Thirty-year-old, married for 11 years with two kids aged 10 and seven, Mrs Moni Pal came to the hospital with massive leg swelling, difficulty in breathing, generalized weakness and a history of a one and a half year long diabetes mellitus. She later got diagnosed as a case of Chronic Calcific Pancreatitis with Malabsorption Syndrome and pneumonia. All this while, she was anxious about her kids, who were at home and would be taking exams in a few days—a mother's love, needless to spell out.
Mrs Moni was with her husband, Mr Narayan, an accountant in a garment factory by profession, a very kind person by nature and a worried-to-death husband by the circumstances. He would do night shifts in the factory and come to the hospital at dawn to attend to his actual duty, taking care of his wife the whole day without a minute of rest. He would be restless about what is making his wife unwell and questioning me at every possible chance.
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The pathology involved in her sickness, the case with her pancreas, the odds of her being perfectly fine again...he had many questions, and I struggled with words trying to explain to him the mechanism behind her symptoms, the structure and physiology of the pancreas and the fact that her condition was not a curable one. She had very low protein and hemoglobin in her blood, demanding at least four bags of blood to be transfused. Her husband would tell me he would find 10 bags of blood if that would make his wife any better.
While Moni was admitted in the hospital for eight days, her kids were done with their exams. "Done very well," according to her. Mr Narayan had by then keenly learnt how to inject insulin, knew by heart the type of food to be avoided and to be given, and the medications' dosage and administrations. Once relatively stable, she was discharged to be followed up in two weeks.
For days following her discharge, I kept wondering about how relentlessly Mr Narayan looked after his wife in her worst days, and how not once did I find him show any disappointment or frustration on his wife although it did seem to be eating him up inside. While I was constantly worried that their love might fall victim to the circumstances, maybe he would get sick of her sickness and give up on 'them', he didn't fail to amaze me. To witness a love like that in present day was a rewarding moment in itself. One of the wedding vows often heard in romantic movies—"for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health..."—never meant so much to me until I came to know Mr and Mrs Moni.
Only 10 days later, Moni was admitted again; this time with neurological complaints that involved loss of sensation in her hands, feet and mouth, slurred speech, inability to swallow and so on. Mr Narayan had explained to me the events of the symptoms a number of times until he was convinced he didn't miss any minute detail that would help us get to the core of it. It would require moderately expensive investigations this time that had to be carried out in an advanced diagnostic center. And while his financial limitations were evident, Mr Narayan insisted on getting down the people from the center to collect the samples, no matter what the extra expenses were, for he wasn't ready to put his wife in any more distress.
He was steadfast in his commitment, more in sickness than in health.
It doesn't matter what happens next in their story. But it has definitely kept me wondering how many people in this world actually are as committed as Mr Narayan. Very few maybe, but people like him gives us hope and keeps our faith in true love alive.
Shipra is a trainee doctor at the University of Science and Technology in Chittagong, Bangladesh.
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