Life was looking up after a long time. It had been several years since Raja and Parvati had moved to Hyderabad from their home at Prodattur in Andhra Pradesh. Raja a mason earned a daily wage for his services. A lot of struggle, grit, determination and several years later, they finally  had a decent home. Their two kids were going to school and they had enough to go by. Parvati had recently taken up a small job in a pharmaceutical firm that added to the household income.

On the Sankranti day on last year Raja after finishing his work was returning home. Walking the familiar streets he turned towards his home. It was way past the sunset and the streets had become dark. Little did he know that his life was going to change dramatically in the next few moments. While walking back in the darkness Raja did not notice a piece of metal railing jutting out from the side. The sharp piece of metal cut his right knee. He did not think much of it as such things would happen to everybody every other day.

After coming home his wife Parvati applied some medicine on the wound so that it could heal faster.

A few days passed and Raja started going back to work. But he noticed that his right knee had swollen and had become progressively more painful and he started limping.

A few more days later the wound had grown in size and the skin on the leg stated peeling off. Alarmed husband and wife visited a local hospital where the doctors declared that the wound caused by the metal had become infected. Raja and Parvati then visited an advanced centre where the treatment began.

“Initially they removed the infected skin and put a dressing. It looked as if the wound was healing, but then the infection started spreading and within a few days it had covered much of the leg,” Parvati said. Not knowing what to do we rushed to an emergency unit of the hospital. “I was admitted in the ICU. They removed the infected skin and did the dressing. After many days in the ICU I returned home, but the infection was still there. Again after a month we returned to the hospital,” Raja said.

“The treatment was taking a toll on my husband’s body. He had become very thin. Finally doctors told that they would not be able to tell how long it would take before he became all right. In the mean time we enquired with some private hospitals, which had plastic surgery departments. They were demanding several lakhs for the treatment and said that if you have the money only then you come here otherwise go somewhere else. This kind of response discouraged us to a great extent," Parvati said.

“There were also some doctors who said that unless immediate care was given there were chances that my husband might not survive. “This really broke my heart. We did not know what to do or where to go. I was witnessing helplessly my husband wasting down gradually day by day with little options left. 

By this time Raja had completely become bed ridden. “I could not do even little things like walking a few paces for going to the toilet. I could not even place my right leg on the ground. For everything I had to depend on somebody,” Raja said. Added to that the family income dried up as Raja could not go for work and his wife had to take extra leaves to tend to him with hope that somehow he would start improving. The situation was a desperate for the family.

As we have seen, Swami has his own ways to getting things done. We may think them to be mere coincidences, but in the God’s scheme of things there are not coincidences.   

As mentioned, Parvati had to take frequent leaves from her company to tend to Raja. During one of her visits to her company’s HR department something interesting happened.

“I would visit the HR department of my company frequently for taking leaves due my husband’s treatment. So they asked me how my husband was doing, to which I narrated them the whole story. Then the manager of HR heard my story and suggested that I should visit Sai Baba’s hospital in Puttaparthi. He mentioned that one of his relatives had undergone a totally free heart surgery at Baba’s hospital. And added that there was a plastic surgery department also there, which might take care of my husband’s problem. ” she said.

For us it was like a manna from heaven. We had heard of Baba’s hospital, but did not know that it had a plastic surgery department. My brother-in-law stayed near Puttaparthi and so we asked him to enquire. When he enquired, we came to know that the treatment was available and it was totally free of charge, as it had been told to us.  We did not waste a single minute after receiving this information,” Raja said.

Both husband and wife leaving their children in the care of their in-laws visited the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, Prasanthigram, Puttaparthi. Covid was raging at that time and regular admissions were halted for some time as the whole hospital staff were busy taking care of covid patients. But when Raja visited the hospital, the surgeons realized that it was an emergency case, as his leg was badly infected. He was admitted immediately.

According to Dr. Gurumurthy the patient had a 6 month old cellulitis for which he visited various hospitals in Hyderabad. He then finally came to the SSSIHMS, Prasanthigram. Initial examination revealed that he had developed a non-healing ulcer on the right thigh, knee and leg. He was taken up for surgery and skin  taken from the left thigh was meshed and grafted on to all the raw areas sutured and dressed. He stayed in the hospital for around a month. After adequate recovery he underwent regular physiotherapy sessions to get the movement of his leg back. He had an uneventful recovery and was later discharged.   

It took almost a month for Raja to recover after the surgery, which tells us the dire situation Raja was in. It was with the persistent efforts of the surgeons, the nurses, the physiotherapists and the dieticians that Raja was able to get back to normal and started walking again.

"This life I have got is a gift from Swami to me. We were in dire straits, we did not know whether I would get better, much later after I have recovered my wife told me that some doctors were not sure whether I would even survive. In such a situation Swami entered our lives and saved me. From where were we to arrange for so many lakhs of rupees that many hospitals were demanding. In Swami’s hospital we got the best care totally free of charge. For this we both will be ever indebted to him,” Raja said.