One evening, as I prepared to shut shop and head home after a rewarding day of surgery, I had a call from our emergency department that an elderly gentleman was asking to see me. He was, they said, quite sick with high blood sugar, kidney failure and low blood pressure, with sepsis resulting a severe infection in his left foot. I rushed to the ICU to find a pale and anxious looking lady clutching a smartphone, from which I could hear soft sobs. I nodded acknowledging her presence and rushed to see the elderly gentleman.
“Sudhrendran uncle’s toes will need to be amputated to save his life,” I had to declare to his 70-year-old wife, Seema.
Sudhrendran Kurup, aged 75, an affluent and socially active retired banker now spent his time tending to his rubber plantations and pepper vines in the lush environs of Kerala’s beautiful Idukki district. A man with no vices other than the comfort of an evening tipple to the soothing tunes of old Malayalam and Hindi melodies, he was like many Malayali senior citizens, a hypertensive, with as they all say, “just a touch of sugar.”
