20: Helplessness smells like Iodine tincture

On a warm Friday afternoon, April 2020, I stood against the green walls of the cardiac ICU in the hospital helplessly staring at my wife. She was motionless in deep sedation with tubes running all over. I remembered the smell and sharp agony of tincture iodine administered on an open wound at school.

As a kid I was a bit sickly, lethargic and not at all sporty. My school believed that all children should be bullied into running around the games field as often as possible. The running track had these black shrapnels of submission for a surface and we always fell. We cut our hands and knees ever so often. I was always walked to the dispensary where a curt nurse (who could eat children as light snack) would be waiting with a bottle of iodine tincture. With glee she would soak cotton in that dark liquid and slather it on my wounded knee. That would inflict great pain and a free fall into a bottomless abyss of helplessness. That is exactly what I felt on that warm Friday afternoon in the ICU.

On the 1st of April, smack in the middle of a nationwide lockdown, my wife went breathless and lost consciousness in her bath while I was on one of those faceless calls with a potential partner in Singapore. My daughter called me in panic. I rushed her to the hospital in a barely-conscious state where the doctor diagnosed pulmonary embolism originating from deep vein thrombosis. In English, a blood clot had dislodged from her leg and entered her lungs causing a potential collapse that could be fatal. She barely managed to survive. On the third day in the hospital, in the emptiness of no chores, I felt a wave of vulnerability and realisation. I smelled Iodine tincture. Till then I had swapped the emotions with instructions in my head that led to continuous list of tasks to be done. It hit me.

Amidst the fear of the pandemic hanging over all of us, the surgeons and nurses worked hard over the next few days to save her. Eventually, she got discharged to be under home supervision. We were and are happy to have her back.

There are two lessons that I learned: 

Anticipation is far worse than adversity: We will all deal with trouble with great courage when we face one. But the anxiety of expecting trouble is more debilitating. So live free.

Fragility makes experiences precious: We should all learn to live fuller and meaningful moments. We should all learn to listen and share because we are together in this experience called life and it is all too precious to squander away.

It has been ten months. My wife commutes to work now on our 25th year of being married and we are looking forward to our anniversary mid this year. And today on the 4th of February 2021, I turn 53. As corny as it may sound, 53 is the atomic number of Iodine too.

Photo by Bofu Shaw on Unsplash

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