I am a General Surgeon living and working in Cochin in the south Indian state of Kerala. As a surgeon, I was passionately involved in surgical diseases of the abdomen. I enjoyed working inside the abdomen with my scalpel, scissors, forceps, and cautery. At 39, I was doing ‘not a bad job,’ having been mentored by my boss, a senior surgeon, a tough taskmaster, who settled for nothing less than perfect.

It was the afternoon of January 14th, 2005. I had just operated on a patient with rectal malignancy. After a while, I walked up to the ICU to check on the patient I had just operated. There, I fell with a thud at the nurses’ station. A physician taking rounds in the adjacent ICU was summoned by the nurses who were taken aback by my fall. He promptly diagnosed stroke as the reason for my fall. Conscious and alert, I objected to the diagnosis. As with any other patient, my first reaction was to deny the diagnosis. That blood flow to the right side of my brain been cut off by a clot in a large blood vessel was confirmed through specialized investigations. A rapidly swelling brain caused pressure within my skull to build up by the minute. I passed out. I was wheeled off for emergency surgery of my head. When consciousness returned, I realized I had been hooked to a ventilator, from which I was eventually removed. I came back to my own to behold my siblings, my wife, colleagues, paramedics, my mother, and daughters hovering around my bed. After a while, my wife, an anesthetist, related to me what had befallen me. I soon realized my left side was considerably weak. I was elated that I was alive!

 Intense physiotherapy and a course of Ayurveda followed. I realized disappointingly that the surgeon in me had died prematurely the day I fell. How could a surgeon with a weak side operate? Hanging up my surgical scrubs, I moved from the operating theatre to the ICU, where patients after surgery are looked after, and I have been working there since. Why am I relating this sordid story of mine to the world?

 I love to tell this ‘old, old story because it reminds me of Jesus and his love for me.’ It reminds me of the bolstering presence of Christ in me. It reminds me I could have died that day, and that Christ chose to be beside me, even though I was unable to request Him so. He was right there to command ‘get up and walk.’ God, through Christ, has brought me thus far to tell the world that by taking my weak hand, He led me through that stormy night into the light of a new dawn. Jesus was right there – unsolicited – because He cared for me.