Reflections from a sanatorium for tuberculosis

Who takes care of people who are abandoned with no hope of cure from the disease they are suffering from?

Palliative care is more than just end of life we said,
Beyond the scope of usual diseases, we wished to tread.
Thus came a call for a need in a disease,
It was Tuberculosis and its deadly associated unease.

The name of the place had a the tone of an abandon,
It was called TB Sanatorium, a place that certainly doesn’t have any fandom.
For people say if you are going there you go to die,
Little do they think about the doomed one to go there and lie.

Slowly losing their self to the monstrous microbe within,
Soon realize that the so-called near and dear go on with their living.
Disconnected he becomes from the society that was meant for thriving,
For no one around him could take the uncertainty of aimlessly driving.

His remains are literally some flesh and all bones,
Closest ones around starting to look at life in all negative tones.
Soon all take off on their personal journeys to attain,
Painfully leaving behind this one in utter disdain.

Listless, alone, and empty he has become,
I walked near him and looked only to see a vacuum.
If ‘I do not have a purpose of existing’ had a face,
This is what it would look like and I realized I had to make a case.

Here was a group of healers trying to do all that they can,
To get back one to normal and make a wholesome man.
We wish to do more they said with willingness,
How can we rekindle the spirit within from the sufferers' current state of nothingness?

Palliative care may have some of the answers if not all,
There is something we address beyond the body because it stands tall.
The consideration one gets adds beauty and value to life,
Sitting by the bed and sharing will take one out of a lot of strife.

To know that a curable illness can do so much damage is sometimes beyond imagination,
Most of the time the treatment demands arising from the ash’s situation.
BEING THERE can do a lot for such a person in suffering and in mourn,
It can give a sense of purpose and meaning that there can be a new dawn.

About the poet:

Deepak Sudhakaran is a palliative care physician working at Pallium India.