“How God Saved My Mum”

by Sanchari Sengupta

I’ve always believed in God, that’s how I was raised in my family.

I don’t pray regularly, but I keep up these one-sided conversations with “the Universe”, hoping somebody out there is listening to me.

I’ve spent 25 years of my life doing the same thing. Maybe once or twice, I did come across some miracle, but I’ve often been more logical than spiritual to understand the “hand of God” in these things.

Until November last year.

My mum had to undergo a kidney biopsy. We were assured it was a simple enough procedure, and she’d hardly need to be in the hospital for 24 hours.

But the surgeon botched it up.

About 6 hours after the surgery, my mum complained of an intense abdominal pain. Soon after, she lost consciousness.

Her BP dropped radically, and so did her pulse rate. She also lost control of her bladder.

I was scared out of my senses. She was taken to the ICU immediately; the doctors shooed me and my dad out of there.

We could still see her lying in her bed, unconscious, a team of doctors and nurses poring over her, fitting her with all sorts of machines.

Finally, they took her back to the operating room.

While there, they realized the surgeon had accidentally ruptured two of her arteries in one kidney. That had caused an internal hemorrhage.

They gave her 9 units of blood that night. My dad sent me back home with my aunt and uncle and volunteered to stay back at the hospital.

That night, for first time in my life, I prayed like my heart would break.

I prayed to whoever was out there, whoever created all of this, I prayed and prayed and prayed!

When my aunt came to wake me up, I was unable to speak coherently.

I was muttering “Please save my mum. Please save my mum”– it must have been about a million times.

When I went back to the hospital later in the morning, my mum had regained consciousness.

The doctors said, after the corrective surgery of embolizing the ruptured arteries, and receiving enough blood, her BP steadily rose again.

They said she had almost died, that very very rarely do people come back from the state that she had gone into.

Till today, I know there is someone out there that listens to us.

I know that our prayers don’t just drift idly in space, that they reach somebody somewhere.

I know that, because whoever that is, saved my mum.

***

I am an observer of the universe, the confused, snarky voice in your head, love to bury my nose in books rather than other people’s business.

Currently pursuing my MPhil in English Literature.