Life or Years?

All the characters referred to in the below blog are fictitious and bear no resemblance with anyone living or dead whatsoever. Any co-incidence is purely co-incidental and unintentional.

Natasha woke up and found herself in a hotel room. She was shabbily dressed and was not able to recollect how she had landed in this room. She saw the menu card lying there, and read the name of the hotel, “Nandan Van, FC road Pune”. Pune!!!, how come I reached Pune from Bangalore! She thought. But she was not at all able to recollect the last 2 days of her life. And again on returning back to Bangalore, the same fear followed her, someone stalking her. This fear was killing her and she was not able to concentrate. She walked straight into the chamber of Dr. Suresh Malhotra. After listening carefully to her, and her problems of her fears of being stalked, her complete loss of memory over elongated periods sometimes extending to weeks and people around her trying to remind her of instances, of which she is completely unaware of and sometimes finding herself in places, she had never thought of visiting or any remembrance of how she reached there, Dr. Suresh could conclude only one thing, the presence of alters in Natasha. She was a victim of a psychological disorder called Dissociative Identity Disorder, better known as the Multiple Personality Disorder to the layman. This was further corroborated with the fact that people have sometimes addressed Natasha as Nisha, Nausheen and Rosemary. The problem was grave, Dr. Suresh thought, 4 alters. He thought. But this was not the right time to disclose. He just told Natasha that she was overworked and needed rest. He advised her to go on a vacation, thus buying time to work on the case. After she left, the problem persisted. Dr. Suresh was pondering over it.

In the evening he met his pal Dr. Amitesh Mehra, who was talking about a case of “ischiophagus conjoined parasitic twins”, a rare case of conjugal Siamese twins, where the child has two pairs of limbs, hands and the other twin is residing inside the host, sharing nutrition, kidney, anal channel and excretory channels. Dr. Suresh was bewildered at hearing it. Nature had its own way of performing miracles he thought. On one side he had a case of Dissociative Identity Disorder, where the person herself was not aware of the existence of three other personalities residing within who take up turns to make her perform things she’d never imagined. Also when the alters (the personalities, Nisha, Nausheen and Rosemary better referred to as alters henceforth) took control Natasha was lost, a personality, a part of Natasha was lost. On the other side he was hearing a case of parasitic twins, where a real physical person resided inside another, two personalities, completely distinct, sharing space and nutrition.

Dr. Suresh: “So how do you think are you going to cure the parasitic twins?”
Dr. Amitesh: “We will operate on them and separate them through surgery. The operation may take anything between 28 – 35 hrs, depending on how well the patient responds to the treatment. Also we have other issues like tissue growth and kidney transplant, the parasitic twin is drawing nutrition from the host. Alimentary canal and the breathing duct also need to be separated.”
Dr. Suresh: “Seems complex but at least you have something physical and concrete to work on.”
Dr. Amitesh: “What’s the matter with you?”
Dr. Suresh told him of the case of Natasha. Although multiple personality disorder has a rich history and literature, it is a practically incurable disease so far with no guarantee on the timeline. It all depends on the origin of the personalities and the very fact that patients sometimes refuse treatment, on grounds that they are not ill and no personality resides within them. Dr. Suresh thought how different personality development is from the case of parasitic twins. Not very much except for the fact that the two personalities in the parasitic twins case have a separate physical existence, here the same person assumes different roles, portrays altogether different personas. But parasitic twins do not harm anybody. But people with multiple personality are rarely harmless. Natasha can be very harmful, it will be very necessary to dig into her past and know the reasons that have given rise to these alters in her. But that being a cumbersome and lengthy process, void of any guarantee of success even after elongated psychotherapist sessions, Dr. Suresh was getting wary over it, when he heard Dr. Jaya Mathur speaking to someone on phone,

Jaya: “After listening to your case, it seems the person is suffering from BorderLine Personality Disorder.” Dr. Suresh was alarmed hearing the words, BorderLine Personality Disorder. Another psychological disorder which wreaks havoc on the life of the patients and the loved ones of the patient.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is defined as a personality disorder primarily characterized by emotional dysregulation, extreme "black and white" thinking, or "splitting", and chaotic relationships. Their mood swings like a pendulum and they can love someone till eternity in a moment and at the very next moment they hate them to the extent of posing any harm to them. Dr. Suresh was thinking about all this and thought how psychological disorders had led to most of the problems in today’s life. The most alarming fact was the rise in the number of such cases with modernization and urbanization. This was surely related to the increase in the stress level of the population. The average income of an individual has no doubt increased manifold, but as they say, everything has a price; the increase in income brought with itself an increased paranoia to invite more and more stress in life. Today as we see youngsters starting their earnings with thousands, magnitude times with what their fathers started, but living standards have shown a dramatic downfall. They might have added years to life, but have not added life to years.