Eon passed,everything was sailing smoothly and then SARS-COVID19 hit the world.It was no less than a catastrophe!
My father residing thousands of KMS away to give us the best of this life would video call me innumerable times to check on if I took enough precautions or not! He would read every article based on covid and be ahead on the current affairs later pour each word on me.Disappointed,he couldn’t travel to India to be with us.Unfortunate enough.My father even after taking utmost precautions caught covid-19,proven on the third test after the demise.How?Being a doctor,I’m clueless.Even after ordering a plethora of tests for covid patients in the hospital,I work,I have no idea.Having done duties in ICU,I know what intubation and how painful it is.After two days I get informed that my father is intubated and is on mechanical ventilation.My whole world doomed.Tears did not stop flowing from my eyes,my second sister far away in other time zone and the youngest who had just stepped into college,I had no clue how it will be for them.Being the eldest I was devastated.I dint know how to gather myself up,and a day later on 3rd June,our world just saddened forever.Kubler Ross gave five stages of grief and for the longest of time I was in the first stage which is ‘Denial’,my brain cells stopped conducting messages.I still have amnesia for the particular day.And don’t have much words to enunciate my feelings.
Few days later,I had to join my duties again and get back to Covid duties.It wasn’t easy to tear the packet of PPE kit and don it with a stance to serve humanity. Looking at patients gasping for air and continuously falling oxygen levels,revealing their conditions to their respective families was a very surreal task,sporadically breaking bad news too.
Watching the family member fall unconscious.All in together haunted,gave me insomniac nights wondering if the pain my father experienced was any less than theirs.
In a nutshell,my father’s last words that ‘I’m proud of you’ and wants me to achieve my rest of the dreams and goals is what gives me strength and makes me combat the situations,obstacles no less than a tigress!!