February is the most compassionate of all months; it limits its misery to 28 days or a day more but no more.
ROAD TO DAMASCUS
Every Tuesday, they served drinks and dinner on the lawn with a long verandah bordering it on two sides. It was a modest but clean and well run eatery, just away from the bustle of the city center. The food was excellent and adding to the pleasure, a flautist would lace up the evenings with soft Hindustani ragas.
I used to carry those tunes home with me every time I visited the place. The sound of the reed would ring in my ears, more pronounced in my left ear. I wondered if others also felt the same way; nurturing a previous experience with them for a long time. Slowly, my wonder turned to bewilderment; the reed started playing in my left ear every now and then. Sometimes, the flautist would take up the reed even at midnight. Like an ideologically correct politician, the choice was always the left ear.
That was when I started thinking about seeing an Oto-Rhino-Laryngologist.
It was a drive of 35 minutes from the airport to the hospital.
As I sat impatiently in the taxicab on the New Year day, several disconcerting images revealed themselves as it had been during the four hour flight and ever since the phone call the previous morning.
An old lady sat on a wooden stool, late at night, in the kitchen, waiting for her grandchildren who had gone for the late night movie, to turn up. She was dozing. Every now and then, she would wake up to check and finding no one around, she would go back to her dreams.
On that New Year day, inside the ICU, my grandmother lay silently on a slanting bed. Many tubes and video monitors conspired with each other all around her. Her frail arms jerked ever so slightly off and on.
The first month of the Year 2013 smelled of Hospital and medicines.
After numerous hours of vigil at my grandmother’s bedside, occasional bursts of laughter with the members of my rather huge family, socializing with the security guards of the hospital with a view to easy entrance even during the forbidden hours, casual chatting for hours with my mother each night, and many expeditions, often monotonous, through the hospital corridors, my grandmother started showing signs of recovery.
Yes, February is the most compassionate of all months. It was in February, I met the Oto-Rhino-Laryngologist.
A labyrinth of corridors unfurled ahead of me. Several doors to my left and right and people entering and exiting them made the corridor all the more narrow. At the end of many twists and turns, I reached a door where the Medicine Man's name was painted in obscenely large fonts. I knocked at the door.
The large desk almost covered the Healer up to his neck. Crouching on a wooden table, he adjusted his ear pieces and looked up. It seemed as if the world of sound, accessed through his hearing aids, made him uneasy.
I told him I have ringing in my ears.
The Healer waved me to a wooden stool near him. He did not seem to be interested in my ears even when examining them with some weird looking tools.
I told him I have ringing in my left ear.
He told me I had no apparent problem in my ears but an MRI might reveal more. An audiogram would also help, he said.
The
young girl at the MRI Center showed a sympathetic face. She, being a technician, knew that an MRI
of the head, more often than otherwise, foretold misery. She also knew that it
was better to sympathize than be sympathized and this gave her the strength to
be generous in her care. She held my shoulders with both hands as I tried to
lie down on the narrow bench. The smile on her face was slightly uncomfortable
but the dimples on her cheeks were glowing. She exuded an unusual radiance.
I asked her about the length of the ordeal before submitting my head, braced by a metal bracket, to be shoved inside a tunnel, 70 mm in diameter and packed with endless abundance of disconcerting anxieties. 40 minutes is not a long duration, she assured me and gave me a switch to alert her if I felt the unhappiness grew beyond my level of tolerance. She gave me a soft pat on my shoulder as she went out of the room and I sensed she would make a good mother one day.
A few minutes into the search, I lost the sense of time. The machine performed like an incompetent percussionist, often missing beats altogether, but always trying to cover up the error by a bout of mindless clatter. The metal bracket had small openings which offered linear windows of light but the rest of the focus was all blurred. To escape the bizarre music from the machine, I started counting.
Reaching 600, I marked it with a closed finger, assessing 10 minutes had passed. Each closed finger seemed like an hour long and after several hours, the music stopped.
I asked her about the length of the ordeal before submitting my head, braced by a metal bracket, to be shoved inside a tunnel, 70 mm in diameter and packed with endless abundance of disconcerting anxieties. 40 minutes is not a long duration, she assured me and gave me a switch to alert her if I felt the unhappiness grew beyond my level of tolerance. She gave me a soft pat on my shoulder as she went out of the room and I sensed she would make a good mother one day.
A few minutes into the search, I lost the sense of time. The machine performed like an incompetent percussionist, often missing beats altogether, but always trying to cover up the error by a bout of mindless clatter. The metal bracket had small openings which offered linear windows of light but the rest of the focus was all blurred. To escape the bizarre music from the machine, I started counting.
Reaching 600, I marked it with a closed finger, assessing 10 minutes had passed. Each closed finger seemed like an hour long and after several hours, the music stopped.
Pituitary
adenoma
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pituitary adenomas are noncancerous tumors that
occur in the pituitary gland. Pituitary
adenomas are generally divided into three categories dependent upon their
biological functioning: benign adenoma, invasive adenoma or carcinomas, with carcinomas accounting for 0.1%
to 0.2%, approximately 35% being invasive adenomas and most being benign
adenomas. Pituitary adenomas represent from 10% to 25% of all intracranial neoplasms[citation needed] and the estimated prevalence rate in the general population is
approximately 17%.[1]
Non-invasive and non-secreting pituitary
adenomas are considered to be benignin
the literal as well as the clinical sense; however a recent meta-analysis (Fernández-Balsells, et al.2011)
of available research has shown there are to date scant studies - of poor
quality - to either support or refute this assumption.
Adenomas which exceed 10 millimetres (0.39
in) in size are defined as macroadenomas, with those smaller than 10 mm
referred to as microadenomas. Most pituitary adenomas are microadenomas,
and have an estimated prevalence of 16.7% (14.4% in autopsy
studies and 22.5% in radiologic
studies).[1][2] A majority of
pituitary microadenomas often remain undiagnosed and those that are diagnosed
are often found as an incidental finding,
and are referred to as incidentalomas.
It
was a sunny morning.
The term adenoma was new to me. I called up
my friend, Raman and asked him to check what adenoma meant; I didn’t have
internet access on my phone. A few minutes later he called up to say it was a
kind of tumor, mostly related to brain.
Going back to my Grandmother’s room, my mind
was blank. It was close to noon and she was awake and pleasant. I sat beside
her holding her hand. She smiled and reached out to touch my cheek. Her fingers
were warm. I kissed her and slowly walked out of the room.
ROAD TO BANGALORE
Airport was very crowded. There was a long
queue at the check in counter, quite unusual for a mid day flight.
As I settled into the airport lounge seat, a hand patted me on my shoulders. It was one of my old friends. He asked me where I was headed to. He said he was also going to Mumbai. I was confused for a moment as to what I should tell him about the purpose of my visit. I told him I was on business tour.
Madhu waited for me at the arrival terminal. As we drove to the hospital, Madhu tried to be too hilarious but I could still see the worrying thoughts clouding his forehead. He reassured me that the Doctor we were meeting was one of the best in Mumbai.
The Doctor was a young man in his thirties and exuded confidence. He went through the test results without much hurry, occasionally looking at the MRI film as if to cross check. He was casual when he said I could go for the surgery and the time I could choose, but without much delay. He said the surgery would be through the nose, a transphenoidal endonasal endoscopic surgery where the intruder is accessed through holes drilled through sphenoid sinus.
I knew the war with the prowler was on.
When I called up my sister to check on Bangalore hospitals, she was confident that Vakkachan uncle would be able to find a competent doctor. He was my mother’s first cousin and lived most of his life in Bangalore. It was he who led us to Dr. Venkataramana and BGS Global Hospital.
Uttarahalli is a hamlet, roughly 20 kms away from Bangalore city, on the sidelines of Bangalore-Mysore road. Turning right from Kengeri, the road leads to a huge arch, welcoming the visitors to the hospital complex. A dual carriage way, both the sides lined with taxi cabs and autorickshaws, takes one to the hospital gate. The building is a sprawling one and conceals the medical college standing behind it. Young medical students strolled all over the place, living their friendships and little romances.
The Doctor stood watching the MRI film for a long time. When he turned back, there was a glint in his eyes.
"We do not have much time to lose now. This is the ideal time to remove the intruder"
A few twinkling stars flew behind him, past the roof and the trees, slowly disappearing into the sky; the evening sun had already vanished.
Endonasal Transsphenoidal Endoscopic Pituitary Surgery
Transsphenoidal surgery is performed to remove tumors from the pituitary gland, sellar region, and sphenoid sinus of the skull. The surgeon approaches the pituitary through the nose. The surgery can be performed with a microscope or more commonly with an endoscope in a minimally invasive technique. Pituitary tumors cause a variety of hormone problems and can grow to large size, compressing important nerves and arteries at the base of the brain. When this occurs, surgery is needed to remove the tumor, especially when vision is at risk. Tumor removal often reverses endocrine problems and restores normal hormone balance
As I lay on the stretcher, faces all around me flashed uneasy smiles. I returned the smiles before the male nurse pushed the stretcher along the corridor towards the operation theatre. The wheels of the vehicle made curious noices till we reached a room where a Doctor and a few nurses were waiting for us. The Doctor told me he had to prepare me for the surgery and proceded to give me an injection.
The flautist had already taken his seat and started playing the reed. Soft music filled the room. The gentle notes of the pipe lulled me to sleep.
I woke up to the stillness of a large room.
The sky was pink and blue and green. From amidst the flurry of colours, a white cotton candy cloud came floating towards me. It spoke like my sister:
“How do you feel now?”
From beneath my nose which was stuffed with splints and wads of cotton, I gave her a nasal smile. The cloud slowly faded away, leaving behind splashes of colours shrouded in an overwhelming silence.
I could vaguely see a number of beds and a nursing station where a few nurses, both male and female, whiled away their time chatting. The room was forlorn and the dim lights highlighted the stillness. I could hear a young nurse teasing her male colleague. The young man did not stand a chance against the bubbly girl and was always meekly surrendering.
Heavy head, stuffed nose and dull pain brought me back to life.
Sedation was slowly easing. My nose was stuffed tight and I realized that I was breathing through my mouth. Cool air of the temperature controlled room made my lips parched and throat dry.
Rain stopped. The smell of rain-soaked soil filled the room.
I felt immensely thirsty.
As I settled into the airport lounge seat, a hand patted me on my shoulders. It was one of my old friends. He asked me where I was headed to. He said he was also going to Mumbai. I was confused for a moment as to what I should tell him about the purpose of my visit. I told him I was on business tour.
Madhu waited for me at the arrival terminal. As we drove to the hospital, Madhu tried to be too hilarious but I could still see the worrying thoughts clouding his forehead. He reassured me that the Doctor we were meeting was one of the best in Mumbai.
The Doctor was a young man in his thirties and exuded confidence. He went through the test results without much hurry, occasionally looking at the MRI film as if to cross check. He was casual when he said I could go for the surgery and the time I could choose, but without much delay. He said the surgery would be through the nose, a transphenoidal endonasal endoscopic surgery where the intruder is accessed through holes drilled through sphenoid sinus.
I knew the war with the prowler was on.
When I called up my sister to check on Bangalore hospitals, she was confident that Vakkachan uncle would be able to find a competent doctor. He was my mother’s first cousin and lived most of his life in Bangalore. It was he who led us to Dr. Venkataramana and BGS Global Hospital.
Uttarahalli is a hamlet, roughly 20 kms away from Bangalore city, on the sidelines of Bangalore-Mysore road. Turning right from Kengeri, the road leads to a huge arch, welcoming the visitors to the hospital complex. A dual carriage way, both the sides lined with taxi cabs and autorickshaws, takes one to the hospital gate. The building is a sprawling one and conceals the medical college standing behind it. Young medical students strolled all over the place, living their friendships and little romances.
The Doctor stood watching the MRI film for a long time. When he turned back, there was a glint in his eyes.
"We do not have much time to lose now. This is the ideal time to remove the intruder"
A few twinkling stars flew behind him, past the roof and the trees, slowly disappearing into the sky; the evening sun had already vanished.
Endonasal Transsphenoidal Endoscopic Pituitary Surgery
Transsphenoidal surgery is performed to remove tumors from the pituitary gland, sellar region, and sphenoid sinus of the skull. The surgeon approaches the pituitary through the nose. The surgery can be performed with a microscope or more commonly with an endoscope in a minimally invasive technique. Pituitary tumors cause a variety of hormone problems and can grow to large size, compressing important nerves and arteries at the base of the brain. When this occurs, surgery is needed to remove the tumor, especially when vision is at risk. Tumor removal often reverses endocrine problems and restores normal hormone balance
As I lay on the stretcher, faces all around me flashed uneasy smiles. I returned the smiles before the male nurse pushed the stretcher along the corridor towards the operation theatre. The wheels of the vehicle made curious noices till we reached a room where a Doctor and a few nurses were waiting for us. The Doctor told me he had to prepare me for the surgery and proceded to give me an injection.
The flautist had already taken his seat and started playing the reed. Soft music filled the room. The gentle notes of the pipe lulled me to sleep.
The sky was pink and blue and green. From amidst the flurry of colours, a white cotton candy cloud came floating towards me. It spoke like my sister:
“How do you feel now?”
From beneath my nose which was stuffed with splints and wads of cotton, I gave her a nasal smile. The cloud slowly faded away, leaving behind splashes of colours shrouded in an overwhelming silence.
I could vaguely see a number of beds and a nursing station where a few nurses, both male and female, whiled away their time chatting. The room was forlorn and the dim lights highlighted the stillness. I could hear a young nurse teasing her male colleague. The young man did not stand a chance against the bubbly girl and was always meekly surrendering.
Heavy head, stuffed nose and dull pain brought me back to life.
Sedation was slowly easing. My nose was stuffed tight and I realized that I was breathing through my mouth. Cool air of the temperature controlled room made my lips parched and throat dry.
Rain stopped. The smell of rain-soaked soil filled the room.
I felt immensely thirsty.
