You Only Live Twice!

Dharmamma entered my life when I was in dire need of help. My ex-maid had met her end in a tragic manner. I was looking for domestic help. Dharmamma stayed just opposite to my house in a small temporary tenement of the KHB, as her husband was a security guard at the KHB. I taught elder her son and daughter as per my son’s suggestion because they were not admitted to a school. I found them smart and got them admitted to a school nearby. I fell sick one day and requested Dharmamma to come and help me out. She was very happy to do so and neither of us knew at that moment that this relationship was to last forever!

Dharmamma learned broken Hindi from me and felt empowered to earn a few bucks so that she could fight back with her alcoholic husband. She is very smart, though totally illiterate and learned to keep track of her savings in the Bank, learnt to spend on the right needs - gas, milk, medicines and so on. She got jobs in three of my neighbors’ houses. Mahesh was a sweet little child then. We admitted him to a school at the right age and Dharmamma gradually became a part of our family. This story is very long. But this is just an introduction to my present story about Mahesh, Dharmamma’s youngest son, Mahesh, the hero.

Mahesh was a very chirpy, bubbly and cute child and we all loved him a lot. He was doing pretty well in school too. He was eight years old. One evening he came running innocently to my house with his blood report shouting, “auntie, the doctor said I have blood cancer”, little knowing what that meant. We were shocked and immediately rushed him to Kidwai Memorial Hospital, Bangalore. His platelet count was just 10000 and the doctor there said he could survive at least for a week only if he was infused platelets immediately.  

We had booked tickets to Kharagpur to go and meet my son, who was studying at the IIT. Dharmamma was totally lost and had no clue of the next step. She had nobody to support her sensibly at that juncture, though she had a large family of two stepsons, husband, brothers, brothers-in-law, sister, etc. We could not leave her alone. Hence we canceled our tickets and started our sojourn to save that cute child.  

It was 10 in night. We ran around looking for platelets and luckily found two units in a blood bank 10 km away. We rushed there and during our wait, realized how hungry all of us were and ate something in a small eatery nearby. My friend Sadhana was with us on that day. She too pledged to be with me in this fight.  

Our lives totally changed from the next day for the next six months. We had so many things to organise - funds, blood, fresh food for Mahesh, support system for Dharmamma’s other two children at home, training a 14-year-old illiterate cousin of Mahesh to assist us in running errands in the hospital like going to the lab, paying up fees, buying medicines, collecting blood/platelets from nearby blood banks and so many other things. Sadhana and I, supported by my husband on and off, were totally dedicated to only this cause - getting the innocent child out of the jaws of cancer!  

The Dr. Appaji and Dr. Aruna and their team were a totally dedicated bunch of doctors. Dr. Appaji told us on day one, “if your social service is to just bring this family to this hospital, donate a few thousand and forget, please do not even bring them here, because this child has the serious kind of blood cancer AML-M2 and there a bleak chance of just 25% to survive with the traditional treatment with chemo drugs. Bone marrow transplantation would be a good option but it will cost a lot (maybe around Rs.25 to 30 lakhs in the first instance in the year 2008) and we do not have the facility for that treatment in our hospital. If you want you can try elsewhere but do it within the next 3 days, as the child may die within a week if we do not start the treatment. And I am not ready to start the treatment unless you promise me that you both will come here every day and support the child for the next 6 months, because his mother does not know the language, is illiterate and may not understand the seriousness of hygiene and nutrition.”

In the next three days, we went around leading cancer hospitals of Bangalore to enquire about the bone marrow treatment but finally had to come back to Dr.Appaji because of the cost, the Herculean task of finding a donor and the urgency. We quickly organized for around one lakh rupees and started the treatment with the painful bone marrow examination on that Monday, totally placing our trust in Dr.Appaji and his team and our willpower to support! Mahesh responded very well and his innocence helped a lot in his recovery. As the treatment progressed, we faced more and more challenges like getting him home, keeping him safe from infections (it is little tenement, where hygiene had no meaning. He refused to stay in my house), arranging for clean bed, sheets, blankets, mosquito curtains and making his family understand the need to not let people swarm around him, after every cycle of chemo, arranging for award every time and so many more issues. After two cycles, we even went to Vellore and consulted three doctors but they too said that what we were doing was the best one can do in the given situation and Dr.Appaji was a safe bet.

We thank God for giving me and Sadhana the strength, fortitude, and willpower to take on this mission wholeheartedly, facing so many challenges. Sadhana had to go back to her home in KGF every week, I had to take care of my dependent in-laws and attend to household chores, with just limited assistance from Dharmamma’s teenage daughter. We had to carry our lunch every day, attend to other routine affairs of the family.  

November 14th was Mahesh’s birthday and we had a very important family function to attend. We were dead tired at the end of the function which was 40 km. away from my house and thought of skipping our visit to the hospital. But when we called Dharmamma, she said the poor child was eagerly waiting for us and our hearts melted. We, therefore, drove straight to the hospital at 9.30 in the night. Mahesh had just slept. The moment he heard our voice, he woke up and the satisfaction that we saw in his eyes is inexplicable. He wore the new shirt that we took for him, ate the small chocolate and went back to bed. He had become a popular patient among all the nursing staff.  

Thus passed 6 months and we waited with our fingers crossed for the bone marrow test result. “Mahesh is under remission and is out of danger. But he needs to come for a monthly check-up, avoid non-vegetarian food, eat nutritious fresh food and be careful about any sort of infections”, said the doctor. We thanked God, the dedicated doctors and hundreds of others who supported us in this struggle financially and in many other ways.

Thus our tryst in keeping him healthy and cheerful continued for years after the treatment. We would get worried if he catches a common cold too. After missing his school for a year, he started going to school again. That day was a festival for all of us. It was so good to see him in that uniform, wearing an innocent smile on his face. He was almost our child by now and he loved our breakfast. We shared all that we ate with him. We celebrated his birthday in a simple manner. We took him to places. We attended the parents’ meeting and annual day celebrations of Mahesh’s school. Everything was fine until two years ago.

Dharmamma wanted to go to her native place and was gone for six months. Mahesh was an adolescent who started showing all the traits of teenage. His alcoholic father had no time or inclination to take proper care of him and just kept finding him. He started avoiding us and roaming around the entire day. His mother arrived just after he completed his eleventh grade and that’s when we came to know that he had got into drugs, alcohol, smoking and other vices. We were shocked to see Mahesh in that state. He had lost nearly twenty kilos and he could not talk to us with his eyes meeting our eyes. “Amma, do something or else he will die”, cried Dharmamma. She showed us what Mahesh was inhaling the whole day and night - erasex, thinner! We had brought him out of the mouth of death once and here he was in a worse state! Addiction is not an easy thing to handle, because it is multi-pronged and leads to so many problems - social, medical, familial and what not!

Once again our struggle with fate started. We somehow got him admitted to a Rehabilitation Centre through our friend Mansoor and followed up for the next eleven months. Last year, the center released him, stating that he is out of the addiction but we have to handle him with care. It is a big challenge taking care of him in his family, as nobody realizes the seriousness of the issue. His parents and brothers continue to fund him, without supervising him and he gets back to his old habits. He has no normal home where he gets love and care.

I spoke to my dear friend Muktha Gubbi, who runs a couple of institutions for the blind and hearing-impaired children and asked her to keep him there for help so that he will be away from the possible chances of getting back to his old life and her iron hand will discipline him also. She readily agreed. She loves him dearly. He is basically a good person and helps her a lot. But we are still not sure whether he is fully out of addiction, whenever he comes home even for a short stay, he is stung by his vices. We are unable to trust him, though the trust is what will help him come out of addiction. He keeps promising. His mother says, “you have saved his life twice Amma. If he still cannot realize the value of life, he has to die.”

We are unable to give up on this boy, whom Dr.Appaji and his team saved from a dreadful disease. We thought he would be the last succor for his poor mother, whose life has been only a struggle throughout. I pray God to grant him the good sense to become responsible and realize the value of his precious life. He is going to turn 19 on this 14th. I seek all your blessings! 

And don’t forget to pray for all the addicts, who drown their precious lives in the evil vices!