Finding the Fulcrum

 https://borderlessjournal.com/2024/09/16/finding-the-fulcrum/

I decided to care for my ailing octogenarian mother, not because she willed me a great fortune or because I have a great liking to care for the sick. Neither do I want to gaslight her for all the not-so-nice things she said about me and my family in better health all through her healthy life.

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Caring, being sick and obligations to stay so.

Sharp Objects (HBO, 8-part miniseries; 2018)

They are there more than you think exist. How they smother you with love. They go out of their way to do things for you. Then they make you dependant on them. You think that they are indispensable. You cannot function without them by your side. You cannot make decisions. Simple decisions. They make you incapacitated. They make themselves valuable and liked. 

In the eyes of the public, they are the exemplary guardian. They have the reputation of going that extra mile to fulfil their motherly duties. They are warm and fuzzy to the general public, but to you, they are toxic. They never give you breathing space. It is either their way or the highway; one way and no other way. With their power of quick thinking, wit and charm, they win arguments. You are helpless in their presence. They brought you up that way. Your knees buckle by the mere mention of their name. You are stunted. You like it. It makes things easy. You do not have to make hard decisions. You do not grow; stuck in the ever inter-dependent quagmire of caregiver and beneficiary. 

This type of dynamics defeats the purpose of parenting. Should it be one where the parent prepares a child to seamlessly find his place in society learning after making bad decisions and mistakes?

What about the significant other? Is his presence just a figurehead to witness the whole hullabaloo? Sometimes he is just steamrolled by the ever-domineering other. Maybe he is too lethargic to fight back after years of doing so but finds it much easier to let nature take its course. He would find a reason and an avenue to look the other way!

Sometimes, one wonders whether all these are effects of affluence and empowerment. When survival is a question, and thinking of the next meal fills up most of your brain, there is no place for caring for the other. Everybody would be holding on to their dear lives. But the desire for power and domination is as old as humanity itself.

This gripping and dark miniseries tells about a city reporter who is assigned to cover the disappearance of a young girl in her hometown. The reporter, herself with problems with the bottle, self-harming and institutionalisation, has to revisit her traumatic childhood as she has to deal with a domineering mother, a sickly stepsister, a mousy step-father and the whole town of high-school mates. Set in a sleepy town of Wind Gap in Missouri, the story, over the eight episodes, narrates how she deals with the hostile small town folks, a lackadaisical police chief, an annoying mother and the painful memory of losing her younger sister in her childhood. A good one 4.5/5.

https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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This is what it means to be old

Here I lie, on the hospital bed, with tubes from all my orifices. Every movement of my body reminds me that I am still alive! The nagging pains, the squeaky joints and the laboured breaths are testimony of my continued existence. Alive but barely alive. Of course I want to be alive as long as I can and would like to postpone the Reaper's appointment as much as I can.
I realise that all the people that I have hurt and the people who cursed under their breaths for my annihilation are the same people who are by my side, attending to my needs. The hurtful incisive expletives hurled at me for my ruin in the most cruel way and me to them, have all been forgotten. In its place are prayers for the Maker to ease my pain. Words are just words. Most of the time, people do not say what they mean and mean what they say. At the spur of the moment, we all say so many things. Lest we forget, sorry does not miraculously reattach a shattered china no matter how many times we apologise or roll out tear blood stained tears. Deep inside, blood is thicker than water. The skin quivers when our loved one is in jeopardy.
I saw a Tamil movie from the 70s recently, before my mishap which landed me here in the hospital, bedridden. Tamil movie industry, in the 60s and 70s try to be philosophical with its films which tend to infuse lessons in life, friendship, morality, honour and societal more in its story-line and dialogue. There was a scene (Vetri Vizha, 1972) where an old man's adult children ridicule their father's wish to re-marry at the age of 60 after spending almost his whole life as a widower and a single parent. This old man, feeling neglected by his kids who themselves have their own families, thought he needed a companion to pull him through his twilight years of his life as he willow into senility. Unfortunately, the people around him equate matrimony only with conjugal needs and consummation. Companionship and camaraderie is not in the equation at all. To them, he is just a commodity that had reached the end of shelf life awaiting the thrash bin.
And here she is, my other (better) half, albeit her loss of youthfulness, trying to perform her duties in spite of the ups and downs that happened in our life.......

Back to basics

In 1988, during my housemanship, LKH, a dedicated doctor who was excellent with his ears and eyes, related to me his experience in a medical rounds taken by his professor during his medical school days. The professor was describing the methodical but laborious ways to examine the chest and to appreciate the various sounds that were audible via a sthesthoscope. An American medical student doing his elective posting, who was amongst them, raised his hand to suggest, "Professor, wouldn't it be easier if we just ask for a Chest X-Ray to be done?"I am afraid we have come to this. Gone are the days where a proper medical examination starts with a good history taking. After developing a rapport and trust, the ancillary tests aid diagnosis, not the way to diagnose a condition!
Now, it appears that patients or symptoms are triaged to undergo complicated tests and imaging before a proper examination is done. Furthermore, simple Roentgenogram (Xrays) are deemed worthless now. Why do Xray when you can do an MRI?
A friend was all excited when his wife delivered a healthy son after a late marriage. So naturally, when his parents, who acted as their babysitter, told them that his 4month old boy had jerky movements of the one the hands, sometimes, he flipped.
A rush to the biggest private hospital with the state of the art equipment and workforce brought him to the office of a healer. Within a jiffy, before you can say, 'POOF", the infant was MRIed and an EEG was down together with a battery of blood tests with crimson hued sanguine filling test tubes with various colour coded more than the rainbow. After a few days' stay and a few thousand ringgit poorer, he was told that everything was A-OK. Diagnosis? "I think we will keep an eye again and do some more tests if it recurs"! In other words - Idiopathic, G.O.K (God only knows)!

The next few days were unsettling. Every grunt and every hiccough from the infant raised everybody's eyebrows and everybody's pulse rate. Ventilating with friends and relatives brought them again to an experienced paediatrician in a humble clinic without the flashy glare of new medical equipment. An old dog in this field, he resorted to the oldest trick in the book. He took a detailed history and a complete examination to come to a conclusion that the jerky movements were probably related to the improper way of carrying the baby and nothing more.

4 months after the visit, there are no more abnormal movement and everybody sleeps well in the house - father, mother, son and grandparents.

My friend, an accountant by training, realizes that medicine is not a science that has to have black and white proof like the receipts that he needs to balance his accounts but is an art by itself.

Some characters أحرف อักขระ символов გმირები

No, I am not referring to the character in Roman alphabets or in any other language. Neither am I referring to characters in a play or caricature nor to certain traits of human, physical, chemical or biological object. I am humbly referring to some characters with whom you have make small chats in a party!

Lionel Hutz from 'The Simpsons'

of the law firm “I Can’t Believe It’s A Law Firm!”

As we get further and further away from the only day that our mothers smile to see us cry (to quote AKJ Kalam), as did as our forefathers before us, we fret about the generation which about to take over the rein of leadership of the nation and world arena. Everything they do seem to be counter productive and heading to doom. Like that, a conversation came forth... Generation Y and their antics.
This guy was telling his newbies are forever trying to cut corners with their designated duties; how they are last to come and first to leave irrespective if he (the boss) is still around. He was narrating how in his days how he used to be early to rise, beat the morning traffic jam, grab a quick bite near the office, be immersed in work long before the bosses saunter in and later idle around fiddling with things appearing busy to wait for the boss to leave to call it a day, just to give a good impression to the paymasters!
Then the conversation went on to the gargantuan number of medical schools in the country superseding even that of the UK and hospital bashing reports in papers of late. For good measure, he volunteered his bad experience with the medical fraternity.
A gloomy day, he was feeling under the weather. Even his wife told him he looked run down with his face all puffed up and his jaw ached. Even before the sentence ended, he was zooming all the way to the city's premier private medical concern.  
After a laborious discussion, outpouring of symptoms, extensive battery of investigations and further discussions, a definitive diagnosis was not put forth by the front line medical personnel. Admission was advised in view myriad of mind boggling symptoms.  After further haggling, the sufferer left the scene unhappily as further discussions met dead ends.
A few calls here and there through country club contacts placed him on top of a top notch doctors' appointment list.
Review notes of the earlier meeting of the day before by the 'top notch' consultant revealed a disturbing diagnosis- hypochondriasis! All hell broke loose. A few calls here and there ensured the parties involved be reprimanded. A diagnosis like that would have bearings in his future dealings with the insurance company, with his fraternity and at any time when his character assassination is attempted! He was happy he managed to nip it the bud before bigger damage control needed to be mobilized!
How is this related to Generation Y and their work ethics, you may ask. Yes, I wonder too. The people in the front line were younger than him.  But what I know for sure, is God is not so unkind sending so many sickness all at one go.
By the way, a simple course of analgesics and antibiotics spared him of his miseries, all at time. Perhaps giving a name to his predicament and having confidence in the paternalistic man with the stethoscope went a long way to exorcise the dwelling demon in the body!
Just some characters who appear high and mighty as well as condescending and we have to put up with so as not offend the host.

Obligation to remain sick!

Many years (a quarter of a century) ago, when I was still in training, there was a patient who used to stay in the wards for weeks on end for asthma. Even though he may be moving around the ward, chit-chatting and carrying tales from patient to patient to create territorial animosity between chronic long-staying patients, when it comes to morning rounds, he would be wrapped in blanket sweating like a pig creating wheezy noisy breathing insisting that he was still unwell to return home. It went on for some time until the senior officer of the ward, aware of chronic asthmatics' ability to feign a wheezing sound of an asthmatic attack, managed to coax him to return to his worldly duties like working for a living! I can swear by the look that he had on face, he was screaming ala Arnold Schwarzenegger avenging to be back -"Hasta la vista baby!"

Frank Gardner, a disabled skier

In our daily life too, we see many able bodies running their lives as if theirs is the most tragedy stricken, ailment filled torturous life that is a burden living. Yet, they failed to see how so many physically, mentally and economically challenged individuals carry on life making do with what they have and are capable of and utilizing it to its fullest potential. Yet, there remains an obligation to remain sick as an outlet to garner sympathy that there so yearn as well avoidances of challenges of getting up in the morning and facing the obstacles of the real world.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Season 6
Final Arrangements Part 1, 2, 3...
Have a watch, enjoy!