Wild Foot At One..

"Running like a mad man down the center of the main road, with no shoes on, in the dead of night, in the south of India, that's what I was doing!" I replied. 

It was our lil Wild Foot's 1st birthday this past week and a large part of me is finding it terribly difficult to reconcile this with reality! One year old! Already! We call him Wild Foot because while he was still in the womb he would relentlessly try to kick the house down, and now that he's out in the big wide world nothing much at all has changed. We had a little 1st Birthday celebration for him with our family and the grandparents and at one point someone asked me what I was doing at this time 12 months earlier. That question sparked a memory of Wild Foot's birth which I had all but forgotten, and probably for good reason.

We live in Banaras which is in the North-East but had moved to Kerala, India's most southern state, a couple of months early in anticipation of the birth so that would could be close to Birth Village, one of India's only natural birth centres. We had an amazingly beautiful Home Birth from Little Feather in Australia and carried no desire to birth in a hospital, be it Australia or India (and especially not when you look at the stats of the ridiculously high rate of unnecessary C-Sections that happen in Indian Hospitals). So we were living in a lovely little house right in the center of Fort Cochin and had to regularly make a very bumpy 45minute trip in the back of an old Ambassador or Auto Rickshaw to the birth centre for our checkups. What became quite obvious was that at some point Wild Flower would be in labour and would need to make this journey, bumps and all, and that to first spend half an hour walking around town in search of a driver who would take us for a reasonable rate was simply not going to fly. Especially if she went into labour in the middle of the night! And so I went to work trying to find a reliable taxi driver (preferably with a decent set of wheels) who would agree to come, rain, hail or shine, and get us there in time!

One thing you quickly learn living in India is that just because someone looks you in the eye and promises you something, doesn't exactly mean that they mean it. Now look, I'm not going to get into debating the rightness or wrongness of this way of acting, but suffice to say it's a reality of life here and so when it comes to a taxi walla promising you that he will come to your house at any time, day or night, and take your pregnant wife to the 'hospital,' well, at best you've got about a 50/50 chance that he's telling the truth, at worst it's a bold faced lie. And so I hedged my bets and got 5 numbers, from 5 different drivers, promising big rupees if they would agree to keeping their phones on throughout the night and coming to get us when we needed them most.

And then one evening it happened; Wild Flower went into labour. Her contractions had been growing stronger over a number of hours and at some point she made the decision and it was time to go. So at a little bit after midnight I stepped out our front door into the warm Kerala night air, punched in the first of five phone numbers on my speed dial... and waited...

It's a funny feeling waiting for someone to answer the phone. You kind of expect that they're not going to answer on the first or even the second ring, but there's this moment that happens around the 4th and 5th ring, and when it happens you know it, and it's the moment of unexpectedly hearing another ring. The window in which you expect someone to pick up is closing, no ones going to answer you, and it feels like you've breathed in the pungent smell of failed expectations mixed with a dash of isolation.

I hurriedly ended the call and dialed in the 2nd phone number. Followed by the 3rd. Then the 4th. And finally the 5th. Pressing in those final numbers was a nervous moment but I remained optimistic because hey, surely 1 out of 5 has to come to the aid of a pretty pregnant lady! But I was wrong, 5 sets of phone numbers had all rung out!

I felt sick to my stomach. The dead quite streets of Fort Cochin did little to ease my nerves and I began redialing the numbers. All of them, again, nothing.

Now not wanting to worry a woman (who has just decided that it's time to go and deliver a baby) with the news that I might in fact have to carry her to the birth centre, I did the only think I could think of; I ran. I ran like a mad man down the center of the main road, with no shoes on, in the dead of night, in the south of India, searching for someone, anyone, who would take us where we needed to go, and as you'd expect, there was not a single soul on the road.

For what felt like an eternity (but was probably just the longest 15-20minutes of my life) I ran up and down every street I came to, feeling sick yet super charged, desperately praying that God would miraculously send a taxi around the next corner, but instead he sent me to the only building that still had the lights on, the local police station. I busted through the open doors and into a typical Indian Police scene; a whole bunch of men with large mustaches sitting around doing a whole lot of nothing. I hurriedly explained my situation to the stone faced police officer whose glazed over eyes told me that he could not have cared less about my plight and whose bulging cheeks told me that his mouth was full of Paan which he was in no way willing to spit out in order to talk to me. The officer sitting next to him nodded his head to the side, indicating the road to the side of the building, I looked at him again and he repeated to nod his head in that direction and I took off down the street, a mixture of sweat and curses pouring from my face.

Coming to the end of the street I could hear the sounds of music coming from a building only a short distance away. I ran towards the sound and minutes later came upon a guesthouse with a number of locals sitting around watching television and a beat up old Auto Rickshaw in the driveway. In that moment, that Auto was probably the greatest sight I'd seen in all my life! I ran up to the men, asked whose Rickshaw it was, then began to explain my predicament to the owner whilst he causally leaned back in his chair and lit up a cigarette. He said he would gladly take us... for a price. And when he told me his price (probably the same as what I'd pay for my family to fly back to Australia) I gave a nervous laugh, he knew he had me over a barrel and there was not much I could do about it, but still I postured. I told him I'd pay him about a third of what he offered and without waiting for a response walked over and sat in the back seat, a bargaining trick which only occasionally works, and he slowly and reluctantly stood up, took a long drag on his cigarette and told me to wait while he went inside to get his keys.

In those next moments as I sat waiting, worried how Wild Flower would cope being in labour and having to make this 45minute trip in the back of a beat up old Auto and not a taxi, my heart still pounding and still feeling short of breath, I began a silent dialogue with God. I began explaining the ridiculousness of everything that had just transpired (I guess I thought he needed to be reminded) and expressing some thankfulness that it seemed that at the very least we'd be leaving for the Birth Centre soon. Midway through this conversation I heard the familiar sound of my phone beginning to ring in my pocket and I assumed it was going to be Wild Flower, probably being more than a little concerned that her husband had disappeared off into the night, but it wasn't, the number on my screen was none other than that of missing Taxi walla #3 returning his missed call!

And wouldn't you know it, he was ringing to let me know that he was already on his way!

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that we made it to the Birth Centre and from that point on everything went smoothly (well.. mostly) and that the next day our cheeky, smiley, noisy, cuddly little man was born sporting a righteous looking Mohawk. He's been challenging and delightful and we love him to pieces! This story for you little man, and I'm so glad you're my son!

The Elephant Man (Not For The Faint Hearted)..

That quick pinprick pain on your foot. You know the one. When a small critter sinks his teeth/stinger/dagger right into you and for a split second the only thing in the world that matters is slapping the hell out of the affected area. Well I had that today, and after it happened my sweet Winnie Wild Flower said "Well, lets hope it doesn't get infected like last time." What she was referring to took place almost exactly 12 months ago when I woke up one morning and felt a slight pain on the corner of my lip.

I spoke to Oodbilav about it as he was a Triage Nurse before moving to India but he couldn't see anything wrong with it and so he sent me on my slightly less than merry way.

A day later the very corner of my lower left lip swollen and was painful to the touch.

A day later it was half of the left side of my bottom lip, it was hard as a rock and my 2nd back molar was giving off quite a bit of pain. I googled it and the verdict was pretty much unanimous; an abscess under my tooth. Now this is bad news regardless of what country you live in, but in Varanasi this news means having to see a dentist, and that is almost as bad as it gets.

We rang around and found the best dentist we could and went in to see them right away. Her office was clean and so was her equipment so that felt like a good start. I told her what the issue was and she took her scraper thing and poked around for a bit. But then it got all India. She took her little mirror, the one that's attached to the end of a little metal rod and turned it upside down so that she was holding the mirror in her hand with the metal rod sticking out from her fingers. Using this metal rod, she then gave a strong and decisive WHACK, right on the sore tooth. I gave off a shocked and slightly pained shout but by that point she was already taking off her gloves and walking away, totally satisfied with her work. She said "You need a skin doctor, not a dentist. If that was an abscess you would be crying on the floor right now, and you're not, so it can't be an abscess." 100 bucks says they don't teach you that in any Dental school in Australia! So off we went to find a skin doctor.

I'll skip past some boring bits like plenty of searching around and sitting in waiting rooms and go to when things began to pick up when we finally got in to see a really great skin doctor. She told me that what I had was an insect bite of some sort and most likely from a spider, and that it had turned into Cellulitis and thus she prescribed a ridiculous lot of tablets. It was a Friday afternoon and she told me to come back after the weekend if there wasn't any signs of improvements.

To be taken 2 or 3 times daily

Saturday morning the growth was so bad I could hardly speak.

Sunday morning turned out to be worse. I woke up early but found that I was unable to speak a word. The skin on the left side of my face had stretched as far as it could outwards and so had began to stretch the only other direction possible, inwards. I couldn't put the teeth on the left side of my face together as my cheek had swelled about an inch into my mouth in a giant painful bulge. On this morning for the first time you could actually see a small white headed pimple right at the spot where I first felt the pain and so I began to do what one does when they have a pimple, I squeezed it.

What came out is almost too distasteful for me to describe.. but I will, cause hey, that's the kinda guy I am! Wave after wave of thick, off white, semi solid puss oozed out from deep within my face with each squeeze. The process was intensely painful but with each squeeze I could feel the bulge inside my mouth lessening and the ability to open and close my mouth was improving and so I'd give myself a few moments to get psyched up to get through the pain and then would just keep on squeezing. On a couple of occasions the tiny hole became blocked and so I sterilized some tweezers and literally pushed them into the hole in my face and pulled out semi-solid masses of puss. After about 40 minutes I had filled up a small glass cup about a third of the way.. I offered to show it to Wild Flower but surprisingly she was not even slightly impressed with me.

Hellooo Ladies!

Oodbilav made a call and took my to see the Doctor again that morning as I was in too much pain to wait another day. She saw me sitting in the waiting room and called me straight in and I must have looked quite a sad sight as she didn't bother with any examinations but instead told me that she was going to have me admitted to the hospital immediately.

Going to hospital in Banaras is never good and in general I will avoid it at all costs, however today I really felt that I had run out of options. The hospital she wanted to sent me to was not a good one, in fact it has a terrible reputation and Oodbilav voiced this concern with the Doctor. She replied "in all Ponds there are good fish and bad fish. The hospital I am sending you to is filled with mostly very bad fish, however the specific fish you want to see is the best fish there is!" She had proved herself to be a very capable and trustworthy Doctor up to this point and so I took the gamble and trusted her.

Getting checked into the hospital was a typical Varanasi bureaucratic nightmare. A forty-something minute wait at the front counter to pay your first pointless "welcome" fee. Another long cue to pointlessly hand over your receipt at another counter in a different part of the hospital and pay another fee. Another long wait with the thousands of other sick patients on concrete benches in a cavernous underground room that apparently disdains natural sunlight in order to see our specific Doctor. Finally seeing the Doctor and being assessed by him at the same time as he assessed two other patients with horrible (and smelly) skin infections and then offending the Doctor by asking him to please use new gloves before he put his fingers into my mouth after he had just been poking an open wound on another man's leg. The list goes on.

Angelina Jolie Sold Me Her Lips

I was finally admitted to a private and quite decent (decent by Banaras standards of course) room with the help of Oodbilav who really was my hard working hero throughout all this. They brought in an IV drip with some cocktail of antibiotics and after a couple of failed (and painful) attempts managed to get it into a vain, and slowly things started settling down. Or so I thought.

I had fallen asleep around 11pm and at midnight the nurse came in, woke me up and asked what every single other person who had entered my room that day had asked; "Where is your family?" This question was fine, it was the second question that was really the kicker; "Where is your medicine?" I did my best to wake my mind up and managed to grumble out "huh?" She asked again. I naively responded through swollen lips "My family is sleeping at home, and aren't you the nurse? Aren't you suppose to bring me the medicine?" And here came my introduction to the Indian medical system!

You see, in Banaras when someone is sick or injured and is admitted to a hospital this turns out to be a whole family affair. And for good reason! You see, the sick person lays in bed while the family members do all the running around as Indian hospitals don't provide you with food, or water, or medicine, or medical tests! This is all to be done by your family members! And as I didn't have any family members with me and it was too dangerous and unthinkable to call Wild Flower and get her to wake up Little Feather and make the trip this late at night, I had to go for a walk, with the IV still attached to my arm out of the Hospital and up the street to the nearest store that sold medicines. I didn't get to sleep for another couple of hours.

The next day was pretty uneventful. The swelling seemed to have stopped and maybe even come down a little and so I watched a couple of movies on the computer and read for a bit. At one point the nurse forgot that she had turned on my IV and so about an hour after it had finished I went wandering through the halls looking for someone to take the tube out. At one point blood from my arm started flowing out and down into the tube so I squeezed the tube to prevent further flow. When I found the nurse and she came back to my room and took the tube out, I asked her if she would get me a new tube to which she rolled her eyes, said she would clean it, then walked to the corner of he room then held one end of the tube up in the air to let the blood splash out onto the floor in the corner. When Wild Flower and Little Feather visited I made them keep their shoes on and sit on my bed.

That day I made sure I had all my medicine in advance so as to avoid the post-midnight stroll into town to buy some and was settling in for a quiet evening. I ate some dinner (sweetly brought in earlier by my dear wife and daughter), watched a movie and curled up and fell asleep. But sure enough, jut after midnight, in walked a young student doctors who wanted to take some blood samples. His first question "Where is your family?" His second question "So who will take your blood to get tested?" Yep, at 12:30am I was told I would have to walk out onto the street, hop in an auto rickshaw, traveled to the next suburb (still with my IV in) and drop off my blood samples to get tested. Oh India!

The next day was Wednesday and it was a pretty drastic improvement. It was my third day of being routinely treated with IV antibiotics and by midday the swelling had come down to the point where if you didn't know me you might not have noticed any swelling at all. The little hole in the corner of my lip (from where the puss had made it's grand exit) had now opened up a little and if I pushed it from behind with my tongue the skin would open up just enough that you could actually see into a cavity inside my face! Very bizarre. They gave me an extensive list of medicines to continue using for the next couple of weeks and to my great joy discharged me sometime later that afternoon. Getting out of there and arriving home was a huge relief and thankfully within a couple of days all swelling was completely gone and I was the Elephant Man no longer. 

So tonight, as I'm sitting typing this up and looking at the little bite mark on my foot I'm rather thankful that I'm not sitting and thinking "hummm, so which hospital would I like to stay in this time!?"