The 68-year-old unmarried Nepali Congress leader is currently undergoing treatment at Bangkok’s Bumrungrad Hospital. She was taken to the Thai capital on May 26, 2008 after four months of treatment for depression at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital failed to yield results.
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The frontal lobe of her brain is not working, the source told myrepublica.com, quoting the doctors. Because of this she has lost her speech and memory. “The medical team here is now trying to find out whether these indicate Alzheimer’s,” the source said.
Alzheimer´s, which causes irreversible damage to the brain, is diagnosed through a process of elimination, in which the patient is tested for stroke, tumors and other possible causes of memory loss and cognitive decline. However, the only way to confirm Alzheimer’s is through an autopsy after the person’s death.
Acharya, who played an important role in the restoration of democracy in the country after the royal coup of December 15, 1960, started showing signs of memory loss in early 2006. “At that time she was accused of supporting the royal regime when all major political parties, together with the Maoists, were organizing a series of protests to end the direct rule of (then king) Gyanendra,” Members of Acharya’s family, requesting individual anonymity, said. “Gradually people close to her started abandoning her, which probably sowed in her the seeds of depression.”
She was then taken to India for treatment. But doctors there couldn’t help her. She was then brought back to Nepal and admitted to the Teaching Hospital, where she was subsequently pronounced ‘dead’ but brought back to life through administering of electric shocks for 45 minutes. “The electric shocks brought her back to life but took away her ability to speak and remember,” her family said. She was next taken to Bangkok where she is currently spending her days in an armchair in a hospital room with an oxygen pipe in her nose.
Her tiny body with her boy-cut hair looks frail. She cannot eat by herself and has to be taken to the toilet every now and then by nurses or her sister-in-law, Mita Acharya.
Her condition is so bad nurses put diapers on her 24 hours a day so that bodily wastes excreted without her knowing do not soil her body and her clothing. “Before she goes to sleep the doctors put her on a ventilator so her respiratory system will not collapse in case she forgets to breathe,” said Mita, who has been Shailaja’s caretaker for the past eight months.
Mita, however, said there has been considerable improvement in Shailaja’s condition after she was brought to Bangkok. “When she was brought from Kathmandu she had to depend on an artificial respiratory system 24 hours a day. Now it’s only during nighttime,” she said. “She’s even started holding a pen and makes frantic efforts to write.”
These are obviously positive signs. “But it does not mean she can lead the life she was living 10 years ago. The doctors have made this clear to us,” Mita said. “They are, however, trying to stimulate her brain to function normally so that she can at least live the life of a normal human being.”
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