The child who ate and drank like the heavens

We’ll call her D .. she came to us with breathing difficulty. And when we admitted her to ICU we were puzzled with the way her urine bag filled in a jiffy.We later found out she had been eating salt hidden in her pocket and wetting her bed since the last two years. And she was putting on weight rapidly !.. Parents were alarmed at her habits and brought her to the doctor. A blood test showed she was hypothyroid. Child was started on thyroxine, they were reassured and sent back , and yet the child kept eating salt and drinking gallons of water, an then peeing it out at the same rate. It lead to embarrassment at school. Her mother looked at her in concern but did not know what more to do.

And now her child was here, struggling to breath .. why was this happening ?

Her beloved child was on multiple tubes. She was being poked for blood daily , they were taking pieces of tissue from her lungs and her bone marrow and her liver and  the parents listened numbly while she was told her child could have a kind of cancer called LCH.. whatever that expanded to .. along with a problem in the brain that led to the child drinking and urinating excessively. So there really was something wrong with her child .. the word cancer resonated again and again in their minds.. and the fathers’ eyes turned red with the effort to choke back tears.

They were told there was hope , with the correct treatment their child would get better , and they clung onto that hope for dear life. Their eyes shone with resolve.. these doctors would work this miracle..

She was off oxygen and all those tubes now .. thank heavens ! and back to her rebellious self . She shouted at her mother and bossed over her father , this lil 9 year old bully with her curly hair and little defiant snub nose and almond eyes.. and what a relief it was ! She was back !

Only one glitch..she was eating far too much. Far far too much . She was like the ravenous devil pouncing on that lone sandwich and hiding bananas under her pillows, waking up at night to gorge on her hidden snacks. So much so that maintaining a nil by mouth status for her resulted in tug of war with food flying and screaming and kicking … She would wake from anaesthesia only to scream for sandwiches ! Her mother could not find humour in this situation . She was told that this was a side effect of steroids she was receiving, and was reversible.

The parents were also told they had to spray a medicine into her nose daily that would take care of her excessive thirst and urination, but she also had to take extra salt. That was a piece of cake, wasn’t it!  Their strange little girl took those salt packets with delight, spread them out on her fingers and lapped em up like it was maple syrup … what would have made another nauseous was like dessert to their child.

Just when things were settling, D became frenzied with itch all over her body . two days later her stools became whitish in colour, and they found her liver was swelling . Now what ! her mother wondered . But this is a multisystem problem the doctors told her. And she nodded trying to understand . What was wrong with her baby ?

Money was dwindling as problems were piling and their stay was prolonged . New doctors – experts came in to look at her child and spoke amongst themselves in low tones and she strained to catch their expressions. They reassured her always but somehow it wasn’t enough. They were simple folk and they needed simple answers to their questions – what was the diagnosis and what is the treatment. And the doctors themselves were struggling to understand and giving vague answers. Yet, the parents were not demanding or reproachful.  They were terrified and being strong for each other and their child, while beseeching the heavens to give them the strength to live out this ordeal, get their child back.