IRON MAN.

The breathless patient was wheeled into the ICU under my care in our town's super speciality hospital. He was a portly, semi bald man in his late sixties. He was diagnosed with Fluid Overload syndrome due to Chronic Renal failure and Heart failure. After instituting the necessary treatment, he started improving in a couple of days. However on the fourth day, he acutely became breathless and eventually started gasping for breath only to stop breathing. The Blood Pressure started dropping and alarm bells on the monitors started ringing in a frantic urgent manner.It was a CODE BLUE alarm! The entire ICU staff mobilised around the patient and made efforts to revive him. I intubated the patient and put him on a ventilator. An immediate bed side dialysis was started along with various tubes inserted in the body for monitoring and administering life saving medicines. It looked like a war zone out there with me marshaling all the forces around this critical patient. The nurses and the junior doctors were all running helter skelter under my command. Eventually after an hour of resuscitative efforts, The patient showed some signs of improvement and stability.

The next equally important part was to appraise and counsel the immediate relatives about the grim condition of the patient.

I went to the waiting side room where a group of relatives was silently praying with anxious sallow look in their eyes. As I entered the room, I immediately hugged my mother and burst into tears. The critical patient was my Father and I could not bear to see his suffering. I am a very calm and composed person when I deal with such critical cases and my counsel always allays the fear of the relatives of the patient. But,this time I did not say a single word and just burst out crying. Seeing me in such a state depressed my relatives and they too joined the crying. I understood the pain the relatives go through when their patient is critical, but was not ready to experience the same. Later in the evening, my brother flew in from the states and hugged me and cried. In the night time, however my father had regained consciousness and achieved stability,much to our relief.

My father is called the "Iron Man" by us in view of his disciplinarian approach and military strict demeanour. The advent of grand children in his life has softened him now. He lives for them, so he says.

The grand kids always playfully roam like proud and fearless tiger cubs in front of the tiger, we still behave like meek lambs in front of him.

The Iron Man however fought all his demons in the ICU and walked back home the next week. My daughter Chaitra and son Prithvy were all agog with excitement to see him after a 10 day period. They just leapt over him, hugging,caressing and kissing him. The now softened Iron Man too cried in joy.

All the time, My dad was sure that I would make him alright, his eyes told me that. I was his guardian angel in the ICU and made sure of an early and uneventful recovery.

The "Iron Man" may be rusty now with age and one fine day will eventually crumble. Death is an inevitable part of life. I, as a doctor very well know that and so does he.

Till then, my kids say, Long Live The Iron Man !