Greetings, stranger.

The last essay I wrote here on my site is dated March 2024.

After nearly 20 months, I’m back. Because I’m alive.

Alhamdulillah.

Around March 2024, I developed a mysterious condition. I was playing basketball nearly every day.

Then all of sudden, I was bedridden.

We’ll not go into the specifics. Let it be sufficient to know that within two weeks, I felt I was not going to make it alive.

My worry was compounded when the ruthless doctor told me ‘yes, there’s a strong possibility you could die’. Nevertheless, it did not stop her from prescribing all sorts of expensive tests just to determine whether I had X or Y. She did say it was X. Then she said, maybe X. Maybe Y. You need to do the tests.

So I asked: “but will knowing whether I have X or Y or whatever make any difference? Will you be able to cure me!?” Suddenly, her eyes became narrower and much colder than they were originally.

Meanwhile, all this time I was standing and she did not even offer me the empty chair. That’s how I knew she was a toxic. And probably also incompetent (Most toxic people are).

Coming back home, I had strange feelings. It’s one thing knowing we all die some day, but quite another being told one is going to die (soon).

I sort of had almost agreed, given how much I was suffering. The suffering was real enough. So the ruthless doctor was not lying. Or was she?

As a computer programmer, I couldn’t resist debugging this. Given that she seemed toxic, wouldn’t it make sense to ask many other opinions?

Yet, time was not a luxury I had. Imagine being so sick that you can’t fall asleep. Nor can you do anything else. Since I had hypoglycemia, it gets worse when I’m sleep deficient. As a result, going out becomes difficult: if you’ve experienced this, you know what it means. It means panicking when outside.

Nevertheless, another lesson from my computer programming background was to never ever give up. Right? We don’t, or else we wouldn’t be writing software. ;)

So I packed a lot of ’emergency food’ in my backpack and decided to go to the expert whom I had found by recommendation of a local (I’m an expat). I was told he’s good, so I decided to give it a try. What had I got to lose?

When I arrived, the doctor was kind and smiling. And seemed very competent. There’s a correlation, always. I felt his humanity–he was human. He listened to me patiently and when I asked whether I was going to die, he smiled and said: ’no!’.

Suddenly a huge weight was lifted off my mind and chest. He explained–without any expensive tests–what had happened, and prescribed a side-effect-free cure that I took for two weeks. And just like that, I was completely fine!

Lessons learned:

• Don’t give up when the going gets tough. Fight until the last second.

• Keep your mind sharp and read people. If the person seems toxic, distrust what they say.

• Don’t lose hope, ever. How? Start acting, stop worrying.

• Guard your health.

The rest of 2024 was just as tumultous but that will be the subject of other essays.