ALIVE BUT NOT KICKING PART 1

13^th April,2010

Just to let you know that I have been offline for few days. I met with a smallish accident where the motorbike I was riding skidded on loose gravel on the road near Tansen, Palpa and I fell on my knee making two holes there but luckily no fractures. However the exhaust pipe resting on my ankle area while I was unconscious for a few minutes caused some small but bad burns which will necessitate some grafting of skin. The positive part was that it happened just 30 km from a good hospital (the United Mission Hospital) in Tansen and near good friends like Henny and Jakob. And just after the accident a taxi passing by with some good people brought me to this hospital while Henny and Jakob gave me a warm reception to the small hill town of Tansen. All my previous plans to visit them had not materialized, this one accidentally did.

At first we thought it would be just few stitches and then a quick discharge, so I could recover at H & J’s place for few days and then get to work in Kapilbastu, but the doctors at the Mission Hospital didn’t think so. And now I have been enjoying their hospitality J since Saturday and it seems it will be another five days of this. Since the wounds are slightly deep and a lot of dirt and sand has gone in, the doctors want to clean them thoroughly before stitching up, secondly they seemed to think that the burnt area is not yet ready to take the grafting. They did one brutal clean up on Sunday and they just told me this morning that the stitching as well as the grafting would be done on Thursday with a lower body anaesthesia (that is much better than local anaesthesia where you can still feel a lot of pain.)

Oh yes I forgot to say how come I was on a motorbike near Tansen. MS Nepal had donated this motorbike to a partner NGO in Kapilbastu for the Green Schools project and since they did not have anyone picking it up from Kathmandu just when the school work was at its peak, I offered to bring it myself. I was scheduled to go there and thought it would not make much sense if I flew to Kapilbastu while somebody came from there all the way to just collect the bike. So I cancelled my flight plan and started on the motorbike on Friday afternoon. Then in Mugling I learnt about the Terai bandh and decided to take the Syangja road instead, stopping a night in Pokhara. Everything went perfectly fine on Saturday until near Ramdi Khola where the roads were very fine, not much traffic but with a sprinkling of some slippery loose gravel, and all of a sudden... I heard some people lifting me up (as if from sleep) and saying ‘don’t worry nothing much has happened to you, don’t look at the wound, everything will be alright’. So I knew everything was not all right. ‘We should take him to the Mission hospital, it’s our moral duty’ said another. So they packed me in the van with one person holding me lovingly and another one trailing behind on my motor bike (which by the way didn’t even suffer a bruise), by which time I was fully conscious and was looking at the wounds and the bits of black gravel that had gone deep inside (one kept showing in the X-rays and doctors thought it was a bone splinter, though I knew what it was). I was not impressed at all as just two weeks ago I had played the savior role for bike accident victim who seemed to be at the verge of death. I actually felt very happy that it was not much worse, and felt lucky that it had happened this close to this good hospital and good friends, considering the 400 km I was to be on the motor bike. I called Jakob to say that I was paying him a visit but in a slightly different shape (all my previous deals to visit my two Danish friends in Tansen had not materialized though they had visited Ladakh). He agreed to come to the hospital to receive me. And when we reached the hospital there they were Henny and Jakob, partly smiling and partly nervous. I perhaps had a better shape of face since I could not feel any pain and was generally happy that it had happened in this way. The rest is history as they say (with a bit of biology, rather anatomy mixed in).

I have had a very good night’s sleep last night (much better than the two before) and am walking/dragging around rather well. Henny has arranged for a young man to be with me for any help and with great difficulty I have convinced her to visit only once- in the evening with dinner. In a way I am enjoying this forced rest to do some reading, writing, thinking and reflection. My nice private room in the hospital is really wonderful and now that the stitching happens only on Thursday with a few days of bed rest after that, I am slowly unpacking my thermometer, hygrometer, books etc. and decorating them on the table. I just hope I don’t have to think of putting posters and pictures on the walls. The doctors (from many different countries) and the nurses are all wonderful people and everything works impressively well. I know I can move to Kathmandu for better (i.e. more expensive) treatment since its all covered by insurance but I think I have no concerns, for the level of treatment I seem to need and it is perhaps better that this hospital charges my case well and benefits, as it seems to be differentially priced for haves and have-nots (treats poor patients free of cost). Secondly I would like them to close up all that they have opened up. The injury is not big enough to call people all the way from home but neither so small that I do not inform them, so I am slowly informing them in instalments.

So in short I am feeling better and better (with my poor knee also trailing closely behind) and I am making good use of this bed-rest. See you all in not too long time.

Best wishes for the Nepali New year.

Sonam Wangchuk