Palliative care is when medicine stops trying to cure and starts trying to bring shanti, to make the ending journey less painful. You need it when the illness cannot be beaten, only endured. For those who cannot speak, we watch the eyes and the hands, and listen for the ghughuti in their breath.
My bua passed in our downstairs room last winter. The district doctor gave tablets, but managing the pain was my mother holding her feet, and me reading the Gita aloud even when I wasn't sure she could hear. The warmth in the room was our only true medicine.
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