At 3.30 am her mother passed away in the Covid ICU after a week’s battle with the virus. Six hours later, Dr Shilpa Patel, an associate professor with anatomy department at state-run SSG Hospital, in Vadodara was back in the saddle trying to save other lives. After carrying out the last rites of her 77-year-old mother, Kanta Ambalal Patel, Dr Patel diligently donned her PPE suit once again - staying true to her mother’s words - duty before everything else!
Dr Rahul Parmar too lost his mother, Kanta Parmar, 67, who passed away from age-related issues in Gandhinagar last week. But Parmar, who as nodal officer for Covid management and part of dead body disposal team at Central Gujarat’s biggest hospital, finished the cremation rituals and rushed back to join duty on Friday.
“It was a natural death. I finished the cremation rituals with my family and returned to Vadodara,” said Parmar, who is with Preventive and Social Medicine Department at SSG.
Officer on special duty for Covid-19 in Vadodara, Dr Vinod Rao, said the Covid warriors displayed great personal commitment and devotion to duty even amid their mourning. But for warriors like Dr Patel or Dr Parmar, service to humanity is literally their only form of worship at the moment. Dr Parmar had to fight a personal battle with coronavirus last year when he got infected in December while on duty. “I was admitted for five days here (in SSG) itself. I was administered remdesivir and after 14 days’ quarantine period, I had rejoined duty,” said the doctor who has been handling the tough task of coordinating and handing over bodies of Covid-19 victims to their immediate families for more than a year now.
Dr Shilpa too has been on Covid-19 duties on rotation every month since the beginning of the pandemic. “We had shifted my mother from Mehsana to Vadodara after the private practitioner there told us that we will have to arrange for remdesivir ourselves. Since she was admitted at the SSG only, I could at least keep visiting her,” said Dr Shilpa, adding that her mother was admitted on April 7 and she died on April 15. She, along with her brother, carried their mother’s body wrapped as per Covid protocol in an ambulance and cremated her at Akota crematorium. Recalling how her parents always taught her to work with dedication, Dr Patel said that her mother had insisted that she should stop worrying about her and concentrate on her duty just a couple of hours before she passed away. Dr Patel said, “Based on rotation, my Covid duty was supposed to begin at 9 am on Thursday, but mom departed before that.
