COMA

COMA

            As a doctor, I sense a situation getting out of hand. Even before those final moments, I perceive the futility of further endeavors, resigning to helplessly watch the patient slip through my hands. Slipping, sliding into oblivion, into the arms of Death…letting go with dignity and decency. However, it would always take me time to get over (though not fully) the scene of my patient dying.

            …. And  now, as I am sprawled on the hospital bed, amidst snaking tubes and beeping monitors; as white linened doctors and nurses confer in hushed tones; the same sense of foreboding returns.

            I am the doctor-patient slipping into oblivion, into the obituary columns of tomorrow. I cannot recall the events that led me to this hospital admission. My lids are closed, yet I can sense, rather vividly, what’s happening-like a slide show on a giant screen. I ‘see’ a battery of doctors, all my colleagues of various specialty/sub-specialty/super-specialty attending on me since-I don’t know when. Strangely, I have a confusing sense of time and biorhythm. Surprisingly, it is not deteriorating either. Rather it appears to be gearing up for something else-something beyond my comprehension yet.

Coma-in medical language means failure of the patient to respond to deep external stimuli. It represents the end of a spectrum of human consciousness passing through drowsiness-stupor-semi coma. So, when a deep painful stimulus such as pressure on the breastbone or shin, or a pinch on the nail bed fails to evoke any response from a patient, it is medically classified as coma. And as I was just beginning to experience coma, I realized that coma from a patient’s perspective is beyond the medical knowledge.

            As a doctor who practiced evidence-based medicine; I saw, thought and believed that comatose patients were not aware of their surroundings. And surely I felt nothing too, though my colleagues were doing all the confirmatory physical tests on me. However, gradually, I began to became ‘conscious’ of other things less physical. My mind was startlingly wakeful and I was swathed in bright ethereal light as my senses were at their alert-most.

            It scared me that I could see myself thus. I could see my brain too! I see that most parts of my brain- the parietal, temporal and occipital lobes are paling and withering ….Those parts of brain associated with routine human faculties were losing all power. Yet, one isolated part was rejuvenating. It was the fore part of brain-the Frontal lobe. The actual functions of the frontal lobe are still medically undeciphered and a large portion of its function in humans’ faculties remains an enigma. Does the frontal lobe’s function actually begin at these times then? There was no way they could know because a comatose patient could never respond!

            My mysterious odyssey had just begun. I was journeying thro all the long-term memories. Transported through time backwards…glimpses of medical school, of infatuated adolescence, school days, my rattle and cradle and finally I felt the experience of being unborn. I was back in my mother’s womb and the consciousness of the foetus felt something akin to my consciousness now. I was growing smaller, engulfed by the womb fluid with the umbilical cord playing between my limbs.

            The womb was a strange place. It had a silence of its own. Quietness interspersed with unique sounds-the ripple of the fluid as I moved around, the distant sounds of my mother’s lung working and the rumblings of her intestines which were closer by. The walls were dark and the interior very warm and secure. I basked in absolute fearlessness.

            I grew smaller until I was finally a single cell. The next minute I was split into a rounded egg and a rapidly moving sperm! And suddenly there was darkness…..

            I was terrified. Was this coma for every patient? What was happening?  Vivid hallucinations? A scene from a sci-fi I had never read? No! This experience was for real. It was as true as my existence-or rather as my transitional non-existence! Nobody could ever know because I was in coma-in limbo! I could neither talk, gesture nor even move by volition…. trapped in an autistic body.

            I slipped into further disorientation and I knew not the time, day or place of my being. Rapidly losing memory of this life, I appreciated disembodiment. It didn’t scare me. I was blissfully naked-devoid of a physical form, sheared of negative feelings of sorrow, anger, malice, greed, impatience, lust and the ilk. Brimming with joy, love, serenity and contentment, I wished it would last forever. I could’ve died happily then!

Death? Death?? Who was this in coma then? Was it I? Dying? It cannot be, for here I was enjoying my current predicament, which was the anti-thesis of death. Who was I then? The doctor?  Or this me-Myself, in this wonderful state? I looked at the doctor’s brain and saw only the frontal lobe working. Activated at the time of transition from Life to Death. Did it hold the secret key to this Mystery?

            As I wondered, I sensed (heard) an unearthly, low hum. Gradually becoming a roar, it engulfed my consciousness (The identity now no longer myself or my being). The sound was inside and outside me and it was me. Simultaneously I began floating-drifting along, driven by an unseen current. The darkness gradually became a purplish hue showing long stretches of coral-reef-like structures. I began to wonder and immediately saw a sea of marine creatures-of all sizes, shapes and hues. I had never ever seen so many varieties before and the ones emitting light (bioluminescence?) appeared eerie.

            Thus, submerged in what I presumed to be some water body, I had a glimpse of the underwater world. I saw huge sharks, tiny fish and plants that were half animals. Gradually, the outline of every creature began to fade until only a bright Rainbow hued light was visible at its center. The lights seemed so serene, fearless and healing. Were they the souls visible to me in my current state? Was the light the Life? Was it the Consciousness? Was I also looking like a multihued Light right there in the water? The water kindled memories of the amniotic fluid in the womb. This was one large womb housing myriad lives. But where was the Mother?

            As I began thinking amidst the constellation of rainbow lights, I was suddenly thrust up and out-I was air-borne! Weightless, empty and floating; I was the feather on a bird’s wing and the tail of a kite-flying in abandon. The ether was around as far as I could fathom. I cruised past several stars and indeed even landed in one of them. It was a ball of fire and I wandered in it. The fire had its own thoughts-it was raging at one place and was soothing in the other. It was calmly burning now but became violent later. I swam in the fire basking in its moods. I climbed one tongue and as it licked the ether, I rolled off again.

            So! This was the ether that suspended all the heavenly bodies! The fire I left now-was it the Sun? Many stellar bodies hurtled through me rushing out to nowhere. This was all so True-so existent that I felt I naturally belonged with them! As I entered yet another phase of thoughtlessness-of just being, I found myself back in a territory, which I now found only vaguely familiar-the Earth.

            A kaleidoscope of scenes passed by-or did I pass through them? I was a poor Chinese farmer toiling in the far away fields, a battered baby in a European home, a semi-clad middle-aged prostitute on the streets of Taiwan, a black slave of colonial America. Several more glimpses-a Rishi of ancient India, a casualty of ethnic strife somewhere in Russia, the consort of an Egyptian Pharaoh, a wizened Eskimo dying of pneumonia, a designer child of two gay men, a crawling insect in a rain-forest, a crater on the Moon’s surface…and many more… What were these? Were these my past and future? Who was the real me? All of these or none of these?

            For now, I was trapped in this doctor’s body. I could now see her frontal lobe gradually losing its luster too and finally it withered. So that meant the crossover was complete. I was free again….

In Memoriam: Dr. Kalyani, a renowned city doctor died in a private nursing home late last night. She was in coma for the past five days. Doctors attending on her said….