It was almost a year since Yatish’s surgery and there were still a few problem areas which needed to be addressed. At this time there was a National Conference on Disability happening in Bangalore and one of the keynote speakers in this conference was Dr. Takashi Matsuo, a renowned paediatric orthopaedic surgeon from Tokyo, Japan, who has pioneered a spasticity release technique called OSSCS.
Orthopaedic Selective Spastic Control Surgery (OSSCS) is a surgical procedure to control or reduce spasticity or hyper tonicity in Cerebral Palsy patients. Various types and severity of varying degrees of hyper tonicity can be controlled by the appropriate use of selective muscle release surgery.
Since Dr. Sharan was hosting Dr. Takashi, all his patients had a chance to consult with him. I found him to be exceptionally sprightly considering his age (he was almost 70 years) and had child like enthusiasm. Every new sighting of a problem area got him all excited and it was amusing to see him jump on to the chair, with both his legs up. For Yatish he advised to release a few more muscles to improve his functionality.
Dr.Takashi was supposed to perform these surgeries along with Dr. Sharan, but poor man was not expecting the volume of patients, he would have to deal with. Yatish was the last in line but by the end of the day, he was so exhausted that he did not want to do any more surgeries and so Yatish’s surgery was cancelled. We were quite disappointed as we were mentally prepared for the surgery and so was Yatish and now we had to wait for another day and Dr. Takashi was leaving to Japan the next day.
Finally Dr.Sharan performed the surgeries himself. This time around we knew what to expect, but nothing can undermine the pain and suffering, which Yatish had to put up with. He was in plaster for the next 6 weeks albeit this time there were no fixators or pins and it was all soft bandages. He had to lie down the whole time without much movement, but he was very patient and in spite of his multiple wounds, he coped and recovered quite well.
Now we had to start the arduous rehabilitation process. Along with a tough rehab schedule, Yatish also had to do school and then wait for me to finish my job. It was really hard on him.
One of the participants in the conference was a stem cell research company from China and they did a presentation on how stem cells were being used effectively to treat various conditions including cerebral palsy. I did a lot of reading up and also wrote to doctors in Malaysia and at AIIMS Delhi. Stem Cell research was in very early stages of experimentation and everybody told me to give it a few more years.
You must be wondering after all these surgeries, would Yatish sit up and walk. Well the truth is we can do any number of interventions to improve his condition, but it will take a divine intervention to make it go away. So with equal gusto, we set about appeasing God, visiting temples, performing poojas and rituals, but I realise that God has his own agenda and to this day we wait for redemption....
