Dreams of little shivu

This is again an article written by my friend Dr. Ramamani and sent to me by mail some time ago. This makes an interesting reading. I am blogging it.

Dreams of little shivu

I was posted in first shift in male ward for fifteen days. I took over the ward from the previous night staff nurse who gave me charge of the patients, as was the routine. All the twenty beds in the ward were occupied. There were two new admissions the previous day, one was a middle aged man with history of accidental fall from scooter and the other a young boy of about 8 admitted with vomiting and tiredness.
His name was Shivashankar. He was actually ten years old as recorded in hospital case sheet. He was small built with narrow bone structure, he had a shriveled body with sunken eyes. Investigations of boy revealed he was a juvenile diabetic.
Doctors ordered insulin injections 3 times a day for him. Whenever I carried insulin loaded syringe towards him the boy would show his left little finger and would disappear into toilet. It required 15 minutes of coaxing by his mother and a lot of luring with goodies like murku to get him out of toilet. After his forcible extraction and deposition on bed, there would ensue a struggle between him, his mother and ward boy with me hiding the insulin syringe behind my back. My other nursing responsibilities for other patients would stall.
On the third day of my first shift I was relatively free after my lunch break. I called the boy and his mother to nurses’ station and had a chat with them. Always working amidst sick patients, talking to kids lightened us.
Chatting with him for a few minutes after lunch break became a routine as long as he stayed in hospital. The little boy started talking and slowly opened up his world to me. He told he was called Shivu at home. He talked about his school, his friends and the bullies in his class and his favourite games. He shared his past secret with me, how teacher caught him while he was opening his friend’s tiffin box. He played many games including hopscotch with his sister but his favourite game was cricket. He liked driving and wanted to become driver, not an ordinary bus driver but a driver of double decker.
On the last day of his stay he told me that I can call him Shivu and that he would call me “sister auntie.”
He was admitted twice later in the same year for other problems when our friendship thickened. As soon as I entered he would shout “sister auntie” to draw my attention and then greet me with a squeaky “Good morning.” He volunteered to assist me in my work. As part of assisting he would give the small bottles meant to collect urine for checking sugar to other diabetic patients in ward and would arrange them on the stand according to number written on the bottle. As I dipped the dipstick meant to find the amount of sugar in diabetic patients he would watch fascinatingly the change in colour in dipstick. He picked up reading the percentage of sugar in urine within a day as he watched the change of colour in dipstick. From next day as I dipped the dipstick he would loudly announce the percentage of sugar like an umpire in a game and I would enter the results in patient’s chart. It was a great game for him. I heard from staff nurses from other shifts that he did the same assistance to them also.
During his last admission he discussed his problems during our chats. He told me he loved sweets but his mother had stopped preparing it. He wanted to know why he should not eat sweets. How could I explain to a little boy of 10 about lack of insulin in the body, about breakdown of sugar, about damage to organs if blood sugar is not controlled? I just told him sweets turn into poison in diabetic people and sweets prevents him from growing tall and he cannot drive a double decker when he grows into a big boy. The boy thought hard over my explanation. He asked whether he couldn’t play cricket if he ate sweets. When I answered in affirmative he looked disappointed. Finally he made a sort of wavering decision.
“Sister auntie” he said, “I will not ask for sweets.”
After a few seconds added “ I don’t like sweets”.
“I too don’t like sweets.” I lied.
“You too don’t like sweets?”
Our bondage of friendship grew thick from then onwards.
The other day I was coming out of hospital after my first shift. I heard the familiar squeaky voice calling behind me. “Sister auntie, sister auntie”. I turned back and saw Shivu. He had a gleam in his eyes and excitement in his voice. .
“Guess what?” he called out. “I saw Wasim Akram yesterday. I shook hands with him.” He started jumping after sharing the most exciting event of his life.
I remembered having read about Wasim Akram’s visit to Bangalore in newspaper and had seen his photograph along with diabetic children splashed over the front page of newspaper.
“Really?” I said.
“My doctor told me that he also has diabetes. Do you know he played cricket for Pakistan?” In the same breath he said, “I also want to play cricket just like him.”
“That is a sweet dream.” I said.