In a Kolkata hospital with COVID…

Hare Krishna my dear friends. Ive been home for 3 days and I’ll share some rambly experiences from the last 2 Weeks. They aren’t sweet so feel free to scroll past…. part update, part cathartic release.
I dont see very much improvement in my body. My mental state, however, has improved many fold. This was heavy and im grateful to be coming back. I felt emotionally lost forever. 😞
The stay in the hospital, although medically very proficient, was emotionally and physically traumatizing.
While in icu I wasnt very conscious so they did what they had to do and I wasn’t much of a player in the game.
A couple of torturous things:
When I was laying there immobile, I thought “ok I better try to chant” and I was literally unable to string one word of the mahamantra after the other. The words just began to scramble.
So, I thought, let me try and chant my Gayatri 😆
I made it about 2 words in and gave up. That was the least logical thing in the world to attempt lol
I surrendered and thought “ill just talk to krishna” and so I did that. I spoke to Him alot. Probably not coherent, but straight from the heart.
Arriving to the hospital after a HELLISH 4 hour drive, flopping around the back seat of an “ambulance” with a sick kripa trying to pin me to the strapless gurney, between the oxygen deprivation and the drugs I was being hammered with, my consciousness was not thinking right. I wanted to die.
Floating infront of my mind were these 2 tubes… the tube on the left was where I would go in if I decided I was going to fight to live. The tube on the right was the one I would enter to leave my body. Those 2 tubes followed me into the ER, into the initial MRI, and hovered around me in ICU.
Somehow I decided to go into the tube on the left and so here we are. I guess.
They had this monitor with a screeching alarm next to my bed which would be ignored All. Night. Long.
If it was so critical, why was I laying there listening to this piercing alarm? Falling unconscious was sweet relief.
Across from my bed was the washing station and one night one of the staff turned on the tap full blast and left it that way for the night. Just laying there with this auditory assault, which was to become the theme of my stay in a Kolkata hospital.
They bathed my body with what smelled like Arm & Hammer car wash detergent wipes and of course didnt wipe me down with water after to remove it.
Such a toxic smell.
The nurses were adept at finding my catheter bag hanging on the side of my bed with their foot every time they came in 😩 That was painful.
And the blood sampling…. they couldnt find any veins so I was literally a pin cushion. The IV lines would collapse and they were making new ones all the way up my forearm. I was having blood draws what felt like every couple of hours. And constant injections into the IV- the meds, clearing the line and on and on. Injections in my stomach before each meal. It was hell.
Ill tell you- they didnt like a western woman falling apart in tears. In ICU I was able to call kripa which was always just a phone call of my incoherent weeping in his ear but at least they gave me a phone. In the second tier, they didnt have a portable phone and between asking what day and time it was, I just kept begging for them to call kripa for me so I could hear his voice. When i fell apart, EVERYONE came to my room to offer me support. Patting my hand and in broken english “please dont cry ma’am”
Well let me speak to my husband!!!
Finally they got someones cel phone and allowed me to call him a few times which was my saviour. To hear my husbands voice while i was marooned out in nonwhere land where no one understood me.
He wasnt allowed to see me yet, so he rented a small room just outside the hopsital which was next level austere for him. It was very difficult for him to eat as he didnt know where was safe, many places didnt take western credit cards, our bank cards didnt work in any ATMs so he was walking around kolkata without cash and without the use of our credit cards… a devotee from the kolkata temple took mercy on him
and delivered a little prasad every day.
Eventually he got the bank card situation sorted so he could have a little cash in his pocket.
At one point in the second tier (no phone, only bed pans, catheter bag etc) a random dr came in and demanded “why arent you sitting?!” I barked back after pointing to the NO CHAIR “where am i supposed to sit?? On the floor?” So he barked at a nurse who scurried back with a platic chair.
I carefully clambered out of bed, onto the chair and sat. I started to feel dizzy so I just focused on my breath. Then this high pitched ringing in my ears started and my vision started to tunnel. I laid my head on the bed because I was starting to lose consciousness and waited for someone to come where I had to mime explain what was happening.
When I was put on the ward, the real emotional hell began. And this was the first time i was able to clean my mouth 😞
they brought me mouth wash and said to use my fingers…. kripa wouldnt arrive until the next day with my toiletries.
Mostly the problems were due to culture “shock” and not being able to communicate to anyone my needs. But it was real and scary and I was not in control of my faculties at all.
I was finally able to see kripanidhi which of course was a huge relief for both of us.
The rest is just complainy- cultural issues which made staying there for another week unbearable.
The food started out ok then really declined in quality. I noticed it was a different nutritionist who came to see me so I guess her cooking wasnt so good. A lot of mystery vegetarian dishes, names and ingredients I didnt recognize with unsavoury flavour. The highlight of my day was the 3 slices of cukes, 1 slice of tomato sprinkled with salt & pepper and 1 chapati. It was fresh and tasty coupled with the hot water meant for my “tea” i was happy in those moments.
They kept trying to feed me bananas but i preferred papaya and there was this whole scandal about that. They had no problem feeding me white bread 3 times a day but I couldnt have a dish of diced papaya?!?! She eventually surrendered and just gave me the papaya.
I couldnt bathe myself as even today I am very shaky on my feet, but I didnt want them wiping me down with toxic waste wipes either. So I would wait for kripa to be allowed to visit in the evening to help me bathe and this got the nurses all worked up, but I couldnt explain that the wipies, and the dry shampoo and the combing of my hair with their wearing rubber gloves was ok. It wasnt ok and I started to stand my ground. It HURT!!
Although the nurses found it strange that kripa was caring for my bathing needs, we did it anyways. Got my hair washed, newly formed dreadlocks combed out with hand fulls of conditioner, and my body cleaned nicely with soap from home. What heaven.
This became our evening routine. He would come, we would visit, security would randomly cut his visit short so we’d go to (hide in) the bathroom and get me ready for bed. That would buy us another 45 minutes together.
And then there was housekeeping VACUUMING the ward at 11pm. The orkin man walking around spraying around our beds with a metal backpack and a substance that smelled like WD40. Kitchen staff would arrive at 10:30pm to collect our dinner trays, smashing their trolly against the ward doors then sorting all the cutlery right there. At 10:30pm 😩
The ward was with 6 women and one of them was the self appointed DJ and welcome wagon. She would wander from bed to bed visiting loudly. She would have conversations over speakerphone with her young nephew (?) in bengali and it was soooo loud. She would start her DJ gig around 6:30am playing everything from bollywood to hindu-y bhajans at full volume on her crap speaker phone. Then in the afternoon she’d settle down, put in her headphones and start humming along to whatever she was listening to. 😩
I observed this didnt bother anyone else so i tried to tolerate.
Then a different group of women cycled in, DJ Jazzy Bengal staying on, and this group of women were vomiters, gaggers, horkers and sinus clearers right there in their beds. 😩
At one point I felt good. Thought ok im on the mend and ill be released soon, but it was the steroids making me feel good so I was grounded there for 4 more days while they could be sure my lungs could operate on their own.
Kripas evening visits continued, security continued to harass him and I felt increasingly alone and physically overburdened by the meds.
My bed was a steel frame with nothing more than a yoga mat under the sheet which I had to remind them to change periodically. Sometimes it would take them 2 days to bring me a change of clothes (hospital gown).
They would insert the iv into my line for my evening dose and forget about me for hours. I would be locked in my bed, unable to move and of COURSE I would have to go potty.
Then the iv line stopped working. Felt Like Part of the solution would drain in my arm tissue and the other part would make it to where it had to go. My arm was KILLING me especially when they had to flush the line. I eventually said no more iv until a dr comes to see me. They switched me to oral meds and left the shitty iv line in “incase of emergencies.”
I am exhausted more than I can actually relate to you.
This morning Kripanidhi took me down into the garden to chant. I got dressed simply and put on shoes and sat on a chair. I lasted 10 minutes. Holding myself upright was not possible.
Dragged myself back upstairs (1 smal flight) where I had a good, defeated cry.
I know…. time. The nature of recuperating from this illness is to accept that time has to do its work to repair the damage in the lungs.
On a good note, my appetite is a riot to watch. I am eating anything and everything thats handed to me. And everything tastes amazing.
We are so grateful that Mayapur has established a prasad delivery program for covid + devotees so twice a day we receive hot, healthy prasadam delivered to our door.
Today visvadhika from saranagati came to visit and it was so uplifting to see a friend from home.
So that’s that. It seems trivial but the pain, the separation, the language barrier, the cultural differences all added up and I wasnt coping well at all. I told the dr that I wasnt healing anymore and that I was better off at home. Took 3 more days to discharge me.
Right now im laying in bed, because I cant sit up for any length of time, and I am SO grateful for being back in mayapur.
I am soooo grateful to my friends and STRANGERS who generously contributed to this very large medical bill. Unfortunately anything covid related was outside the policy of course but I was initially admitted with typhoid so we will see if my insurance will cover that.
A medal 🥇for you if you made it to the end.
It is not lost on me that people suffer WAY worse and thinking of that helped me to calm down. I was thinking of how these devotees in albania were tortured by the govt for being Hare Krishnas.
Someone else I knew was in an indian jail for years. Yes his fault but he still couldnt communicate with who he had to.
Well thats it. Kripa is starting to move around alot more. The whole time he was caring for me, HE alos had covid and thphoid but obviously not as dangerous.