgery ....i remember puking after a bit ...as i had nothing to eat since the night before.....fianlly i was allowed liquids ...i drank as much of coconut water and pineapple juice as i could ..... i was not given a fibre glass cast as they wanted my open wounds to heal ..... i was very lucky to get a very good nurse in my ward ....she was the most gentle kind and efficient nurse i could hope for ... i was being given a very strong painkiller called dynapar ... once when sister Sbita was not around ..another nurse gave me a shot of dynapar and i remember crying out in pain as it got injected ...this nurse panicked and went and got Sabita....who realised the careless girl had given me the dose of the medicine without diluting it.....however since the pain was too much i kept begging for the pain killler and was worried that i was developing a dependency

the second day i was bored and also worried ...i was not reading the economic times .... so i asked my husband to get me my old issues and that day's ET from home ...and i read an article about how some drugs which were banned in most countries were still being sold in India and dynapar was one of them ....i was soooooo amused at how immediate was my brain's reaction ...the brain just turned a new leaf and did not feel as much pain.....it helped me increase my pain threshold in no time LOL   

from third day my pain threshold went up and i was beginning to control my pain through mind and will power to not give in .....my students came to meet me and told me they were worried as to who will correct their papers as i had a problem with my right hand ...i told them to not worry and that i would do something ....the next day i told the doctor i had enough of lying around in hospital and took my discharge ....went straight to the college and collected my papers from the pvt professional college .....then went to the govt aided college, where i was told ...in case i had a problem with paper correction the other profs would do it .....however i decided to take that load home too ....i had around 700 papers to correct over a time of 4 weeks of holiday ..... distributing this among my colleagues would mean an additional burden for them ......

before going home i needed to take care of my hair .... there was no one to comb or tie it up ..... i went to the parlour and chopped it as short as i could .... the girls there were repeatedly telling me to not cut it so short ..... but that was that ...i needed one area where i was less dependent on another person .... took the whole lot of papers home and willed myself to correct them ...i did not want to think of what i had gone through and take my mind of the pain ..... when i started correction i realised if i concentrated i could use my left hand quite well ..... i had 4 days to finish 65 papers i had got in banking and insurance ..... i could not cook or clean ...so when ever i could ...i would sit and finish corrections .... the problem was writing down why i had given a particular answer a certain rating .... my father helped me enter the marks and convert them .... and they were sent to the concerned college .....now there were around 700 papers left .....since the government college did not have a semester system ...the paper answered was not a very long one ..... somewhere before the holidays got over i had got addicted to playing ....hidden object games online ... so obviously the speed of paper correction did come down .... then it caught speed when it was time for college to open .... i did not finish the whole lot when college opened ... 

during the holidays i had to take the post graduate lectures ... i used to take my elder child with me to help me pay the rickshaw ..... and help me wrap my shawl and tie my scarf .....it was a long wait for him as he was just 5 years old then .... he loved coming with me as it meant a treat and being pampered by the peons .... running around the statue of 'the common man' ..... some days he would sleep at the back of the class .....what i had not anticipated was the change in attitude of my post graduate students, due to me wearing western clothes  ....suddenly some of them wanted to know my age and my child's age and i used to sigh ..... thankfully i finished the syllabus in time and typed out the question paper with my left hand ....

the cast meant i had to sleep alone ....plus the college was at quite a distance ...which meant me getting up before everyone and leaving home by 6.45am latest ....it was peak winter by now .... and i was travelling alone.... it was tough ....plus one lady from my dept was brewing problems because of the attention and response i was getting ...another issue was my participation in the english departmental acitivities ....in the college i was teaching banking and insurance ..... my popularity as compared to the co-ordinator's popularity was a bone of contention for her ..... my clothes too was an issue ....some days they would shift the podium from the class which meant holding on to my right hand with my left hand after a point .... plus drawing diagrams with my left hand as a PPT could not help them understand how to plot a diagram ..and i do not like teaching using teaching-aids .....

 i would call up the residents when ever i had a problem as it is very scary to not know why and what was going on with my hand .....the ortho was the only doc who was not easy with explanations .....his point was ...people have worse accidents ...you are lucky so do not brood, be upset and h would go wild if i cried ...happened only once !!!!

i did not take up an offer the college offered me as they had told me there would be an opening coming up for me in a sister concern near my house .... i did not use my hand from October 2006 till February 2007 ...on 14th February i had enough of not being able to cook and with my cast ...went grocery shopping and made vegetable chowmein and chicken with my left hand ..even washed vessels with my left hand ....i was sick and tired of the cast by then ....it was changed once in January 2007 but it was beginning to irritate me no end .... i needed to do a bit more work to take my mind off the cast .....it was like a parasite needing extra energy from me .... my fingers would swell up sometimes and everything would pain like crazy .... living with pain was a constant ... one day my kids were fighting and i went to split them up and the elder one hurt my pinky finger a bit ...the pain was as good as if i had broken my finger ......so i ran to the doctor and took an x-ray ...only when i got a normal report did i relax ...nothing was broken ... the second time my cast was changed ....i realised how long it takes a broken hand to set .....there were many shards and bone splinters in my right hand ....which the doctor promised would go with time 

i was given the worst divisions but what no one or me had anticipated was .... the way students took to me and i gelled with them ..... in 6 months i decided i could tread these waters and went on to become a full time faculty .... i had specifically asked for some leeway as my hand needed treatment ....they promised me so but i would later learn how they would kill me with work ....

in 6 months i was made exam committee member and my heart sank .... this would mean taxing times for my hand .... the thing with a hand with crushed bones is that when bones grow back ....it tends to get longer ....and as expected my right hand got a curvature to the right as one bone had becomes longer than before ...

this operation was slotted for 2008 Jan ....even a day before my operation i was stuck in college doing exam committee work ....one major disadvantage of staying near college ...... plus they did not let me apply to the university for medical leave and gave me just 15 days leave .....this time too ...i had a 3-4 hour operation ....the rods in my ulna and radius were removed and a plate inserted in my ulna or radius ..... i can never make out which is which ..... when i joined back, the college festival as on and i was asked to do all the work a regular person had to do ... hell had started .... food was my mantra to deal with operations ..... fruits and coconut water plus a strict watch on my diet .... exam committe work would make my hands swell up on occasions and i would bunk the next day .....

my hand healed soon enough ....then i had my next operation in 2009 to remove the rod in the humerus and the plate in the lower part of my hand ..... one of the bones is still slightly bent and needs plating ...i keep postponing it ...

on some days i think about how one small driving mistake by an auto rickshaw driver and how much i have endured....