Ok… Where was I? Oops, excuse me, had a minor lapse of memory. Yes, the guesthouse. As I mentioned before, the guesthouse was all-out awesome. I got freedom from the hospital bed, which in itself was wonderful for my mind, and by extension, my body.
We were still going strong on the “eat ‘n rest hard, therapy even harder” routine. Even with the vigorous therapy sessions, we still had to stay for nearly an entire month in the guesthouse before we felt comfortable and confident enough with the level of recovery that I had achieved to let me make my comeback to the world outside.
Make no mistake folks, the “coming back” was no easy one. If you thought the guesthouse was the test run, then be mistaken. It came as much of a surprise for me as it would be for anyone, but my stay in India was far from the end folks. To give one last trial run to my body, we decided to stay in India for one more week. Just to be sure, you see. We couldn’t afford any errors, not when we had come this far.
One last week to complete all the final tests, and make sure my body’s joints and muscles and everything else was functional enough for me to re-join school. Or at least that’s what I was planning on doing.
Fast forward across my uneventful last week in India, we decided it was time to finally fly back and join school. So, we set forth to do what the plan had been all along. But little did we know, nothing from that point on was going to be as we had “planned”.
The first day when I landed in Dubai was, in every sense, amazing. No words can describe my flood of emotions when those wings entered the Dubai airspace and I could see my home waiting. After such a long “leave of absence” … there were just so many questions, “What must have changed? Are my friends still playing football in the same spot as we used to?” … and so much more.
And then, once we had landed, it was a whole different feeling in itself. Not just from the excitement, but also from the fact that now I had a VP Shunt in my head… Just kidding, hahaha. What? I am allowed light moments, aren’t I?
Ok, I should probably cut to the chase now, shouldn’t I? The real magic was in store for me when I arrived home. I was blissfully unaware that my home-coming had been made known to all my classmates and friends. And unknown to my parents and me, my friends had (along with my sister who was also in town for my home-coming) planned a small welcome-back party of sorts. Imagine my surprise at coming home to so many surprises, my sister being the one to open the door and welcome me back into my decorated home (filled with balloons and all btw), to all of my friends jumping out from behind the dining table and gleaming at me right in the face. I had a burst of euphoria, emotion and elation all at one time. Every second of effort put in to get to this moment felt priceless now and it didn’t feel like I was away from home for so long at all. In that moment, they made me forget that anything had ever happened. I daresay that no patient should be subjected to so many surprises and rush of feelings of these kinds 😉. Little did I know though, that the surprises were just getting started… there was much more in store for me. After all, I had only just come home, hadn’t I, folks?