{"id":791,"date":"2016-07-21T06:26:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T06:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=791"},"modified":"2016-07-21T06:26:57","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T06:26:57","slug":"cancer-chennai-india-whatsapp-mamas-baby-in-sickness-and-in-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=791","title":{"rendered":"My Mama\u2019s Baby in Sickness and in Health"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"container page-content\"><p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span><\/p><\/div><p> narrowly missed losing an eye when I was 11 years old. The rains had left the front yard slushy and my canvas shoes sent me flying toward the sidewalk when I ran to catch the school bus. I remember holding on to my face; blood dripping on my white uniform; and hearing my father, as he bundled me into our Maruti Omni, say: \u201cWe won\u2019t tell your mother about this. She will worry.\u201d\n\nTwenty years later, I hung about in the arrivals lounge of the Chennai Airport waiting nervously for my mother who was aboard a delayed British Airways flight. We hugged each other tightly when she arrived \u2013 a long and reassuring hug, halfway between the arrivals gate and the Madras Coffee House, with her luggage trolley adrift, in everyone else\u2019s way. We stood there and silently told each other we would get through whatever lies ahead.\n\nA fortnight prior, my world had spun on its head and here was my long-distance mother responding to the news in her signature way: promptly flying halfway across the world, changing into her super-mom costume somewhere over the Middle East, and storing all her energy to gift it to me.\n\nIn late August 2016, my mother had moved with a giant shipment to New York City for a new job, motivated largely by proximity to me. We would live under the same roof after two decades and we would clash, as mothers and daughters do, about our distinct definitions over \u201csettling down\u201d.\n\nTwo months later, with a strange inkling that I was never to return, I flew out of JFK with airfare borrowed from her, packing my bags for a brief holiday in India. While there, I chose a Sunday morning to get a routine master health check-up. I shopped for blood tests and scans as casually as I would check off boxes while rating the ambience in a new restaurant, and joined a queue of senior citizens waiting to pee in a bottle. Many hours later, after a duty doctor had repeatedly poked my side with an ultrasound stick, I was told that one of my organs had quietly sprouted a strange growth. That evening I picked up the reports: There was a mass on my left kidney. And the dimensions were enormous.\n\nI hadn\u2019t been prepared for surgery. I watched my doctor at Apollo Hospital, used to dealing mostly with geriatric patients with faulty kidneys, quietly study my scans and rename my mass a tumour. Tears poured down my cheeks as I was told that this may not be good news. Renal masses were rarely benign. I had to stay strong, my life was not in any kind of danger (at least not yet), but surgery was inevitable. I might have to lose my entire left kidney.\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>Her stories soothed me, as if they were from the medieval ages, even as I put my faith in modern medicine that I was sure would have me back on my feet in no time.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nIn the weeks before my mother arrived, my agnostic self allowed friends and family to believe. I let my forehead transform into a canvas of holy powders, and quietly nodded when relatives thanked God that I had two kidneys. \u201cPeople live for a hundred years with just one,\u201d said an older relative, a certified homeopath, who offered me an endless supply of Alfa-G tonic (with Ginseng), a concoction marketed by a white woman holding her waist on the box. I texted a bunch of friends and asked if we could get together for some beers (my anaesthetist had okayed me for one stiff drink!) We sat around a friend\u2019s living room and christened my kidney \u201cSenthil\u201d, and the tumour a \u201cbowler hat\u201d. The WhatsApp group wishing Senthil farewell had talk of constructing a giant billboard outside the hospital with condolences to a floating kidney.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">***<\/p>\nIf my father had been alive he would have spent the day of my surgery smoking nervously. If my grandfather had been alive he would have sat next to my mother for the entire six hours and read an ode to Lord Vishnu. But both these men had died several years ago, with one of them taking with him a sense of humour that was particularly useful in grim hospital settings. So, on December 12, as howling winds brought down 1,00,000 Chennai trees, it was just my mother in Room 2307 working on a Sudoku and sending group SMS updates to well-wishers. I had been wheeled away, after high-fiving my doctor, close to 11 am wearing pigtails, compression socks, and a carefully constructed positive attitude. My mother was told she shouldn\u2019t expect word for at least five hours.\n\nI spent the first night at the hospital lapping up my mother\u2019s stories of childbirth and her hysterectomy. She spoke of the strength she derived from her mother and grandmother as they nursed her back to good health. She would repeat all of this to me in the weeks after my surgery when I stood naked in front of her, embarrassed that she had to see her grown-up daughter this way. Her stories soothed me, as if they were from the medieval ages, even as I put my faith in modern medicine that I was sure would have me back on my feet in no time.\n\nForty-eight hours after robotic arms, carefully manoeuvred by my doctor, sliced off the tumour along with half my kidney, I was back on my feet \u2013 gingerly \u2013 after my first solid meal in three days. My mother, who had barely gotten over her jetlag, had hovered over me with every kind of liquid item that Apollo\u2019s menu offered. It was now time for solids. Soon she would be caught by the ward boy eating the beetroot halwa that had come for me. Our time together at the hospital contained pain, chronic constipation, an AR Rahman \u201990s playlist on my mother\u2019s iPod, and my most treasured hour: Piecing together Jayalalithaa\u2019s 75 days in a ward just down the corridor through the vivid imagination of the nursing staff in my urology wing.\n\nMy mother and I spent four weeks together, the longest in 20 years. On our first week back from the hospital, with my stitches provoked by coughs or laughter, we watched Mr Bean singing \u201cO Mio Babbino Caro\u201d on television. That afternoon my doctor informed my mother that he had seen my biopsy results. It was top news: I had a very rare benign tumour made of smooth muscle and, apart from patiently resting through my recovery period, absolutely no follow-ups were needed.\n\nI vomited my dinner on the night my mother flew back to New York. It was a tearful climax to our bittersweet time together. That night, I clutched the schedule she had meticulously jotted down for me to follow and cried myself to sleep. My mother to me was like the charging point for electric cars I had seen on my trip to California last summer. Silently passing on all her energy just by stroking my hair.\n\nWe had discovered each other as adults yet she\u2019d allowed me to slip back so easily into being her baby. This week we marked six weeks since my surgery. \u201cOMG I can fold my legs again without pain,\u201d I texted her. \u201cWhen the time is right, everything falls into place\u2026\u201d she texted back. I was reminded of something my grandmother had once told me: \u201cWhen you were born, your great grandmother had read your horoscope. She had said then that yours and your mother\u2019s lives were linked. You will keep each other strong and healthy.\u201d\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My mother and I lived under the same roof after two decades and clashed, as mothers and daughters do, about \u201csettling down\u201d. All that changed when I got a renal tumour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":792,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[439],"tags":[1410,1411,1324,37,19,1141,939],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-modern-family","tag-ar-rahman","tag-british-airways","tag-cancer","tag-chennai","tag-india","tag-jayalalithaa","tag-whatsapp"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>My Mama\u2019s Baby in Sickness and in Health<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My mother and I lived under the same roof after two decades and clashed, as mothers and daughters do, about \u201csettling down\u201d. 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