The condition seems to have developed, according to my neurologist,due to extensive playing of guitar,an exercise I had indulged in with passion,in my late teens and early-20s, when I used to play in the college rock-band which had a rather brief yet excitingly joyous professional stint later on. I had formally learnt classical &folk guitar(like flamenco,the Catalan folk)which is played finger-style,and that requires a 'classical' acoustic guitar which traditionally sports a much broader finger-board than usual. That necessitated my left fingers to stretch extensively,and all the more so when I used to hold the broken chords in the background when we played those Scorpions numbers(I still remember those initially painful hours during rehearsals as we played songs like "When The Smoke Is Going Down").
Over the last few months the left ring & little fingers had forced my hand into a clawed shape of submission,the fingers getting contracted & flexed at the little bone joints,a seemingly eternal state of Spasm that was not exactly painless. I find that rather ironic as the name of my rock-band(well it was 'mine' just as it was any other co-member's) was SPASM too, a name I'd kept myself along with Miku,the bass-guitarist who went on to become a hand-surgeon himself later on. Now that's one of 'those quirks' of destiny,isn't it?
Coming back to my neuropathy,the pain had,at one point of time,increased so much that even the strongest painkillers were not being effective,and I had become literally sick of pain-killing injections. Nothing seemed to work,and the fact that I could no more hold chords,or even use my left fingers while playing guitar(ultimately I had to quit my favourite pass-time activity)only added to my frustrated,depressing woes.
Three weeks back,as I was having my morning cold coffee,my 21 month-old daughter tiptoed her way into the hall,nimble-footed,and stood in front of me,looking at me with her sparkling, bright eyes. I knew that look. She wanted to climb up and sit on my stomach,straddling her legs on the sides facing her father - her favourite "seat" in the morning,as she would excitedly tell me how the pigeons had looked at her from outside the kitchen window or how busily the crows had pecked at the crumbs on the parapet. That day I found it difficult to give her a hand to take her morning seat. The pain was too much in my left hand which found itself too weak to carry her weight. I knew she would be disappointed.
As I looked back at her eyes with helpless apology written all over my face and with a tinge of guilt too,trying to shake my afflicted hand off the pain,I spoke to her in my Bengali mother-tongue,telling her,"Aaj baba'r haate khub byatha je.."(which vaguely translates into - "But there is too much pain in father's hands today...". She isn't too familiar with that language as her father has got only a handful of relatives and none in Mumbai to pay the occasional visit so that the language is spoken. I really don't know what she understood,but she didn't show any disappointment. What she showed in her eyes was gentle and tender care. She took my hand in her soft,little fingers kissing it mildly, looked up at me and said in broken English,"Baba?pain no...Baba?pain no no.."..
Well,my left hand hasn't exactly stopped paining since,but that was the last time I felt the pain. I have not needed any pain-killers since then simply because I don't feel any pain anywhere,anymore. And as I watch my daughter growing up each day,every hour,every minute,I just wonder how beautiful life can be for anybody in the simplest of ways,in spite of all the pains & troubles,the aches & breaks it keeps on dishing out on a regular basis. No matter how much one cries,life always gets back to you as a great leveler,giving you something to smile about,and perhaps with a little reward at the end. It is just only a matter of time.
Let it be.
-- anirban
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• Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone
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• with sincere regards from :
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri,(MBBS)
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology & Critical Care Medicine)
Mumbai,India.
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"Let us all live to work for Peace towards a
United,Green World.For that is the
Tomorrow we leave for our Children,our
own Tomorrow,to live for."
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