The story starts with Avantika asking Deb to start their family by having a child and Deb declining her as he is too afraid to become a dad. He is supported in his decision by his best friend Shrey who cracks hideous jokes about having a child.
After so many struggles they finally get pregnant and their happiness knew no bound. They were not the only one who was overwhelmed by the news. His contribution in taking care of Avantika and selflessly loving the unborn child is what took my heart.
I really loved his character and I hate the author for eliminating him from the end of the book without any reason. They were all happy in their small family and the twist occurs.
I really loved this book. At the end of the book, I almost cried and I had to read the whole climax twice to confirm what I read was right. He swore at her.
In Hindi. Cursing came as second nature to him … His sentences often started and ended with abuses, most of which had been improvised and perfected over the course of years that had passed by.
The first time he had hurled abuse was when he was in the eighth standard. Not too clever, but ever since that day, bhenchod became a way of life. It replaced emotions, feelings and entire situations, depending on how it was being said by him.
He had no visitors. He had no friends really. In the four years and the few extra months he had spent in the college, he had made drinking buddies, smoking buddies, getting- fucked-upwith buddies, but none who would come to see him in the hospital. Had it been six months before, some of them might have come.
But now everyone who had graduated with him was either working or waiting for their offer letters. So days before college ended, he rented a flat just outside college and started to live like he was still studying—in his fifth year of engineering. Dushyant was about to doze off when a doctor—presumably in his mid-thirties— entered the room. I am just okay. When can I fucking go now? Are you fucking kidding me? You have the wrong patient, Doctor.
I came here yesterday. Is everyone here an incompetent fool? Get me out of these things! And confusion. Well, these are common symptoms for hepatic encephalopathy. You have every symptom in the book. I have what? And three days back, you had a seizure and passed out. And the confusion was not a symptom of the hepatic whatever he had, but what the doctor had just said.
Not unless you have to undergo some drastic medical procedure which requires them to be around. I have some other patients to look into, who are not killing themselves.
I will check on you later today. Hepatic encephalopathy is a very lazy disease—somnolence and acting stupid being the main symptoms. You have already done with being stupid, so I guess there is just one left. Go, sleep. Frantically, Dushyant called his friend to confirm if what the doctor had said was true.
It was. This is seriously fucked up, he thought. A few search results popped up and he read through them hurriedly. Combing through the labyrinth of medical words and terminologies, he knew where his problem came from—his excessive drinking. He was right, but he was into all kinds of stuff and the more he read up on the disease the more he realized that he was at fault.
A few sentences stood out and he lay there breathing heavily and cursing everything that he had ingested in the last five years, but still wanting some more of it at that moment. Ideally, he would have loved a couple of large shots of vodka mixed with a few shots, big shots, of tequila. If worst came to worst, a cigarette. Dushyant had never been an addict, and unlike addicts who thought they could kick the habit any time, he could actually do so.
Or so he thought. Soon, sleep took over and he closed his eyes, wondering if he would wake up again. What he had read circled his head for the entire time that he slept. Those with severe encephalopathy stages 3 and 4 are at risk of obstructing their airway due to decreased protective reflexes such as the gag reflex. This can lead to respiratory arrest.
Intubation of the airway is often necessary to prevent life-threatening complications e. Are they going to cut my throat open? If encephalopathy develops in acute liver failure, it indicates that a liver transplant may be required. Where would I get that! Even in his sleep, he wanted to get hammered. He walked the hallways of GKL Hospital with a confidence not seen in doctors three decades older and much wiser. His peers said he was arrogant because he belonged to a family of remarkable doctors and extraordinary businessmen.
He just knew he was that good. Had he been one, he would have worked in the chain of hospitals his father had amassed in the last twenty years. He would have been sitting pretty in a corner office with a few brilliant doctors working under him, doing whatever he would have asked them to.
He had earned every bit of the reputation that he had got himself in the last three years. His sincere good looks—he stood at six feet, had short hair and wore expensive rimless spectacles—and savage drive to succeed had helped.
Guys like him make their own lives hell and come here with diseases which I have no intentions to diagnose or treat. He was, after all, a rare genius. A guy who cracks a competitive exam to a good engineering college only to drink and smoke himself to death.
Should he live? Or should the people who die on the streets be given that chance? Did your parents tell you what not to do? And when did that stop? When you got through medical school in Delhi and they had no idea what you were studying and how much you should score? The hospital mails them details of every case I work on here and they keep telling me what to do.
The patient coughs up blood, my dad calls; a seizure, my mom calls; and someone slips into a coma, my sister calls! The worst part is—they are never right! Pretty standard case. The good thing is that the girl is like you, only younger. She got admitted into medical school last year, found something wrong with her hands and diagnosed it herself. Anyway, he always felt something was wrong with Zarah. She was way too reserved for the way she looked.
At five feet seven, she towered above even a few male doctors. Neither did her chocolate-coloured exotic skin, which was smooth and velvety. Maybe Brazil. Or Chile. Or Uruguay. Some place not India. Usually, the prettier female doctors were outspoken; Zarah, on the other hand, was reserved.
It was intriguing. Maybe she was a perfect case for his mother, the acclaimed psychiatrist. We will admit her to the hospital in a day or two. Age He had expected it. When he had first heard about the case, he had felt the same thing. She is just nineteen. Have you heard about Stephen Hawking? He was diagnosed at the age of twenty-one.
Doctors said he had three years. It has been forty years since then. His disease was progressing slowly. She was diagnosed one year back and she might not make it through the next three months. There is no cure, right? I am on the research panel trying to find one. Clearly, Zarah was stunned and her face contorted to signify the pity she felt for the nineteen-year-old dying girl. Zarah had studied to be in the noble profession and save lives and get people healthy, but she never really had the heart to overlook the pain of sick people in the first place.
It reminded her of her own angst. She felt sorry for Pihu, and for the bastard who lay in the room with a damaged liver. Her lips curved into an embarrassed smile. She looked around and hoped nobody had seen it. Examinations were around the corner and everyone was stressed out and high on caffeine.
Pihu was high on anticipation. She had finished the course. Pihu had smiled, shaken hands and hugged. She knew it was just the beginning. School never offered her the opportunity to bury herself in course books the way she had always wanted to.
The course was never a challenge. The entrance examinations were a necessary evil. She knew she would sail through. When news broke out in her hometown that her AIR All India Rank was third, cunning pot-bellied owners of coaching institutes had flocked to her place, wanting her to advertise their highly qualified staff and fully airconditioned classrooms with a picture of their most illustrious student—Pihu Malhotra. A few days later, she was in the local newspapers. Hers had just taken root.
These were the first set of exams in her college. She had the book Human Anatomy open in front of her. She had read it twice. She itched to read something else. Her eyes had been on the book on pathology lying on the side. A second-year student was sleeping on it. You spent all the time with us. When did you get the time? Pihu knew that. Venugopal and Pihu were destined to be friends after the first roll call in their class of students.
Venugopal where P stood for something unpronounceable for north Indians. Kind of what it means for two engineering students to have the first peg of whisky together. Other than that, they were very similar. Middle-class families, dads in government service, mothers as housewives and CBSE toppers of their own regions. In a parallel universe where north and south Indians got along, it was a match made in heaven.
In the past three months, they had become the best of friends. They never kept anything from each other. Simple people with simple desires. They had nothing to hide. They had never partied, never smoked, never drank. Neither of them had stayed out of their houses after eight. They never felt the need to. Which ones? General Pharmacology. A few others.
Why would you? Ever since the time I was a little kid. At first, I thought I liked the candy my paediatrician gave me! But slowly, it became an obsession. I used to fake illnesses as a kid so I could go to the clinic and hear the doctor talk about various medicines and cures. You will be a great doctor. You could have taught me. I am struggling here. Pihu always thought of Venugopal as a sweet, well-mannered guy. He was from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and barely spoke any Hindi.
Pihu had spent the first few weeks forcing him to talk in Hindi and laughing her head off. Somewhere between the lectures on human lungs and lymph nodes, Pihu knew she had found a friend for life. Their bond strengthened over countless meals of butter chicken and shitty sambar, and arguments about which tasted better. Fear clouded her mind.
A million possibilities battled each other and she cried. It stems from the paranoia one suffers from after obsessing over different symptoms throughout the day. She had left the examination hall thirty minutes before the scheduled time.
She knew all the answers. She had wanted to write them. The pen was in her hand, and the answers in her head. But her hands had cramped. There was something wrong with her hands. She had tried moving her hand in vain. After struggling with intermittent pain and the lack of sensation for half an hour, she had started to write. She had written three beautiful answers when the pain and the lack of sensation came back. She had tears in her eyes. Every page from every medical book she had read came rushing back to her mind.
Her head hurt. Tears streamed down her face. Half an hour before the exam ended, she left the hall, tears in her eyes and strange cramps in both her hands. Venugopal had been calling her for quite some time now. Pihu had disconnected all calls till she asked him to join her in the library. You did well, right?
Everything you taught me was perfect! It was like you knew the questions beforehand. You are teaching me everything from now on! What happened? Were you nervous? I knew the answers. The librarian asked them to be silent. Venugopal looked puzzled. He took her hand in his palms and applied pressure at a few points. He asked her if she had any sensation in her hand. She picked up a pencil from her neatly arranged geometry box.
She tried to write her name on the piece of paper in front of her. Venugopal watched in horror as she scribbled. It was hardly legible. It looked like she was using the wrong hand. She cried. It could be something as simple as Vitamin C deficiency.
There are cases reported where Vitamin C deficiency causes paralysis. She looked at her hand. Pale and useless. Stop being so negative! Maybe Venugopal is right. All the possible causes for the symptom started to shadow her mind. She was freaking out, her tears were uncontrollable.
What was it? Nerve injury? Spina bifida? Multiple sclerosis? All of a sudden, it looked as if she could have every disease she had read about till now.
The deadlier the disease, the more convinced she was about its possibility. Sleep evaded her that night as she looked up every possible cause of her problem.
By next morning, she had a list of eighty-nine possible causes. She scheduled herself for a plethora of blood tests the next day. Venugopal had a horrendous next exam. They narrowed it down to twenty types of blood tests and visited a pathology lab at night, rather late for them. Pihu waited for him outside his examination hall the next day with her blood test results in hand.
Her blood work was clean, eliminating eighty-eight possible causes. There were no tests left to be done. Go out, Venu! The exams just got over. Go out and party with the guys. You have to be positive. I am sure of what I have, Venu. See a doctor. She knew he was going through denial. A certain part of her was going through the same. Except for this call, she had not stopped crying since the time she discovered what she was afflicted with.
She had cursed the unfair balance of nature. What she had was not something she deserved. She had cried and pored over the reports again and again, hoping there would be a mistake. She wished she was wrong in her self-diagnosis. She could be. Her eyes watered up. She heard the flipping of papers from the other side. The signal is cracking up. I hope I am wrong about this. She sighed. The tears returned and they never stopped during the three hours it took for her to reach her home from the college hostel.
All her dreams washed away in an instant. Once home, she stood in front of her parents, complaining about the strange sensations in her right arm. Her mother started to ask her about the examinations. Dad asked her if she was eating right.
It took her an hour to make them take the cramps and the loss of sensation in her hand seriously. Her mom suggested stress. Dad suggested infection. She insisted on seeing a doctor. Her dad smiled at the irony. Pihu knew what he was thinking about. He had imagined her as a doctor. Something that Pihu knew would never happen.
I hope I am wrong, she sighed. On the way to the hospital, she tried to be her chirpy self, even though all she wanted to do was cry. Maybe she was wrong. The doctor in the hospital asked her a few questions and prescribed her some blood tests.
Back home, she fished out every research paper and every document ever written about the disease. Looking through various reports she found a research team in a hospital in Delhi which specialized in stem cell research and developing experimental new drugs for the disease.
She found the email ID of one of the doctors on the team— Arman Kashyap, supposedly a genius, and shot across an email giving him the details of her disease. She was desperate. That night, when she was done reading about her disease and had cried enough to make herself tired, Venugopal called again. He had been texting her constantly. Pihu knew for sure he had been doing some reading on the disease too.
Did he order all the blood tests? Did he guess anything? Any alternative causes? Differential diagnosis? I know they will be clean. We did the tests just once. And these government pathological labs make mistakes all the time. Where did you go? Apex Hospital?
He had checked and rechecked the reports; Pihu was sure of that. She had promised herself that she would be strong and not cry.
She had read about the suffering of people who had the same disease as hers, and she felt terrible. Having read horrendous accounts of how patients lose control of their body as it slowly rots away, she started to question the fairness of it all.
Why me? Of all people! She cursed the mirror in front of her for it was lying. Her insides were rotting away, slowly, bit by bit. You know that! She was alone in this. She had to get used to it. Things only became worse the next morning.
Her denial had given way to acceptance, and the acceptance of her condition depressed her. A little later, they were in the car, negotiating the early-morning traffic to the hospital. Pihu sat on the back seat, wondering if the doctor had any inkling of what was wrong with her. She hoped he would. The anticipation of the pain her parents would go through was getting unbearable. He was smiling. Pihu remained expressionless as she looked at all the branded merchandise—pens, diaries, clocks and notepads—from the big pharmaceutical companies.
Her father absent-mindedly played with a plastic model of the human brain. Difficulty in breathing? I would have made such a good doctor. She tried not to buckle and weep. Her parents were still distracted.
She felt sorry for them. The doctor looked at her parents and started to ask them about their families. They are still alive? She knew he was yet to make any sense of it. But he had a hunch about what Pihu had. Nothing major. Pihu smiled back at him. Does he know? Why is he smiling? She is a medical student, you know. Lots of pressure, big books, late nights, you know?
She is a brilliant student, topped the region in her board examinations. She wants to be a surgeon. The doctor nodded approvingly. I am dying. It took the doctor three hours, a battery of tests and consultations with other doctors to come to the conclusion Pihu had reached days before. She had noticed the expressions of shock on their faces while her doctor discussed the case with other doctors in her presence. Some of them even called their counterparts in other hospitals for a second opinion.
She felt sorry for the doctor, too. Why should he be a part of the gloom that was about to engulf her family? First year, Maulana Azad. I did the tests myself. I know there is no genetic history. I know there is no cure. I know that I am slowly dying. I could be gone this year or the next. But I will die eventually. I have read all there is to read about the disease.
I will not be able to eat on my own, go to the bathroom or even breathe. It looked like it could never happen to her. As she finally described her own death to the doctor, she came to terms with it. The news finally sank in. In that moment, all her dreams, her aspirations, her visions of herself as a doctor melted away and the morose faces of her parents stared back at her.
Her eyes glazed over and she resolved to not weep. There is some mistake! I have done nothing to deserve this. I am perfectly healthy! Her heart cried out loud. They will give me a few months more. A few days more of breathing on my own. I have read all about it. She had to be ready for what was coming next. ALS is a cruel disease. It starts with the patient becoming clumsy. You drop things, get tired easily, and the sensations in your limbs keep getting dimmer till paralysis sets in.
You will be on crutches … before the wheelchair comes in. Loved each and every part of this book. I will definitely recommend this book to romance, fiction lovers.
Your Rating:. Your Comment:. Read Online Download. Till I Find Someone Better Hot You Were My Crush.. Great book, Till The Last Breath pdf is enough to raise the goose bumps alone.
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