Wild life

The HBM Hospital Community Health and Development Project works in the Jhakora and Bar blocks of Lalitpur.  I have been doing most of my field visits to the watershed management work in the Bar block.

Most of the land is spare and dry - though we have just had our first rains (and we hope for much more).

On the way to the large village of Bar - which is the block headquarters too - we pass a small barbed wire area which is under the care of the forest department.

One day, my colleagues told me that there were quite a few deer in that forest.  I pooh-poohed the thought after a quick look at the small area (perhaps 20-30 acres at most) and the spread out decidous trees.  And anyway - it was noon.  Which animals would we see at this time in the heat of a late summer day?

Well, I had to eat my thoughts pretty quickly.  We soon saw chital deer.  And not only one - but more and more.


I clambered out of the jeep and came close to the barbed wire.  Sure enough - two young males were doing their thing - butting against each other with their antlers to an enthralled audience.

This was the last thing I expected in a landscape that is heavily farmed or basically rock.   Hardly any forest cover to speak of.  And yet here are chital deer at noon.  Such beautiful creatures.

So when we passed the same area yesterday afternoon, I had my eyes peeled again.

Sure enough, there were chital to be seen, but they were very far away, and we wanted to get to Bar for our meeting.  But then I saw an awe-inspiring sight.

A nilgai.  The famous 'blue bull'.  The largest antelope in the Indian subcontinent.  As I came close to the fence, he saw me and started trotting off.  Was he alone?  No, there was a Nil-gal for the Nil-guy!

She was a bit shy and far off, but looked back at us with her lovely tan face, as Mr. N. trotted over to her and then they both went further back into the trees.

Visions of beauty.  Wild life.  Oh that we could see more.  This world has a lot of space for such creatures.  In the middle of a highly humanised land-scape (both lovely and ugly versions) it is a joy to see the grace of our cervine cousins.

Opa Elmore Eicher

Yesterday at the breakfast table at Shanti Kunj in Mussoorie, Dad thanked God for his father who had been born 112 years ago on the 16th of June.

My grandfather was christened Henry Elmore Franklin Eicher - but dropped the Henry and was known through out his life as Elmore.  His father Christian Leichty Eicher had arrived in Bombay in January 1904, and so my grand-dad was the first Eicher to be born on Indian soil.

Elmore Eicher was also the first of our clan to take Indian citizenship - for which I am so grateful!

Here is a picture of my 'Opa' (German for Grand-dad - which is what we called both sets of our grand-parents growing up) holding a 5 month version of me in September 1969 at the Alliance mission station in Nargaon.

Yesterday, as we were packing up to come back here to Lalitpur, I actually held a biography of Sadhu Sundar Singh written in 1920 by a Mrs. Parker.  On its cover was written "C. Eicher."  The handwriting looked like my grandmother's but then I did a double-take, since her name is Alice Eicher.  It probably was on of my great-grandfather's books.

As we go through a season of looking after Dad, I am again aware of the brevity of time and the value of every moment we are given to live.  

What a blessing to be able to look back on my parents, their parents and their grandparents and see God's mercies and goodness over the years.

Back in the heat of pre-monsoonal Lalitpur.  Thankful for those who have gone before us.  Grateful for small opportunities to carry on in the here and now.

Looking forward to meeting my 'Opa' Elmore Eicher again - and my great-grandfather Christian for the first time.   Good thing that I believe in the resurrection!

Cancer Chronicles: the latest installment

My Lord knows a way through the wilderness
All I have to do is to follow   x 2
Strength for today, is mine all the way
And all that I need for to-mo-rrow
My Lord knows a way through the wilderness
All I have to do is to follow   

Dad has lived and is living a full life.  He is now 74 years old (he counts his age as 75 as he starts counting from conception).

The last 4 months, however, have seen Dad and Mum walking further down paths which are new to all of us.

It started in mid February in Thane.  Dad and Mum came down to be with us in Thane for a month. They wanted to be with us for Enoch's birthday in February, have Dad's follow-up visit with his oncologist at Bethany Hospital in March, and also help us pack up our house before our planned shift to Lalitpur in April.

Since January this year, I had started doing 2 weeks at a time in Lalitpur to try and start up our work with the community health and development programme of the Harriet Benson Memorial Hospital - and prepare the ground for our family to move.  We were also trying to get legal guardianship for Yohan (another story - to be told soon) and I was also hoping to write Dad and Mum's story as well.

When Dad came to Thane, he said that he was having trouble eating - and that he has experienced a certain amount of discomfort in his stomach.  Having undergone a Whipple's procedure as a life-saving surgery a year before, we know that Dad's digestion is just never going to be the same again.

I was in Lalitpur when Dad when for his initial blood tests in the run-up to meet his oncologist. Sheba called me up and said that Dad's CA tumour markers were high, and that the oncologist wanted to have a abdominal and thoracic CT scan done.

A few days later, another night conversation on the phone.  I was pacing outside on a Lalitpur night while Sheba told me the result of the CT scan.  The results were not good. After Dad had taken his chemotherapy last year, the CT scan had shown no visible nodes.  Now nodes were seen.  Some in the lungs.  A possible node in the bone.  Not happy news at all.  Dad's elevated cancer markers had given the clue - the CT scan confirmed it. The cancer was back and had spread.

When I got back to Thane, we went to meet with the oncologist.  He said that the cancer was back, but that Dad was 'asymptomatic.'  Further IV chemotherapy or radio-therapy would not be much use now - and there was no focal mass to cut out with surgery.  Wait and see was what the oncologist said.   He gave an new daily pill oral chemotherapy with few side effects which has worked for some people.  And told Dad to contact him if symptoms appeared.  We sent Mum and Dad off to meet their dear colleagues from OM years in Bangalore, and then they went back to Mussoorie with the future very open.

The first few weeks of Mum and Dad in Mussoorie were quiet.  And then we started hearing that Dad was not sleeping well.  Not eating well.  Us Thane Eichers were going through an egg-beater of a time as we tried to work with the system to get Yohan's papers so that he could come with us to Lalitpur - plus were packing away and trying to tie up 13 years of living in Thane as a family.   And so all we could do was pray.

Fast forward to early May.  We have moved to Lalitpur - minus Yohan who the authorities in their 'wisdom' have not given permission to go with us.  I am moving up and down between Lalitpur and Thane to try and move things forward (more on this nightmare later).  And then we find that due to some technicalities Asha was not getting admission at the local school for her 10th standard.  Ay-yay-yo!  Rumba kashtam!

A ray of light emerges when the amazing Principal of the Wynberg Allen School goes out of his way and allows Asha to be admitted mid-term into WAS!  On Thursday we get an SMS from him telling us to come on up to Mussoorie.  Friday evening we are on the train to Delhi.  Night taxi to Mussoorie and we are at his office on Saturday morning.  Forms are filled up and a delightful interview in his office later, we are granted admission.  We get the long-list of items for Asha's boarding and so scurried around on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon.  And then on Monday morning, we took our first-born and said good-bye as she stepped into a new school and a new world ... and found ourselves as abruptly as the parents of a boarder!

During our time in Mussoorie, we had the sadness of seeing that Dad was just not doing well.  He was in pain at nights and was eating a tiny amount at each meal.  Dad had regularly measured his weight - and had lost 10 kgs in the past 2 months.  It was painful to see.  With Asha in boarding, we decided that we had to take Dad to see an oncologist - and so got an appointment at a large private hospital in Dehra Dun for the next day.

Sheba, Mum and myself took Dad down the hill the next day, with Manoj driving us in a jeep.  The hospital was plush, and Dad perked up a bit, as it reminded us a bit of the spick and span of Bethany Hospital in Thane.  Dad was all smiles and friendships with the folks around him - but at lunch in the cafeteria, we could see him tiring as he bent over a table and slept a bit.   The oncologist asked for the normally battery of tests to be done - which we did - including another CT of the abdomen and chest. He said that this was most likely a relapse and suggested starting a 2nd line chemo-therapy the next day.  He said that we should try for 3 months and see if it works.

Sheba and I had our tickets booked to go back to Lalitpur and so we as a small family decided to go forward with starting the first dose the next morning.  We left Mum and Dad with dear friends of theirs in Dehra Dun and drove back with Manoj to Enoch who was alone in Shanti Kunj for the day.

The next morning we met Mum and Dad at the plush hospital.  We had our cash in hand and Dad was hooked up for his day treatment on the new course of chemo.  By 3 PM he was back out of his chemo and we packed them off back to Mussoorie while Sheba and I headed for the railway station.  Just before we left, we pocketed the final report of the CT scan.

It did not make easy reading.  The report said that the cancer had spread to the lungs and there was a small amount of fluid gathering outside Dad's right lung (pleural effusion).  There was evidence of spread into the liver.  And there is a mass in the place at the pancreas where the operation was done last year.

Back in Lalitpur we emailed this report to some of our friends - including our dear Tan Tzu Jen. Jen was with me at Taylor and we spent a memorable summer living together while he did research on rat hearts and I counted species progression in fields for a weed-seed ecology study.  Jen came and visited me when I was at Nav Jeevan Hospital in Bihar before marriage (both of ours) while he was a med student.  Today Jen is a surgeon and missionary doctor who divides his time between the River Kwai Hospital in Thailand and his native Singapore.

Jen's response was quick and very sobering.  Dad's cancer has metastasized. The chemotherapy that the oncologist had prescribed was cutting edge and for cancer treatments has a pretty good outcome (about 48% of patients experience tumour shrinking). But, even if it 'works' we are expecting something like 2 months on a 6 month survival after metastasis from pancreatic cancers.  Jen suggested looking into palliation instead. Over the week we got similar responses from Dr. Kenny David at Vellore and Dr. Stephen Alfred from Bethany and Dr. Ann Thyle.

And so less than 10 days later, Sheba and I were up in Mussoorie to talk to Dad and Mum.  We prayed and laid it out to them.  Dad took the news as positively as he always has done.  The first dose of chemo had not been kind to him.  His blood counts were down and he was just not feeling well.  We explained that palliative care is the care we give when its unlikely that further curative care will really work.  We talked about 'adding LIFE to days' (palliative care) instead of 'adding days to life' (the goal of curative care).   We talked about upping Dad's pain medications so that he gets sleep and night and hopefully gets back his appetite.  We talked about the end of life and discussed about where we wanted to be.  Big, big topics to discuss.  Our point was to begin the conversation.  We came away with the peace that passes understanding.  Mum and Dad agreed that we would not pursue further chemo-therapy, but would continue working to make things as comfortable as possible for Dad and work on symptomatic treatment as challenges come.  It was back to Lalitpur for Sheba and myself at the end of the weekend - with Enoch staying on as our representative.

Last week Sheba had the privilege of taking a foundational course in Palliative Care which was hosted at our HBM Hospital in Lalitpur.  And who should be there but Dr. Ann Thyle herself - who helped set up the palliative care programme at HBM Hospital and who has been spearheading the palliative care work across EHA and beyond!   Sheba and I were blessed to have a wonderful evening visit by her which helped us gear up for the next step in Dad's journey.

I was due to come up this weekend to pick up Asha as she has a 2 week summer hols break - and bring back our Mussoorie-holidaying Enoch back to Lalitpur.   Sheba decided that we should both come and help Mum and Dad take the next step with Dad's pain medication.  Thanks to Dr. Ann, we are now in touch with a palliation doctor at a hospital in Dehra Dun.  Dad has been waking up every night and medicating to control the pain.  A certain amount of relief is there - but the pain continues in the back ground.  We are hoping to achieve nil pain.   Sheba and I talked to Dad and Mum on Saturday and then again on Sunday.  We agreed that the current drugs which are low-level opoid-derivatives are not doing the job, and so we are stepping into the next step, which is a morphine-based therapy.

Yesterday we went down to meet Dr. Mayank Gupta.  His office is in the bowels of a large charitable hospital in Dehra Dun.  We meet him at the Pain clinic.  He is friendly and clearly passionate about helping folks with cancer.  A huge difference from the previous experience in the plush hospital.  Dad is very much at ease with Dr. Mayank.  He agrees to start on morphine.  We had come prepared for 2 days of admission while the dose is titrated, but Dr. Mayank is happy to send Dad home and have Sheba monitor his doses.  The drug itself is recorded in the morphine register.  Knowing the street value for stuff that is abused, it is almost comical to see that a strip of 10 costs Rs. 55 only.

And so last night we found ourselves back in Mussoorie.  Dad slept most of yesterday night and we have cut down on the numbers of pills he has to pop each day.  He is in good spirits and we take every day as a blessing from the Lord.

Though not on our agenda - we do have a mini holiday on our hands as we are not down in Dehra Dun at a hospital with Dad.  The cool mist shrouds the oaks.  Shanti Kunj continues to be as beautiful as ever.  There are warbling birds outside in the moss-covered trees.  A cup of coffee is about to be rustled up and Enoch has gone to Prakash's store in search of cinnamon buns.  Scratch that - Asha and I are about to go and buy besan - which Sheba will use to make pakoras (and we will get buns too!).

What will tomorrow hold?  We just don't know.  But we do know who holds tomorrow.  Sheba, Asha, Enoch and I are set to head back to Lalitpur day after tomorrow.  One of us will be bringing Asha back in 10 days.  Stefan is flying in to spend some time with Dad in early July.  We are looking to our Lord to take us through.  Cancer is something that we have not experienced as a family first hand till now.  We are all learning and deeply appreciate the love and concern of so many for us.

Onwards.

Never, ever, ever give up!

Last night - make that early this morning - Enoch and I got a life-lesson.

It was embedded in the beautiful game.   Enoch and I were watching die Mannschaft play their opening game against a plucky Ukranian team.   The great English player Gary Linekar put it nicely: "Football is a simple game.  Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win." 

Though the last decade or so has been the reign of Spain, we did see the truth of Linekar's comment yesterday.  The Germans trooped off the field with a 2-nil victory (better than the 2-1 that Enoch and I had predicted) and have kept their record intact of never losing an opening game in the European championships.  Never.

The Germans were dominant throughout the game.  But they were not indomitable.  Manuel Neuer, their goalie made some fine saves.  The Ukranians did not quite rain shots at the German goal, but the score line could have been very different if even one of the goals had gone in.  The young German team (the youngest in this year's tournament) has actually lost 3 of their last 5 games.  But when it comes to tournament play, the Germans seem to be in a different zone altogether.

And yet, early this morning (for us watchers in India at least) it came so close.  Down to centimeters actually.

Take a look at this:

Germany were 1:0 up, but a posse of Ukrainian players were rampant outside the German goal.   A lovely cross and their unmarked star forward pokes the ball past Manfred Neuer, but instead of going into the goal, its the German defender Jerome Boateng who blocks the ball with his body.  And then he sees that the ball still has momentum and is still headed into the goal.  Boateng is falling backwards, but manages to hoist himself up and kick the ball away, just centimeters before it was to cross the line.  Desperate stuff.

Not pretty at all.  But what spirit, what fight!  At the end of the match, we can say that Boateng's effort was the margin between victory and defeat.

Here is how he looked as he crashed into the back of his own goal net.

Life lesson?

Never give up.  Never.  Ever.

It is said that the then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited his old school Harrow on the 29th of October 1941, at the height of the second world war.  When he was invited to address the students, Churchill stood before the students and said:

"Never, ever. ever. ever. ever. ever, give up.  Never give up.  Never give up.  Never give up."

Thank you Jerome for showing that to Enoch and me.  Whatever Germany's football prowess may be, it is actions like Jerome's - at its point of weakness - which contribute to the on-going story of success.

What about you and me?  How many times we are tempted to throw in the towel.  To say "what's the use?" To fade quietly away and let someone else deal with the mess we face.

Life lesson:  Never give up.  Never.

The Apostle Paul echoes this when he says: To this end I strenously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me." (Col. 1.26).

Never give up.

Lets look at that again:

Breaking the silence.

It has been two months and a week since we wrote our last post on Chai Chats.

A whole life-time has passed by in these 70 odd days.

I am writing this in the almost painful stillness of a Mussoorie night,  Sheba and I arrived at Dehra Dun early this morning just 12 hours after leaving Lalitpur.   I was just finishing off a meeting with my colleagues in the community health and development programme of the Harriet Benson Memorial Hospital at just before 5 PM yesterday, when Sheba’s reminder call came in on the mobile.  I grabbed my laptop and was out the door to our home on the campus. 

A quick prayer and Sheba and I were out the door, rolling our luggage across the campus. We hailed an auto-rickshaw outside the hospital gate for the 10 min ride to the railway station.   We got there 15 mins before the Bhopal-New Delhi Shatabadi was to arrive.  The train came on time (5 mins late) and swished us to Delhi where we had the nerve racking ‘joy’ of arriving 10 mins late (at 11.41 PM) and having to get to our next train in 9 mins.

We got to the Nanda Devi express by the skin of our teeth (and having expended much lung power in the walk/run between platforms 1 and 10 in New Delhi station).  Barely had we actually arrived at our berths, and the train was on her way, taking us to Dehra Dun.  Whew.  Never again.  We have twice missed trains early in our marriage – and this was just too uncomfortably close to doing it again.  I have made a promise that a 20 min gap between trains will not be repeated.

We got up to Picture Palace by 8 AM and tucked into a aloo parontha / chole bhature breakfast when we saw our friend Edwin drive by looking for us.  He had come with his jeep to pick us up and take us to Asha’s school.   

Yes, you are hearing right.  Asha’s school in Mussoorie – not in Lalitpur.

Today Asha started her 2 week summer holiday.  She has for almost a month been studying at Wynberg Allen School where she got an amazing emergency admission in mid May.

Life has us in some very unexpected spins:

Asha at Wynberg Allen.

Enoch with his Oma and Opa for the interim.

Yohan is still in Mumbai – separated from us by a set of circumstances we would never dream about.

Dad is not well at all, which is why we have come up to Mussoorie.

Sheba and I were ‘alone’ in Lalitpur for the past 4 weeks.

Our shift to Lalitpur and diving into the life of the HBM hospital and community work.

There are many, many things to share about.

For most of the past two months things were going at such a rate, and were so difficult to talk about, that I just could not write for Chai Chats anymore.   Thanks for those who have stood with us as we have walked down some pretty unfamiliar roads.

Over the next few days, we will try to untangle some of the stories that we are living through, but writing about where we are right now and what has been happening in the maelstrom of the past 2 plus months.

Thanks for your patience and prayers, gentle readers. 

We want to break the silence, and will be sharing one still-being-lived-out story at a time.

Let my people go...

Go down, Moses
Way down to Egypt la-a-and
Tell ole, Pharaoh,
Let My pe-ople GO!

We sang that old Spiritual in choir in high-school, harkening back to a slave nation that was brought out against great odds.

On the final night, the first 'pass-over' the people were told to dress to leave and eat standing up, ready to march away...  Pharaoh had said that he would never 'let the Israelites go' ... but a few hours later, with the land mourning many a deceased first-born, the message was relayed to Moses - depart!

In a small way, that's where we are now.

In 60 hours the movers are due to come and pack up our worldly possessions and ship them off to Lalitpur.  

Asha's and Enoch's new school in Lalitpur (St. Dominic Savio) started today, but as I key in this small note, Asha is still studying for her last big exam of her 9th standard... Chemistry (tomorrow).  The next day is art which is a breeze for her.   Enoch is already in bed.  As are Yohan and Sheba.

The house is emptying as books are put in boxes and some things (too few) are being given away.  How did we get to have so much stuff?

But we still don't have 'permission' to take Yohan with us.

Our prayer network is humming as folks near and far are interceding for us.

And given the fact that the 'lady pharaoh' of our lives has refused to give us the permission so far things could be seen as being pretty bleak.

Some steps, however, are being made.  We have reached out to the highest ranking bureaucrat in the State for the particular department we are talking about (or not... you can see that we have to be careful about what we 'put out there' while the process is going on - one of these days we will write a no-holds barred account of the last year's shenanigans - but we want that day to come with us having the needed papers in hand).

We also had our 3rd home-visit today - which as far as we can tell went well.  So that leaves us with tomorrow as the authority in question sits only on Mon-Wed-Fri afternoons - and the Fri of this week is a public holiday.   We are hoping to get onto a train at 12.10 AM on Monday the 11th of April morning.  This would mean that Asha would only be missing a week or so of her 10th standard.

Will we be able to make this hoped-for deadline?  Will we get the 'paper-in-hand' - allowing us to take Yohan with us as we shift north?  We have been told that this will happen by the folks who have been approached on our behalf - but we are now talking hours instead of days?  Will the Eichers be on the train on Sunday night - or sometime on Monday?  

Only God really knows - and He does not give us a script to live out... Rather, we have the deep privilege of trusting and being stretched by what seems to be un-doable, completely impossible...

The movers are coming in 59 hours from now. 

We have decided that we must stick together.  The authorities finally sent another person to do a 'home-study' (our 3rd full home-study so far...) and that person came today.  We were glad that Yohan was not intimidated by her and was able to speak freely.   With so many things apparently hanging by a thread, each step forward is a cause for thanksgiving.

We are waiting to hear a correct and life-affirming response to the call: "Let my people (the Eichers - all five of them) goooo!"

Time for a series of miracles.

 

Learning from Indian Grey Hornbills

I turned a ripe and nicely young 47 years old today ... and arrived back from Lalitpur late last night to be back with the family and jointly plough through what should be our last week in Thane for some time ... we hope!

Life has been plunging head-long over the past two weeks and it will take a goodly time to recap everything that we are experiencing.  So do bear with us, gentle reader, as we work through the challenges of seeing Yohan's papers, our flat being sold and other various sundry items being done before the movers come on the 8th of April!

In the meantime, I have been helping out the Harriet Benson Memorial Hospital with their website - do take a look at it if you can.  

Here is a post that I put up on the HBM site - which we hope you will enjoy too:

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The HBM hospital is not only a place for the healing of the body and soul – it is also a place to see the great beauty of creation.  And amidst the stately trees that adorn the compound we are blessed with various species of birds.

Will you come along with with us for a quick visit to our own biodiversity park in the middle of Lalitpur town?

We would like to introduce you to probably the largest bird to live on the HBM hospital campus: the Indian Grey Hornbill.   We see these handsome birds fly in pairs or singly around the campus in the early morning or just before dusk.

 The Indian Grey Hornbills need to be form pairs, because once the breeding season starts, the couple finds a hollow in a tree for their nest.  If the hollow is small, they enlarge it and then the female enters in and is ‘enclosed’ using mud pellets and faeces.  The birds leave only a small vertical gap open.  The female then sheds her feathers and lays the eggs and hatches them in the nest.

The male Indian Grey Hornbill’s task is to keep bringing food.  This he does faithfully, passing the food for his mate and the small ones through the small hole that was left in the nest.  Eventually, when the chicks have grown large enough to take to the out-doors, the nest is broken by the parents and they fly free.

The female has in the mean-time grown her feathers back and is able to fly again and find her own food.  All this while she was helpless inside the nest and dependent on the male’s hard work and careful hiding of her nest from other predators.

What an amazing picture of faithfulness and cooperation as parents.  And a real lesson for us as well.  The Bible says in one place: “But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you” (Job 12.7).  The Indian Grey Hornbill have much to teach human parents about loving faithfulness to each other and mutual help and cooperation. 

So here is another picture of our dear teachers the Indian Grey Hornbill, taken on the HBM hospital campus.