THE NIGHTMARE THAT MADE ME LOVE MYSELF

There is nothing more annoying than a cold.Or atleast thats what i thought until the first signs of an allergy manifested itself. From then, it was only downhill,from bad becoming worse and worse becoming worst....( i'm in want of more superlatives here!)
With a sinusitis problem thrown in for good measure,i became one of the sickest students in school,sneezing all the time. i always had an inkling that my classmates used to sigh whenever i went " a-tishu",while some of my closer friends amused themselves by counting the number of times i sneezed.
Sadly,i wasnt anywhere close to finding it funny.My irritation escalated as my condition kept deteriorating.With all the doctors exclaiming that dust was the sole perpetrator,my parents blamed Vidya Mandir. So,i kind of hoped that as i put my school life behind,i can bid a goodbye to these ailments too.
Fate however plays its own games..It decided that since i was to study pharmaceutical technology,the number of medicines i should take should proportionately increase.(practical education you see!!).so the allergies multiplied,the sneezing exacerbated and i was having a "lovely" time juggling between general physicians and ENT specialists,none of whom could help me permanantly. Somewhere down that line,i lost my sense of smell. I cannot point out the exact day,but it happened slowly. The downside was I coudnt smell anything delicious,the relief was that,as there isnt anything delicious to smell in chennai( esp,my coll) i wasnt very bothered. It actually worked out to my advantage many times,when others had to hold their noses,I could continue breathing normally. But fate didnt want me to do that little activity too. It blocked my nose,so that i was forced to breathe through the mouth.
So basically my respiratory system was in ruins. Down in the dumps.
Around this time,i got a little wild with myself for various reasons,foremost for neglecting myself.There began a series of ENT visits again.This time the doctor oohed and aahed looking into my nostrils. He came out with a clear cut " your in a very bad situation" dialogue. Ofcourse he wanted to confirm the verdict by all the different tests known to 'doctorkind',but for all purposes he had written me off as a surgery case. he said that my nose had gotten so inflamed that even the slightest touch would trigger it to go into extremes.
At this point ,it didnt matter. i would have gladly cut it off myself,instead of waiting for a surgical instrument.
The day of the surgery,i was numb.no feelings whatsoever. It was supossedly minor operation ,and i was pretty happy i could take off from college for a few weeks.
I was taken into the theatre and it seemed like just few minutes later that someone was murdering me,I coudnt breathe at all,something heavy was clamped down my nose. I heard some voices,....Angels ,thought my drugged brain. Five minutes later,with my eyesight coming back into focus,i tried to call out to the nurses. Something had happened to my voice. I could only whimper and hope that someone could hear me over the din. As my whimpering sounds and sniffles grew louder,someone came to my side. . it took me another half an hour to realise that the surgery was already over and that i was actually in the post op.Though i still felt as if i was being squashed by a big stone positioned ever so cleverly on my nose,I dozed off thinking that I could soon walk around happily.
Surprise,surprise, that was not to be. When the doctor came and removed my bandages,my nose felt huge and blood kept flowing out.The flow was stemmed by some cloth which was choking me,and all the blood was making me dizzy.
And still my nose felt huge.So i tottered to the mirror and ......,i saw someone.... someone,whose upper jaw was terribly swollen,lower jaw had disappeared under all that blood,thin slits for eyes,a dry mouth which coudnt open in any case,black,burnt lips(looked as if it had never had water) .and all these things i could see inspite of a big,engorged nose which had magically quadrupled in size. To add to the agony I still coudnt breathe,later I found I coudnt even swallow without causing spasms of pain to wrack my body.
That night,I coudnt sleep. I coudnt stop the blood flow,...The number of things I coudnt kept piling and soon, I was looking like a character from evil dead. The doc assured me that my neanderthal look was temporary. i wasnt ready to believe him. I was merely angry that he had made me look like the night of the living dead,and feel like one too.
The next day, when i saw myself in the mirror,and found the same horrifying semblance to a gorilla,i coudnt stop the tears.I had never really loved my face,but that day, i prayed that I should be restored with MY face with all its imperfections. I would never mind the rashes or occasional acne or facial hair if only i could get back MY own face.

When i finally got back my face three weeks later,i realised how much i loved it. .....above everyone else's.