In !985, Shri Nathji develops heart trouble and it is suspected that He has a heart attack. He was getting week day by day
Priya Nath prays for Divine Help. An impulse comes into him to speak to Shri Vasudeva on the telephone. Priya Nath calls Shri Vasudeva and is appalled at what he has to say. Shri Vasudeva urges him to replace Dr. Gadhoke at once. He narrates a very sorry experience that his mother-in-law had at the hands of the doctor.
Priya Nath is filled with alarm and makes up his mind to replace the doctor at once. No matter how good a faith the doctor had been acting in, the fact was that Shri Nathji’s condition was worsening day by day and Priya Nath could not afford to wait any longer.
On the suggestion of Dr. Kataria, an eminent cardiologist of Delhi is called, a certain Dr. R.K. Corolli. He has great respect for Shri Nathji and touches his feet as he enters. He examines all the earlier ECG’s and also takes a fresh ECG and says:
“It was not a heart attack.”
He also adds that Depin-Nifedipine is a medicine that many cannot tolerate at all, and this is the cause of Shri Nathji’s weakness. He says that some people find even one tablet of 5 mg difficult to tolerate. And here was Shri Nathji being given a 10 mg tablet three times a day!
He says that some deaths had even occurred with the inappropriate administration of Depin. Considering Shri Nathji’s age of 83 the drug should certainly not have been given in such high doses or else not given at all.
This is what Shri Nathji had been saying all along! Shri Nathji is always above all of medical science.
Priya Nath had yet to fully accept the fact that whenever Shri Nathji made any medical observations he was inevitably right. Had he listened to Shri Nathji right at the start and stopped the Depin tablets Shri Nathji would not have suffered so much. Priya Nath now feels that they have had a narrow escape.
Dr. Corolli says it is a strain on the heart, and the coronary arteries are clogged naturally at this age. He prescribes, Peritrate, Ildamen, Isoptin and half a Disprin daily.
When Dr. Corolli looks at a portrait of Shri Nathji in the big room, where Shri Nathji is wearing his mukat for the Mahapoojan, he says:
“With a beauty like this, small wonder that the evil eye struck him–nazar naa lagtee to aur kyaa hotaa!”
Shri Nathji and Priya Nath embrace each other with joy even as Dr. Corolli leaves. The news is too good to be true. It was precisely what Shri Nathji had been saying: that there was no heart attack –or even if there had been a heart attack, Shri Nathji had caused it to disappear for Priya Nath’s sake.
For a while Dr. Corolli’s medicines begin to produce the same kind of weakening symptoms like those of Dr. Gadhoke, but later Shri Nathji’s body begins to get adapted to them. Shri Nathji’s Blood Pressure stands at 176/84.
Shri Nathji always spoke of acute mental intoxication or distress that these medications caused, as well as bouts of weakness, but the doctors attributed these to the vasodilating properties of the drugs which expanded the vessels of the brain. Dr. Corolli was careful to prescribe them in very small doses.
Dr. Corolli sees Shri Nathji later again and says that the collateral blood supply to the heart is increasing, even though one of the three coronary arteries had narrowed down, cutting the blood supply, that the aorta has calcified plaques and there is a regurgitation of blood back into the heart, which was increasing the blood pressure but was not a dangerous condition.
“Ye to sab ek transient phase hai!” he says to Shri Nathji, “this is all a transient phase!”
Although Priya Nath was worried when he heard about the aortic regurgitation, but he is pacified by the doctor’s words that it is all a temporary phase.
Dr. Corolli comes agian after few days and gives a ‘clean chit’ to Shri Nathji’s heart,
showing how the strain on the heart has eased itself on successive ECG’s
taken on 9-2-85, 26-2-85 and 21-3-85. The Blood Pressure he measures is
170/86 and the pulse is 65 and regular. Shri Nathji is very enthusiastic about travelling to his beloved Mussoorie House in the summer, but Dr. Corolli advises against it and says Shri Nathji should postpone it for a year.
Shri Nathji is acutely disappointed. He knows he will never be going to Mussoorie again. Priya Nath could not even think of taking Shri Nathji to Mussoorie especially because of the total lack of medical aid there.
However, Mussoorie or no Mussoorie, Priya Nath is greatly elated about Shri Nathji’s health and the good news that Dr. Corolli has given about the improvement in the ECG’s.
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Ram Kumar Caroli is an Indian cardiologist and a former head of the Department of Cardiology at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, New Delhi. A Fellow of the Cardiology Society of India, he served as the personal physician to four presidents of India and as the cardiologist to Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri. He was honoured by the Government of India in 1969, with the award of Padma Shri, the fourth highest Indian civilian award and the government followed it up with the third highest civilian award of Padma Bhushan in 1974.
He has the. R K Caroli Clinic Heart Care at Bharat Nagar, New Friends Colony, New Delhi
