Aruna Shanbaug, the KEM Hospital nurse, who has been in a vegetative state for the past 40 years, is down with pneumonia, triggering scare among her caregivers at KEM hospital on Friday.
The ailment left the rape survivor in a breathless state, prompting doctors to shift her from the hospital’s ward 4 into the medical intensive care unit (MICU). A room outside the ward at KEM has been Shanbaug’s home ever since she was rendered paralyzed after being attacked and raped by a ward boy in 1973.
On Friday, Shanbaug did not seem to be her usual self; the nurses attending to her round-the-clock noticed that she had difficulty in breathing and immediately alerted the doctors. Shanbaug was promptly moved to the MICU and put on non-invasive oxygen support. Tests confirmed pneumonia and she was put on antibiotics.
KEM hospital dean Dr Shubhangi Parkar said she was responding well to medications. “The vital parameters are an indicator. They have shown great improvement. Senior doctors are attending to her several times a day, and resident doctors are keeping a watch,” said Dr Parkar, adding she was now being fed through tubes. Hoping Shanbaug would be moved out of MICU shortly, Parkar said, “She should be better soon.”
Then a 25-year-old nurse at the hospital, Shanbaug was brutalized by ward boy Sohanlal Bartha Valmiki. To pin her down, he used a dog chain around her neck, causing serious damage to her brain cells and reducing her to a vegetative state.
Around a month ago, Shanbaug lost her elder sister, Shanta Nayak (77), her only family in the city. Nayak, who lived in a chawl in Lower Parel, had earlier said she did not have the resources to take care of Shanbaug. According to hospital staffers, Nayak had not visited her sister in over two decades. Sieving from her memory, Nayak’s neighbour Jaya Sarraya said, “Aruna would come here till she got her quarters in the hospital. But Shanta or her daughters seldom discussed her. A lot of time has passed since the incident.”
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Aruna-Shanbaug-in-ICU-with-pneumonia/articleshow/25569358.cms
