In the Intensive Care Unit, life is distilled into a strict, predictable geometry. There is a quiet comfort in it: the sharp peaks of the pulse oximetry on the monitor, the precise titration of a norepinephrine drip, the calculated rhythm of a ventilator holding a failing pair of lungs. My mind thrives in this crisp, decimal-pointed theater of control. Here, at the bedside, I can translate chaos into clinical strategy. I know exactly what to do.
But on this specific morning, as I moved through the corridors, a silent rebellion was breaching my own perimeter.
Beneath the sterile authority of my white coat, a heavy, leaden fatigue was settling into the marrow of my bones. Along with it came the familiar, phantom buzzing of neuropathy creeping up my ankles—a quiet reminder that while I was orchestrating the survival of the stranger in front of me, the machinery of my own body was running entirely out of fuel. My infusion was delayed by three days. It felt like a battery slowly dying. My neurologist had suggested we could reduce the dose once I felt normal even while widening the gap between treatments.
Now is not the time.
My gastric motility has been failing over the last month. A gastroenterologist had put me on prokinetics, and I was doing fine—until, for some reason only Lord knows, I took the risk of stopping them for two days. I ended up puking in the gym.
This is the boundary of my authority. I can control the breathing of a ventilated patient, but my own body exists in quiet defiance. I cannot control it.
I like things when they are organized, familiar, and under my command. I do not know if I come across as a control freak to others. But I know this: when you feel yourself losing control of everything else in your life, you cling desperately to the tiny things you can still arrange. The color of the curtains. The way the pillows are stacked. The precise sequence in which you round on your ward patients.
It gives you a false, beautiful sense of being in charge.
Lately, I can see the fatigue setting in among my caregivers. I can sense that I am not fun to be with anymore. To be honest, I don’t know who I am anymore. Sometimes, I don’t even know what will make me happy.
Have I become difficult to please, or is the weight simply becoming too heavy to carry? Am I ceasing to believe in the very gratitude I so often write about, or is this just a passing shadow? Why is it that one day I am full of hope, and the very next, the sky turns entirely gloomy?
Am I being true to myself when I say I have found my space? Or is the seven-year-old in me still whispering, wanting to stand on the stage of the India Today Conclave to deliver a lecture? Have I been fair to her? Have I been fair to her father, the man who first taught her how to dream?
I tell myself I have made the most of what life threw my way. But if that is true, why does it still feel like there is so much left to do—even if I cannot turn around without wobbling, even if I cannot digest food without medicine? Why is my heart not content?
Why do I still want more?
I write this at the risk of sounding confused. We are taught that grief has stages, but in my case, denial refuses to stay buried. It keeps popping its head up when I least expect it. Why is acceptance so painfully short-lived?
We seek a clean geometry in grief, expecting a linear march from denial to acceptance. But healing is not a titration curve; it obeys no predictable formula or timeline. Instead, it loops back on itself, pulling old stages into new days without warning. May be -To wobble between fighting and yielding is not a failure of progress. It is simply the tide of a stubborn heart, refusing to be mapped by a clinical chart.
During my recent trip to China, we reached a mountain path. My brother, in an instinctive attempt to protect me, told the tour guide that he had trouble walking and that we should take the escalators. I felt an overwhelming wave of relief.
But the relief left a bitter aftertaste. Would it have been embarrassing if he had named me? Have I still not accepted myself as I am?
Today, my mind is fogged. I know it is a symptom of my autoimmune disease, but I think it is also because my head is simply too crowded.
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.” — Langston Hughes
I think what kills me from within is not the physical limitation, but the absence of a goal. In a brain wired to survive on targets, metrics, and achievements, standing still is the most agonizing thing to do.
All I can hope for now is the ability to find my balance. To find the courage to dream again—not in spite of my limitations, but with them. To keep moving forward, even with the chains pulling me back.
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