Dr Denton Cooley, the name
sounded exotic to my 6 year old self. It was unlike any other name I had heard
before. It sounded exotic and important; a name to be uttered in hushed tones,
respectfully, almost reverently. The fact that people were willing to travel to
the opposite side of the earth, in the middle of a brutal winter to consult him,
made him a sort of demigod in my eyes.
To my sister and me, the celebrated
cardiologist was nothing short of a hero, who had miraculously healed our beloved
grandfather or ‘appachan’, as we fondly called him. I often picture my
grandfather travelling with my father to faraway Houston, their maiden voyage
to a foreign land; their bodies, used to tropical weather, reacting with shock
to the sudden drastic dip in
temperature; their minds getting overwhelmed from having to absorb a whole new
world around them.
Afterwards, when our
grandfather lapsed into tales of his adventures abroad, he would describe the sterile
hospital rooms and corridors, so clean that you could almost eat off its floors;
the nurses with their kind, sympathetic eyes and accented instructions which
made him feel almost guilty, for asking them to repeat it again, slowly. The
huge portions of food they served, always with a helping of dessert, jelly
which looked like brightly colored glass cubes or a sweet muffin, which he
never managed to finish.
His eyes lit up every time he spoke about Dr
Cooley; the tall, soft spoken doctor who had given him the best gift a person
could give another; the gift of time. Time, to watch his granddaughters grow
from pig tailed girls to young women; time, to teach them the ways of the world,
to love them, to know them and pass on his legacy to them. His eyes turned moist and threatened to
overflow when he spoke about Dr Cooley, who wore his celebrity status so
lightly and treated each patient as a person first and not just a number to be
ticked off the list, who took out the time to sit with the patient and his family,
to answer their ‘silly’ doubts and dispel their fears. As Sir William Osler quoted,
“A good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who
has the disease”.
“Have you seen the hands of God?’ he once
asked me. Amused by my bewildered expression, he continued “it was a pair of
hands that gently shook me awake, welcomed me into my new life after the
surgery. It felt warm and surprisingly soft, as it held my hand and as I looked
into Dr Cooley’s blue eyes speckled with a tinge of grey, I said to myself that
these are the hands that gave me a new lease of life; these are the hands of God”.
“There is a crack, a crack
in everything/That’s how the light gets in”.
-Leonard Cohen (Anthem)
You were that ray of light
for our family, Dr Cooley. We thank you for that.
