when I got a call from my mother. She knew I was working so she wouldn’t have called unless it was really important. When I saw her name on my cell phone I was instantly nervous and took the call.
What she told me next completely destroyed me. My Father, who was 64 suffered a major heart attack and was being driven in an ambulance to the very hospital .
I excused myself and rushed downstairs. Emotions were rushing through my mind. Would my father be okay? How bad was the heart attack? Would he need surgery? I knew I couldn’t do anything at thst moment I was too emotional to go through with the surgery. I started mentally listing which of my colleagues could support me in my place, but what happened next was even worse than I imagined. As soon as they brought him into the emergency room, I saw him on the stretcher and I froze. He wasn't breathing.
We rushed him into a private room and I desperately tried reviving him for 10 minutes which felt like eternity. I only gave up after the nurse pulled me off him and softly said, “It’s over.”
I was completely heartbroken. My father was dead at the age of 64.
I never got over the feelings I felt that day. My whole world came crashing down in front of me. I felt as if all my education had gone to waste. If I could not save my father what was the point of being a son? My mother was in a state of shock when I gave her the news. It took weeks for her to accept that he was really gone.
In fact, she refused to talk to me. She thought I could have saved him but in my heart I knew there was nothing I could have done.
While my father’s death was a horrible shock, it wasn’t a mystery. The main reason for his death was Kidney failure. He had a CKF and all he needed was dialysis to save his life. At first all I could think was that we were 8 minutes too late. If he had come in 8 minutes earlier I could have saved him. But in reality, we were years late. If only Kapil had taken his obesity seriously. If only we realized how unhealthy we was because of his extreme weight. Afterall, I've had 100's of patients die in my arms because of complications of obesity like heart attack, stroke and cancer.
After that day, I could not go back to being a surgeon. Whenever I tried I could not keep my hands from shaking. Every time I looked at a body on the operating table I saw my brother Kapil. I knew I was not psychologically fit to perform surgery. However, I knew I had to do something about obesity and find a solution and save the countless people who die everyday because of their extreme weight.
I decided to quit practicing medicine and become a full time professor and research scholar at AIIMS. I dedicated myself to studying the impact of different natural extracts on the production of fat cells. My goal was to find an easier way for obese men and women to save their own lives. Millions of people all over the world struggle with their weight, but most diets are too hard to follow. In addition, most weight loss programmes being promoted by spa-clinics cost Rs. 40,000-50,000, and despite the high cost, the results are painfully disappointing. They only get rid of water weight, and you gain the weight back in under a month.That is why losing weight often feels like an impossible challenge.
After Kapil’s funeral, I went straight to my lab at AIIMS. I promised myself I would use my expert knowledge of biology to find a solution to obesity, and prevent any more pointless deaths. Every day I got into the lab at 6am and before I did anything I looked at a picture of my brother, and remembered why I was there.
