120........

'Those who have come for the test, please drink more water. The more you drink, the better the result would be' shouted the receptionist.

I was sitting at the out-patient ward, waiting for my turn. The receptionist was having a look at the patients who were waiting for the ultrasound test, I was one among them, he stopped his glance at me and asked 'Sir, did  you drink water?' Making me feel a little embarrassed. I just signaled him that I already had four glasses of water with my fingers doing the talking. But in return he said loudly 'four is not enough, have two more, for a better result!' and added insult to injury.

I got up and walked to the water dispenser, had two more glasses of water and sat back watching the test match between India and England, with M.S.D in his avatar as a medium pacer and 'The Wall' taking guard behind the stumps.

Coming to this test at the hospital, the ultrasound test had to be performed only when your bla**er is full, so that the renal calculi, in general terms, the kidney stones would be easy to detect.

The six glasses of water that I consumed started gushing inside. However I had to wait till the test is done. I self-motivated telling 'Perseverance pays my boy!' When the situation was getting out of control, I walked to the receptionist with great difficulty and asked him when was my turn, he said there were four more people in the queue,and  I had to wait for some more time.

I returned to the seat and continued watching the match, M.S.D was carrying on with his spell of bowling, there came a beautiful inswinger, went past the edge of KP's bat, loud shouts from the keeper and the bowler, the finger went up, KP was not convinced, he asked for a review. The Indian team erupted in joy and everyone started congratulating M.S.D. The replays showed that there was no edge and KP survived.

However, my survival was under threat now. I was stilling holding ON it. I was actually feeling good that I was capable enough to hold ON for that long. I dint wanna give up. The receptionist looked at me and said I was next.

I quickly walked to the lab and was standing at the door, soon the in-patient walks out and I was called in. The Doctor looked amicable, the nurse too. There was a bed,with a computer monitor beside and other paraphernalia required for the test. I was asked to lie down on the bed and was asked to lower my pan*s.

The doctor came and put the image detector with a gel applied to it's head. He started moving the detector and looked at the monitor and chuckled saying 'you managed to hold on a lot Karthik!', I felt an immediate feather in the cap with that comment and I gave a little laugh.

He moved the detector all over my torso and lower the torso and found nothing and said  'No sign of stones'. He asked me to let THAT out and come back once again so that he could find something after that. I was relieved with what he said, not that there are no stones, I am talking about the latter statement. I went to the washroom and there passed my two hours of unprecedented efforts, I could proudly say, 'Mission Accomplished!', with that, that day I learnt a new meaning for the word 'Relief'.

I walked back to the lab and the doctor performed a second trial, but the result was unchanged. I took my reports, paid the bill and returned from the hospital with a definite sense of relief and a :) and for some reason or no reason these 120 minutes deserved a space on my blog!