इच्छाशक्ति-7

As compared to the month of July, the crowds here at the hospital seem to have returned. It may not be as big a crowd as it was before Covid happened, but still there are hundreds of patients. Staff seems to have made extra arrangements and rules for the patients to follow to prevent covid.

Waiting outside the HBB 101, I look at my token. It's still just token number 150 that is called, and I have to wait untill 239. While you know it's going to take time, you still keep on checking, just in case your number comes earlier than you actually imagined.

Trying to keep your mind engaged while you wait in the queue is a huge task. There's so much happening around you. Suddenly I heard an irritated voice of a kid, screaming and at the same time crying and telling something to his mother. I see a small pale, thin kid with needles at the back of his tiny palms with heavy bandages for administering medicines, sleeping on the lap of his mother, who by the way doesn't look older than 25-30 years of age. The kid wakes up even with the smallest move his mother makes and gets irritated and starts to scream. "Keep your legs properly, it's hurting."       "Don't keep your palm on my knee it hurts." "Don't rub my head, I have nausea".

Mother is patiently listening to him and doing all he wants her to. With not even a smallest expression of anger, irritation or trouble she absorbs all the tantrums the kid is throwing. The extreme calmness and patience on the face of that young mother is beyond anyone's imagination. At every screem of the kid atleast 10 people turn around and look at her, but she is unphased. Just listens to the kid and does what he demands this time.

It takes immense patience and will-power, to have control over your emotions, tolerate irritated kids and their whimsical demands, understand and be aware that kids too are troubled and have no clue how to manage this issue and what's happening to them. 

All this patience and calm demenor is just in the hope for that next small win. Mind you, the win is not something out of this world, the win this time is just about getting through this long queue and being able to get your kid tested, just to move to the next queue outside the doctors' chamber.

This disease is as overwhelming for the near and dear ones as it is for the patient herself/himself, if not more. While patient just has to bear and try to overcome the pain/physical suffering, person in the family has to fight multiple battles without resting. Battling a certain defeat at the hands of a disease, emotional battle, managing expenses of treatment, managing broken family, thinking about uncertain future, and the list just goes on and on.

It just drains and sucks all your energy out. You know it's a lost battle but you can't give up, you know you are tired but you can't rest, you know you have other things to manage but you can't leave this one. If the patient is a kid it makes things even more difficult, because the poor kid doesn't even understand what's happening to her/him.

When you see a determined, patient, brave young mother who is fighting all these battles with all her grit and without a single expression of being tired, having given up or defeated by the disease, it inspires you. Forces you to be thankful to the God, for all that you've got. Makes you be aware that there a lot of people out their whose pains and sufferings puts you in your place and makes you believe that you are just fine. Makes you feel confident that even you can fight with all you might. And that might is inside you, it's your will-power to succeed and win against adversities.