Last Tuesday (April 30), we got an appointment with Dr. Devi Shetty of Narayana Hrudayalaya. You don't to have pay extra, you just have to wait longer.
However, he wasn't available that day, which gave us some time to finish some pending work before meeting him.
A sweet lady called Asha, in the Executive OPD, asked us to come at 11 AM the next day. Thankfully, we didn't go there in a tizzy. We were led to a waiting lounge, which had a couple of families.
There was a very long wait. The good doc was expected "any time". But we couldn't really hold it against him: he was busy saving lives!
We finished our lunch; the normally
vacant café was teeming with folks. After washing off the meal with some coffee, we plucked berries from the trees all around.
Call it cherry picking berries, not Chery my Berry ;-)
We came back to the waiting lounge and there was more time to kill.
The waiting folks sort of started getting familiar, and one Bengali/Bangladeshi dude asked the coordinator when Dr. Shetty would be available; he was waiting from ~10 AM. Then he made a comment: "It's impossible to understand the nod of South Indians". WiFi countered that with: "At least, down South, folks respond"!
After the Bengali/Bangladeshi went in, we were told that it was our turn. It was ~4:30 PM. After some more waiting, we went in.
It was a very spacious room, if you can call it that. Dr. Shetty was in one corner, with the CD of the angio playing on a 32" LCD TV next to him. He was in his surgeon garb and very charming.
He had a quick look and said that it was better to get cracking and finish off the AVR (Aortic Valve Replacement). That was a similar conclusion i was coming to, considering that it was a sort of a one-way ticket and there was no chance of it getting any better.
With the high gradient, the heart was exerting itself so much more to get the requisite pressure beyond the AV. He opened up a 3D model heart to make it simple for us. Due to my young (!) age, the tissue valve can't be used for replacement and one had to go for a metallic valve.
In between, he put a very reassuring hand on my forearm.
He was just a week away from
his 60th birthday (on May 8) and i wished him in advance. Am still kicking myself for not taking a photo of him, but this is a very similar image:
All that pain of waiting dissolved after that quick meeting. Quite similar to seeing the
Emperor at Tirumala, whose chants (Om Venkatesaya Namaha) were going on in the background, all through our discussion. He asked us to take it further with Dr. PV Rao.
We couldn't meet Dr. Rao that evening, but his sec'y, who gave us his card. Dr. Rao's on Gmail and, from that, saw his YouTube channel. He seemed to be a follower of
Arunachala Ramana.
We went leisurely after lunch the third day (Thursday, 2nd May) but Dr. Rao was tied up in an operation. We could meet him around 3:15 PM, in his 3rd floor cabin.
Wanted to avoid the 6s this month, as the compound adds up to an 8. So i said: "We want to avoid the op'n on any of the 6s", adding that great funda of Sea Sands: "it's like, అడిగి కొట్టించుకోవడం" (ask to get screwed). He was amused by that.
Around that time, i looked up and saw this painting of Ramana Sadguru. Haven't seen anything like that before; a Google Search didn't reveal anything similar, it was a "gnarled" version of what you normally see.
Dr. Rao said that there was a 1 in 5 chance of just cleaning up the AV and making it as good as old. However, they still had to open up the heart and then make the call.
The
mechanical valve comes with its own
set of issues:
However, current mechanical heart valves all require lifelong treatment with anticoagulants (blood thinners), e.g. warfarin, which requires monthly blood tests to monitor.
Call that warfaring with warfarin.
While leaving, saw another large photo of Ramana, which was facing the doc. Had a very quick peek, but it looked like:
Thanks to the Ramana connection, all my apprehensions dissolved on meeting Dr. PV Rao. Feel that i am in very safe hands.
As the day of the Big O approaches, i find that it's one thing to say and yet another to do :-)
Good test for my idea of:
Spirituality = Philosophy in Action
Two sources of apprehension:
- Whether my vertiginous migraine starts acting up on the op. table. The VerMig is very much like the "kick" in Inception.
- Whether i will remember all my passwords post surgery :-)
For what it's worth (can't understand it fully), here's a reading mid-February from my psychic friend:
I finally have some quiet time to get a decent email back to you. I have felt/seen your chakras waiting most patiently and this time they're not alone. There's a man I see who says he is your "uncle", but this might be a term used in a symbolic way as the face I saw was Sri Ramana Maharshi.
He watches over you and he's smiling. He touched one hand to his forehead, the centre j roughly third eye area. Then he sat down, cross legged. I asked him if there's anything he wants me to tell you. He held out a stick, in both hands he's holding it out about shoulder height. It's shorter than a walking stick, maybe a metre in length and it looks like wood bound on one end with string or cord, pale raw cotton coloured cord. It's for you.
He puts words in my head one by one and I typed them that way. He "said":
"Tell him that his days are numbered like the stars, every one is there for a purpose and to glorify the many faces of the Creator. Nothing is by chance, not death or destruction. Your illness is a part of your journey. It will leave you when that journey is done and only then. No medication can alter this path for you. Do not be afraid."
Then he smiled and sat back. I asked about the "journey is done" and got told that this means a life lesson, not necessarily that you'll be ill till you die, but that you'll be ill until this lesson, this "journey" had been accomplished. He nodded slowly, smiling.