In a world you can be anything, be kind!

Yesterday, I was at my regular hospital in Back Bay, Boston, sitting in the waiting area for my appointment with the pain specialist.I was scheduled for trigger point injections. My doctor was running late and they informed me that the doctor would see me 45 minutes late.

As I was waiting and just scrolling through my phone, A young Arab couple came and sat next to me. They had a 3 year old daughter running around and a new born baby boy in a stroller. I noticed the baby had an NG tube placed, so just out of curiosity I looked at the mother and immediately realized what I was thinking was right; she looked frail and exhausted.

I know this because for a long time Aadi had this NG tube when we had brought him home from the NICU. An NG tube (Nasogastric Tube) is a thin, flexible tube that is inserted through the nose and into the stomach to deliver food, liquids, or medicine. We had first hired a nurse at home to place this tube because this tube needed to be changed weekly. But Aadi was not comfortable with this lady touching him and he would wail with anxiety and discomfort. So I spoke with our neonatologist and he suggested I learn to place this tube so that Aadi would be comfortable. One of our best decisions, because Aadi was so much more comfortable with me doing it. 

While placing this NG tube, sometimes it can go down the windpipe and into the lungs, and that would cause the child to gag or choke. The only way to know if the tube has gone into the lungs is the baby’s response. I learned by trial and error. The nurses taught me how much of the tube should go in and then to test by giving some fluid and see if it goes down by gravity. 

Back to the waiting area, The baby of the Arab couple cries and pulls out his NG tube in frustration. It’s always secured with a tape, but a child can easily pull it out. The mother tries to put it back but since the child is crying, whenever she tries putting it through the nose, it keeps coming out the mouth. The mother was overwhelmed and kept saying “I’m sorry!”, to the rest of us in the waiting area. They had a translator with them so I’m assuming “I’m sorry” was one of the few expressions she knew in English. I couldn’t just sit and watch it because I know exactly what that mother was going through! 

I knelt beside her and helped her position the baby in a slanted position with the mother supporting his neck and head with her hand. And just like muscle memory I inserted the tube through the baby’s nostril to his stomach. 

I had done this 14 years ago. You would have read my last blog, where I talk about my memory. None of this was a good memory and so I always thought my brain would have done its work and erased all of this. But just as if the universe was sending me a message that some memories I may think are bad memories, but were in fact good and necessary memories. Those are the memories that shaped the person I am today. 

I helped that mother because I remember how I had felt so overwhelmed at that time. Whenever I turned to the elderly in my family and around me for some support and encouraging words, they would say things like, “every mother does this!”. When I was tired in the morning I heard comments like “no mother gets to sleep, you’re not the first mother in the world” and I would just feel disappointed and think, no, it’s not the same; you sleep the 2 hours your newborn baby baby sleeps between feeds, but mothers like me, with babies with special/medical needs, we couldn’t close our eyes, in the fear that we might lose them lest we fall asleep! In our society it's the women who have been more rude and judgemental. It’s the women who paved the way for this patriarchal society in India. If women with experience had helped me and supported me then, maybe I would have felt less guilty and not kept thinking to myself that it’s my mistake, I’m not doing things right!

All that the world needs right now is people standing up for people. Women backing up other women and not shaming them and dragging them down. The world would be such a beautiful place if people were just simply kinder to each other! There’s still time. At least our generation should bring about this positive change and also raise the next generation with our new values. In a world you can be anything, be kind!