The last few days have been hectic. We travelled to Tirupur, Clothes Kingdom of India to pick up clothes for myself. It's dirt cheap yeah? But the journey proved to be my mother's undoing. It all started on a fateful September 1999 evening. My dad had gone on one of his religious piligrimages (thankfully, on my mother's insistence, he has realized that the God is within and it's no use praying to sullen stone idols that represent "God") and I was studying for my tenth grade National Board Examinations. My mother had complained of acute pains in her joints and fingers a year or so prior to this incident but let it be and ignored it (owing to her philosophy of ignoring ailments and thus curing them - the mind affects the body). On that day however, all hell broke loose. My mother started bloating up like a balloon filling up with water and soon she couldn't breathe. She was retaining all the water as her kidneys were failing - rapidly and alarmingly. I immediately called relatives but until my dad came back, she wasn't shifted to emergency (I'm not sure why). She was soon diagnosed however with S.L.E (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus), a chronic, usually life-long, potentially fatal autoimmune disease, just like the dreaded AIDS [Edit: AIDS is *NOT* an auto-immune disease. It is an acquired immune disease. Therefore, unlike AIDS, Lupus cannot be transmitted and has to do with the body's own malfunctioning immune system. Sorry Mom!]. It isn't easily diagnosed because signs and symptoms are so often seen with other diseases - fever, malaise, joint pains, myalgias and fatigue. The body creates anitbodies against its own DNA - therefore it's autoimmunity characteristics! Women get it on a 9-1 ratio but it's uncommon in Asia. My mother has it however and for a year after the diagnosis, she was in significant pain and suffering.
My mother is an astounding woman however. Her illness is one of the worst. But she is the bravest woman I know. Ever smiling, ever positive, ever wonderful. She did not complain an iota and she stuck to her guns - the illness wasn't going to affect her, it would't affect her family. She openly confronted doctors about high steroid doses (she is well versed in British flower/herbal medication - Homoepathy and Bach Flower Remedies) and without regard to incessant outbursts from her mother, she treated herself with eastern techniques. And my mother got better. She proved to the world that natural remedies work and that being negative was simply foolish. And she greeted me with that same beautiful smile on my trip to India this winter.
However, the last few days has seen the re-emergence of that selfish, sinister disease named SLE. It's been three years since the last "re-emergence". When I came to India last. And it's come back again - on my return. Strange but true. My mother currently has high fever too. And I leave India in a couple of days. The days frighten me and the nights are worse. I only pray she gets better tomorrow. And blogging about it has it's sense of prayer.
To my mother.
