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Doctor: “We think you can take discharge in a week’s time and come for therapy from home in the OPD (Out Patient Department)”

I assumed this would be how my doctors would have started the discharge talks with my family because all they ever asked me was, “When are you planning on going home?” Almost as though it was all under my control – leaving and exiting the hospital, as though I owned the place 😊. The doctors had once again raised our hopes high after the cranioplasty due to the wonderful results showed by my body. Everybody seemed to be happy and were getting ready to go home for continuing with remaining recovery.

As a generic rule, once you get chickenpox, you don’t get it again. but, yet again, the rules were bent, rewritten and redrafted as “surprises” had become a hallmark of my entire recovery journey! Back when I was but just a puny little child, I had chickenpox. And now, when I was once again metaphorically a baby, I got it again! And just when we were packing our bags for getting released from the hospital. Bingo! I was shifted to a super-duper, large, massive single room in an isolation ward –  solitary confinement for some weeks. As part of the unwanted benefits program… kind of like the T&C part that nobody reads or warns you about, I got “free itches 24-hour round” and complementary baths in the infamous Lactocalamine lotion. Well, the therapies had to be stopped, the progress seemed to be getting impacted, not to mention the general deterioration of health. But, as always, we made the most out of this situation.

We made hay while the sun shone and used our portable speaker to listen to music – as there was no one else to bother, also because the isolation room had an eerie silence straight out of a horror movie… and because we love music. This was fun time multiplied x times – me and my isolation ward and music 😊.

Up until now, even during therapy, I was able to walk only with support. In the isolation room, as we had more than enough space, we practiced walking – all the while holding my mother’s hand like an infant who is learning to walk –  so that my body could start getting used to being on its own two feet again.

When we were practicing walking there, all alone, I was too afraid to walk without support or holding someone’s hand. Too afraid that I might fall as I still hadn’t gained complete balance, strength, control or coordination. Or so I thought. But as they say, it’s all in the mind. In my case, quite literally so. For something very interesting, something that would debunk all my fears, happened very soon. One of my doctor’s assistants had come visiting me as a part of his rounds and could see my apprehension towards walking without support and he did something pretty cool –

I was just standing, in the middle of my big empty room, holding my mother’s hand aiming to do some walking practice. It was just at this moment that he entered my room for his daily doctor’s rounds to take an account of the situation. He asked my mom, “Can he walk without support?” To which my mom replied, obviously, “He can’t, not yet, he just started to walk with support”. He told her quite defiantly and confidently, “Just let go of his hand, he can walk without support, I’m sure he can”. And almost quite instantly, all the fear of falling (or whatever it was at that time), just left me and I took my first steps, unaided. My confidence in his words probably arose from the fact that a few days before this incident, he told me a story that hit very close to home. That when he was studying medicine, he had survived a brain injury that involved a complete reconstruction of his skull, and not only did he complete his medicine studies, but also became a practicing doctor. His story had not just motivated me but added fuel to my fire and made me all the more hell bent on getting out of the hospital. I guess, motivation can be found everywhere as long as you have a bit of it in yourself too J. Good thing that I got some more fuel because the journey was not over, even though the end seemed to be in sight.

So what was left? Now that I started to do some walk, talk, and eat somewhat normally. What more could possibly be needed for a normal human being to function on a daily basis? Stick around to find the turning point in this story… 😉