The puffy Foot

“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.”  Theodore Roosevelt

He appeared young, and looked striking as he faced the interview held by a famous news channel. The line ‘ I desperately wanted to walk though the doctors had said that I would remain  handicapped, a stumbling block for the rest of my life’ trapped my attention. I saw a handsome face called Vikram who was a Tamil Actor, despite the fact that he had acted in a few Hindi movies too. An accident had kept him immobile for a long period of four years, but now when I saw the clips of his movies it reminded me of the grit in man. He said he was forty eight years old although he seemed  in his early thirty's. There was a seeming goodness in his eyes and conduct which he attributed to the difficult experience in life that has always kept him grounded regardless of his growing success.

 A torrent Memories pushed me back to the year  2000 that was a century leap year. They said it was a new Millennium, but for me it was a fantastic year as we moved to Hyderabad to live in our own flat, with my sister as my neighbour. My son was around five years old, enthusiastic about all his uncles,aunts and cousins at Hyderabad, it was indeed eventful. My son was welcomed in the same school as my niece, I never needed to worry about him as she was close at hand to be bothered about him more than me.

One fateful day as I was sending off my son to the school in the regular auto-rickshaw,  my  right foot came under the wheel of the vehicle owing to my negligence. I howled, the rickshaw halted, the driver and my sister consoled and helped me reach back home. Though the foot was swollen it was normal in a couple of days. Still later I joined the Hindu Public School as a teacher. The school was a three storyed building and my foot twisted due the high heeled shoes while climbing the stairs. This time neither the pain subsided nor did the swelling. I was taken to the sports specialist at Apollo when  the leg remained same under the local physician’s medication. The sports specialist got all the tests like the x-ray, colour Doppler test and many more. The medication prescribed comforted as long as it lasted. My family and the school authorities helped me every day to continue the job while the maid brought the vegetables and helped me in other ways at home. I was also advised to tie a crepe bandage “a stretchable bandage that is used to create localized pressure".  I had one for the night and one for school. As days went by I would wake up in the middle of the night due to an excruciating pain, initially I tried popping pain killers but after the effect of the pain killer subsided I was back to square one. Each day by evening the foot would be swollen and painful, the X ray now revealed a bent bone in the foot as I had stopped using the foot reminding me of Lamarck’s theory of use and disuse.

I decided to attempt Ayurveda, Ayurvedic medicine is a system of Hindu traditional medicine of Vedic tradition native to the Indian subcontinent, and a form of alternative medicine(wikipedia). There was an Ayurvedic doctor who had a small Ayurvedic hospital near my house. The Ayurvedic doctor put me on a medicine containing guggulu, the resin of the guggul plant, known as  guggulu is an important component of all Ayurvedic medicine. She told me that the medicine was a powerful one and that I would bounce back to normalcy, I definitely wanted to return to normalcy. I would  sometimes perceive the swollen foot  smirk at me menacingly triggering me to eat the medicine zealously. The medicine did bring a change one fine morning when I found myself hopelessly covered with rashes. When we went back to the doctor, she said that Ayurveda could cure a person  mostly through guggulu based medicines which sometimes did not suit the patient and advised me to go for homeopathy.

My family adviced me to stop doctor shopping and so I did it,but one fine day I saw a Homeopathic clinic at Mehdipatnam where my father lived. Homeopathy (ⁱ/ˌhoʊmiˈɒpəθi/; also spelled homoeopathy; from the Greek: ὅμοιος hómoios, "-like" and πάθος páthos, "suffering") is a system of alternative medicine created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann based on his doctrine of like cures like, whereby a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in sick people.(wikipedia). 
The doctor seemed to be a considerate person and said that Homeo medicines take a long time, but the result would be an eyeopener. My brother an Allopath refused to comment. A few weeks later I sensed only pain and never saw any change in the swelling. I limped and could see people eyeing me sympathetically, but nothing changed. It was difficult wearing my shoes as one of the pair would slip out while the other one refused to fit. Days went on, I had lost hopes of any recovery.  Looking at my misery my brother taught me to concentrate and meditate to relax, but when the mind is disturbed there is no power to focus. The pain refused to let me sleep, kept me hooked to painkillers, the excessive pain killers caused a burst of capillaries and so I tried reducing the dose. I went for physiotherapy sessions, but it was of no avail. They called it synovitis and I felt it was end of my wit. It was nearly two years when we moved to Pune. The day my husband  and son took me to Durga Tekdi the forest, I sat near the entrance unable to walk.

My feet could not carry me even half a meter beyond the entrance. My son loved the place, and  described the man made lake in it and   wanted to visit it each day. Each day he would gently guide me a step more. I saw the convulsed, the paralytic, the accident victims in crutches and many more in worse situations than me trudging the forest hill while I sat besieged in pity. That day I understood that  a firmness of my mind and a persistence to recover would deliver me from my situation. Each day after that my little son helped me walk more and exercise my hurt foot till the day I began walking the two km stretch. I could now climb the hill too. I slipped unfortunately once again, but now I knew the secret of coming back again. I understood that people gained strength through fatalities and persisted through their determination. Life has ups and downs, but only the obstinate are able to build through their ability to understand adversities in life with a drive to lead  life where they would love leading it.  My foot is back to the shapely self and has remained a symbol to spring back through a resilience of positive thoughts of learning.

“Destiny and fate are of one’s own making, and riches and happiness are rarely found at the end of an easily-traversed path.” ― Chris Murray,