Grateful recollections !

There are times when memories flood us with abounding gratefulness!

Anna and I had one such occasion during this week. 

Fr Johny, who is the founder of Sneha Deepam, a retreat centre at Vellore, warmly hosted us when Anna and I along with Arpit went to Vellore to attend the interview for Arpit to join the Christian Medical College for his undergraduate studies. 

Since that first meeting with him, Anna and I received his hospitality every week since 1999 when we used to go on Tuesday afternoons for time of reflection and prayer in the chapel. We needed that space and time for us to feel integrated with the life at CMC after joining to begin the Developmental Paediatrics Unit. 

Anna and I  were used to to have regular debriefing times with Fr Joe Mannath and Fr George since 1987 till we left Chennai in 1997 to join CMC Vellore. 

What was special about Fr Johny was his thoughtfulness and kindness to befriend people and be an encouragement. He created an ambience of quietness to help people who needed silence and solitude, while staying in the retreat centre. 

Having known that he was fond of birds, we left our bird house of about twenty birds with him, as a symbol of gratefulness when we retired from CMC Vellore and left Vellore in 2010. His response to us at that time, was 'You are leaving something of yourself with us'! 

It was after a few years we met Fr Johny. It was an occasion of happy recollections. 

The other two whom we meet were Dr and Mrs Mathew Chandy, who were faculty at CMC Vellore.

 Dr Mathew was the council secretary of the CMC Vellore, who was involved in inviting ASHIRVAD to start the Developmental Paediatrics Unit through a Memorandum of Understanding in 1997. He recollected the occasion as CMC normally started new facilities by the existing faculty trained in a particular discipline. In inviting Anna and me to start a new facility was a departure from the convention which involved long process of discussion and deliberation. Dr V.I.Mathan who was the director of CMC at that time took the initiative to carry forward this dialogue. It was his interest to include Developmental Paediatrics as a speciality in one among the five new departments that CMC planned to start in the centenary year of the Institution.

Dr Chandy being a neurosurgeon, was the one whom I approached probably in 2000, when a child with developmental challenges in spite of having been on three anti-epileptic medicines, had intractable seizures. The EEG showed focal seizure activity and MRI Mesial Temporal Sclerosis. On enquiring from him, about surgical intervention, he said that he had not taken up a developmentally challenged child for such a surgery earlier. But he proceeded with surgery and the child recovered well with only one drug required for prophylaxis. For three years following the surgery the child had no seizure and showed developmental progress and could join a school for his learning. 

Mrs Chandy was an Electrophysiologist overseeing the EEG laboratory in CMC Vellore. Since the starting of the Developmental Paediatrics Unit we had three to four children needing EEG almost every day. Often these children, because of their multiple development needs did not sleep well after medicines for undergoing the EEG tracing. It meant the technologists had to be patient and ready to attempt a second or third time. Mrs Chandy was magnanimous to allow that flexibility and encouraged her colleagues to give earlier appointment for taking EEG when she noticed that nearly sixty percent of children with neuro-developmental challenges had Cortical Electrical Dysfunction. I was keen to have some details on sleep architecture of children, which she offered to provide while reporting  the EEG. Once she told me that she included a large section on children's EEG in the monogram on EEG that she published, by using the EEG of children referred from Developmental Paediatrics Unit. 

When Anna and I met three of them this week in a church, I felt a warm welcome from all three of them. Their recollections of our association with them in the past, gave us a feeling of cordial regards they had towards us. 

Life is a such a confluence of relationships and interactions! How much others contribute to enrich our lives! Anna and I returned remembering the happy occasions of associating with three of them. 

Recollecting memories would help us to grow in gratefulness !

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)