A Course of Treatment

I have 29 doses of medication every day. I start with 30 ml of “syrup.” This is a dark brown thin liquid that doesn’t taste too bad. Then I take 2 pink capsules, 2 green capsules

2 large green pills, 1 tiny brown pill plus my Lincoln doctor’s pills, one for blood pressure and one for “urgency.” 

All that before breakfast, then after breakfast I have 30ml of the most disgusting bitter black liquid that I dilute and throw back as quickly as I can. 
I would love to stop taking that one - but it is for fat reduction, so I persevere. 
All the Ayurvedic medicines are then repeated before lunch and before the evening meal.

Every morning I have two massage sessions, but the Ayurvedic massage is very different from the sort of gentle beautician treatment we know in the west. Proper Ayurvedic massage is a four-handed affair. You have two masseurs (the masseuses are reserved for lady guests, sadly.) The masseurs are clothed; you are not. 

You shuffle into the treatment room, hang your dhoti or dressing-gown on a hook and sit on the side of the massive, solid wooden massage bench. It’s more than a yard wide and 8 feet long. While one masseur supports your chest, the other starts an exquisite, gentle oiling massage of your back and shoulders. After a while they change round, and the second masseur starts oiling your front and getting the circulation going.

For the next stage, they both take up positions facing you and work simultaneously on your left and right arms. They are perfectly synchronised to time with your grunts, squeezing down your arms as if they were trying to make your fingernails pop off. But it’s not painful, it’s exhilarating.

I then lie face down, and they start the massage-proper, again working up and down and side to side in unison. I always feel very vulnerable, lying stark naked while two fearsome foreigners molest me, but there’s not much to do except resign myself to the experience and lie there helpless.

There are various types of massage, mostly pretty messy and smelly in a herbal/spicy sort of way. At present I have two sessions. In the first, they heat up dried beans with medicinal spices in a big pan over a gas ring, and then wrap the beans in a piece of muslin and pummel away all over my body with these hot pads. For the second treatment, they have a mixture of leaves tied in muslin, and they dip this bundle in hot oil before pounding my body all over. But it’s not really suffering, because the sensation is pleasantly stimulating. Once the massaging is over they wipe off the worst of the oil, then send me to my room with strict instructions to sit quietly for at least 30 minutes before showering.

Most guests then plan their afternoon on the beach or seeing the sights in Kochi, but that’s not for me, as I am now on Phase Two of my treatment. (Those of a sensitive disposition should skip the rest of this post.) Ah me; this is where they put the TREAT into treatment. (NOT!)

I lie on the bench while they give my stomach a thorough hard rub-down: first my front, then around my midriff on my back. I then lie on my side while they give me a warm oil enema. The anticipation is worse than the experience, and it comes with the instruction to go and lie down and “hold it in for at least an hour.” Of course, the instinct is to do the exact opposite, and I lie on my bed trying not to think about it, then trying to concentrate on what I am supposed to do, and I am never quite sure which is the most effective strategy.

But, once again, the apprehension is unnecessary, because it isn’t really that difficult, it’s just that the whole experience is very unfamiliar, and in NHS terms, quite unthinkable.

And now comes the real treat. The leeches to drain the infected blood from the calves of my legs.

But I think you’ve had enough for one session; so we’ll leave that for . . . well maybe we’ll just leave it. No? You want to know about leeches? Ah well, if you insist, skip the rest if you are squeamish, or click on this link if you want to read more about leeches and see what they look like.

Oedema is a fairly common condition of swelling of the legs and ankles caused by fluid retention and poor circulation, which, in my case are partly the result of my size, and of spending 15 years on my feet, in the restaurant kitchen. Cellulitis is a blood infection which can be the result of a tiny scratch or insect bite, and is aggravated by poor circulation, so the combination of cellulitis and oedema is an unhealthy condition for someone my size and age. As I well know, it’s a condition that is also difficult to eradicate.

They gave me intravenous antibiotics in Lincoln Hospital

In 2014, Lincoln hospital prescribed me 90 days of penicillin following intravenous anti-biotics while I was hospitalised. The condition responded, but not completely and the infection remained.

One of the treatments at Mattindia is to use leeches to draw out the infected blood and excess fluid from the area. This is a treatment I had last year and found that it gave some relief to both the cellulitis and the oedema, though I have to say that the experience is initially daunting for someone coming from a more conventional and drug-based medical culture.

It’s very simple: I sit at my desk and read or write with my feet in a bowl containing an inch or two of water. A medical orderly puts a leech on my lower leg, and after a while it attaches itself to my foot or leg – but there is virtually no sensation to me. The leech then continues to draw out the liquid until it is replete – at which stage it simply drops into the water.

All straightforward so far, but the problem is that the blood keeps flowing, which is probably caused by the anticoagulant that exists in the saliva of the leech. The medical orderly cleans and bandages the tiny wound, but nothing seems to stop the flow, and I finish up going to bed that night with yards of bandaging and my lower leg wrapped in towels to absorb the flow.

The worst part is that I have been virtually immobile for the current week as I have to spend my day sitting and waiting – either because of the enema, or because of the leeches. No excuse not to write – even though I have probably made my hundred or so followers more than a little squeamish.

Sorry, about that. Maybe I should stick to lampooning the French.