I’m so relieved to be writing this column from the other side of my recent ordeal. I spent almost 10 days hospitalised with a case of bacterial meningitis which had spread to a bone in my brain. I have zero consciousness of driving with the ambulance. I only remember waking up at some point to glimpses of a somewhat robotic nurse monitoring my blood pressure, temperature and pulse. I had only questions, but the nurse didn’t make it easy for me. She asked me if I knew where I was, and I responded Bozen because that is where I had a memory of going to some days before at midnight, when I had what felt like an earache from hell. She said we were in Meran. I assumed she was tricking me into saying I was in Bozen. But she didn’t seem so keen on correcting me or disabusing me of any notion of where I was. It seemed irrelevant to her in that moment that I be made aware of where I was. She only told me that my ear had been operated upon during an emergency procedure. I suppose that was what I needed to know most of all, even though the information did nothing to make me feel less scared. It left me with more questions that I had originally anticipated. Because my right ear had already been operated upon once when I was a child, at Holy Family Hospital in Bandra. When did things go so south that I had to be operated upon again?

I seem to have complete blanks in my consciousness from Sunday until Wednesday. My partner says he called emergency services at some point between Saturday evening and Sunday early morning, when I was no longer responsive to him and couldn’t tell him who he was or his name. I apparently seemed very disoriented while moving around the house and he began to get really alarmed. I may have already put our child to sleep. He couldn’t come with me to the emergency services in Bozen, because someone had to stay with our child and my in-laws were in Germany. He said a female paramedic and he took me down the three flights of stairs. I may have been trashing my body around because I have an unexplainable scar on the right side of my forehead. I was apparently taken to Bozen first, but since there was no free bed available in the intensive care unit, I was moved to Meran—a gorgeous historical town further north of Bozen. Those were the mountains that surrounded me when I woke up from being sedated. While I had no idea what day it was, I had the memory of being a mother, of being currently pregnant, of having a husband and a family back home in India and here in South Tyrol. I could remember my birth date, and our child’s name. But I felt tired beyond belief and felt so much discomfort from having had a catheter strapped to my urethra for three continuous days. I’ve been operated upon at least four times before in my life. But each time I was aware of the surgery in advance. This was the first time I had simply ‘landed up’ in a hospital with so many holes in my memory. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. From the time I came too, no one really gave me a satisfying enough answer regarding when I might go home again. I don’t blame them, because they needed to keep monitoring my condition and giving me antibiotics. The fact that I had a toddler to take care of at home meant returning was not an option unless I felt well enough. ‘Do you even know what day it is?’ one of the nurses asked me. I had to come clean about the fact that I was clueless.