First World Problems

Yesterday I spent most of my day sitting on a wooden stool reading a book about Captain Scott’s catastrophic 1910 expedition to Antarctica.  I sat down on the stool at around 9:30 AM and got up at about 2 PM with many breaks between spent talking to Josh, getting water, changing diapers, replacing the dressing on a wound, and serving lunch.  To other people.  Most of my thoughts not taken captive by icebergs, penguins, and impossible turn-of-the-century British phrases revolved around my stomach.  I could easily have eaten my weight in rice and dal from about 10:30 AM on.  I could have also given a fair fighting chance to a similar weight of Chipotle spicy steak burritos dipped in guacamole or Lola’s chicken and waffles smothered in real grade-B maple syrup and hot sauce.  Come to think of it, I probably could have eaten a pile of fingernail clippings and been happy.  Even the frozen seal blubber being fed to the dog teams on page 209 was making me hungry. 

The person sitting (actually it was more of a lying position) next to me was undoubtedly having different thoughts.  We were both in the Kolkata public hospital but for different reasons.  He was there because his femur had been snapped in two by a train and the two giant wounds on his posterior were deep and infected.  He was in constant agonizing pain as he had been for the last two weeks since the accident.  If his thoughts were rational despite his raging fever and emaciated body, he was probably hoping with any hope left in him that his wait for surgery wasn’t in vain.  As it was, the only audible sounds that came out of his mouth were faint, somewhat forced Muslim prayers.  I was there to feed him his lunch, change his diaper and catheter bag, replace the dressing on his wounds, and wait for the big moment when it would be announced whether he had been selected for surgery or not.  Mostly though I just read my book and dreamed about Mom’s sausage and egg breakfast braid.  She wraps it in those flaky Pillsbury croissants so the outside is crispy and buttery but soft and light at the same time.  Heavenly. 

Now to me, sitting on a stool reading a book all day interspersed with a few small tasks doesn’t feel even a little bit important.  It doesn’t feel like mission work and it certainly doesn’t feel like love.  To the young man referred to by me as “the new patient” though, it’s quite literally the difference between life and death.  Without family, friends, or an MC volunteer to fight for his admittance into the hospital, he would already have died on the street.  If he had somehow been admitted but didn’t have anyone to keep the diarrhea out of his wounds, refill his water bottle, and pay his miniscule hospital fees, he would have already died on his public hospital cot.  His short life would have had a lonely and desperate ending.  To him, the bearded white man sitting on the stool reading his digital book might as well be Jesus himself. 

I mostly write this blog to myself.  When you do this kind of thing every day you sometimes forget its significance.  When you spend a morning thinking only of your own stomach and forget to put yourself in the people’s shoes around you it can get a bit discouraging when you are processing your day later on.  Unless you remind yourself that the person you are sitting next to probably feels more loved than they have ever been in their entire life, regardless of how engrossed you are in the study of emperor penguins and how many piping hot, grease dripping, bacon-wrapped lil’ smokies go through your mind.