Dr. Sairam

Dr. Sairam and Chennai International Airport

In the last 6 weeks I’ve spent a lot of time in airports. I was at Chennai International after dropping my mother off at her sister’s place where I faced several relatives and a plate of sweets and deep-fried crunchies: jehangiri/ jangri unabashedly orange and sugary, appam, subtle in its beauty and filled with jiggery and cardamom, murukkus salted with black pepper, none good for the thickening wasteland. I was  smart enough to eat whatever was in front of me, cutting to a single word, thankyou, any discussion of fat grams and calories. 

On my way out, I must have brushed against some blooming plant, the only explanation I have for the creepy crawly caterpillars that attached themselves to my clothes. In the car while on my way to the airport, I discovered and pulled off the first caterpillar and gently dropped it to the floor. The second creature I pulled off my right arm and dropped less gently and stamped out, killing the possibility of a future butterfly or moth. At the airport, as I unloaded my stuff, my cousin found a few more to release into the afterlife. 

My hands were itchy: I knew that an itchy hand means that money is either to come or go, but I can’t ever remember whether it’s the right hand that itches when you’re going to run into money, or would it be the left? Is it different for girls? If both hands itch perhaps we are budget neutral, like a Black Jack player. My hands became redder after I checked in. They began to blister when I entered the bookstore. Would there be a pharmacy where I could buy an anti-histamine?

The bookstore manager sent me around the corner to the Apollo clinic. There was only one other patient there. The doctor in charge, Dr. Sairam made his diagnosis in under 30 seconds. When I told him my name, he laughed: his wife and mother have the same name. I lay on a bed, and Christina, a nurse, put a butterfly needle into a vein and injected hydrocortisone and an antihistamine. 

Apollo set up this clinic a year and a half ago. Dr. Sairam, burnt out from 17 years in the ICU, trained in emergency medicine and found himself practicing urgent care. He has attended to 21 patients who had heart attacks while at the airport, saved 21 lives. 

Earlier that day, he sutured a patient who fell in the waiting area. The suturing tray lacked toothed-forceps, and he talked to someone on the phone in the periphery of my hearing, stating in no uncertain words that suturing trays would have to be complete and meet his standards. He did not say or else, it would be unseemly. 

Twenty minutes later I was discharged back into the world of bookstores and airplanes. Then it hit me: Everyone had spoken to me in Tamil, something that couldn’t happen anywhere else. It makes all the difference, being spoken to in your own language, something I’ve always known to be important yet never had experienced.

 I am so grateful. Two days later as I rub hydrocortisone cream into my blotchy rash, I feel again a rush of gratitude. Thank you for the care, I want to say again. I don’t know that you saved my life, but I know you touched my life. Thank you.