Feast for Thought

Another brave mom - mine. Last week she underwent a three-hour surgery to remove a 6-kg growth south of the diaphragm detected hardly a couple of weeks ago: one of the umpteen things the female of the species can end up with out of the blue. Having the scalpel working on the abdomen for the fifth time, that too when you are heading towards your platinum years in an otherwise active and satisfying life, is somewhat unusual, don't you think? The docs said they did have a little difficulty deciding which scar to start the invasive surgery on, but they did a neat job of it, going by the looks of the lump that they weeded out. A few jittery moments: arranging for blood of a certain negative group, and waiting for the biopsy report. Fortune favoured brave mom - she did without a refill, and the growth turned out to be benign. What a load off one's mind - and mom's tummy, of course. Three cheers for brave moms! May their tribe flourish!

There was this 18-month-old cherub on Tuesday last at the blood bank. I was there waiting to have mom’s blood cross-matched with a donor’s. At the visitors’ area, with more than an hour to wait, my son and I had this baby for company, perched in the arms of his mother. What was noticeable apart from the smiling face was the left hand fully swathed in ‘banded’ (as baby himself helpfully explained). The mother satisfied our curiosity: they were monthly visitors to the blood bank for the baby to receive transfusions - Thalassemia was the reason, discovered when he was seven months old. The parents' awareness and understanding of the condition and efforts at coming to terms with it was possible only courtesy the Net. From the mother’s account, it seemed that their social circle is woefully ignorant about the affliction, so emotional support appears scant. In no reply to the mother’s wondering at why at all this should have happened, I jotted down my contact numbers in her diary, with a...