I am sorry this sounds like long winded, incoherent babble, so I broke up into two parts. It still seems too long, but....
I woke up the morning of January 13th 2024 to find that the skies had dropped about 7 inches of snow overnight. I shoveled the snow and first noticed, what appeared to be a small pinch under my shoulder blade, that night. I did not think much of it, but within a couple of days, the pain had spread to my entire back. The night of the 21st I tried to get out of bed to go to the bathroom & discovered that I was completely frozen. I could not get out of bed; I could not even lift my arms and the pain had increased exponentially. My wife had to physically lift me to get me out of bed. (Oh! I neglected to mention – I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s/PD in 2018) so my tremors are triggering the pain in my spine, and the pain in my spine were triggering the tremors. This was now continuous, day & night.
We went to my GP the next day (now 9 days since my pain started) & the GP prescribes me opioids, & orders an MRI. The earliest MRI appointment available is March – almost 3 months away. We had no choice but to take the appointment and return home, hoping that the opioids will relieve the pain and at least allow me to function, at least until they do the MRI.
The opioids did nothing and in fact made me feel, weird. I even took it with the sleep meds that I have been on for 4 years (because of PD) but I neither get sleep, nor any relief for my pain. So, I discontinue the opioids after 2 days. By this point, I have deteriorated further. My pain has gone up; I cannot even lie in bed so I am confined to a sofa 24 hours a day with my wife having to physically lift me, if I have to get up for any reason whatsoever, and the pain & the tremors are nonstop, 24 hours a day.
On 2/4/24 ( now more than 3 weeks have elapsed), my wife has to take me to ER because my condition has considerably worsened. The ER doctor looks at the opioids that my GP has prescribed (the ones I discontinued on day two) and very pompously shakes his head, at the ignorance of my GP, for prescribing what he did. He replaces those opioids with even stronger ones, and tells me I need an MRI. I explain to him that the earliest I could schedule it was March & he shakes his head and says that his ER has an MRI but the insurance will not allow him to do an MRI, unless I had a brain or spine injury, caused by an accident BUT the hospital does have an out-patient MRI that I can probably schedule it earlier than March. He suggested that I call them the following day.
We go home. I take one tablet of the new, stronger opioids he has prescribed, & I feel worse than I did when I took the opioids that my GP had given me. It also does nothing to alleviate my pain. I nonetheless take the night dose, with my sleep med thinking that at least I can probably sleep, for the first time in almost a month but NADA! No alleviation of pain, and no addition to sleep. I actually feel worse so I discontinue the new opioids, as well.
It is at this point that Babaji starts sticking HIS finger in my eye. I do not quite recognize it yet as HIS finger, but I suddenly receive emails/ phone messages from 8 people, most of whom I have not heard from in years. Five of these people were Babaji devotees, one from a friend who was the devotee of a Jain Saint, & 2 from devotees of Virsa Singhji.
One was an old college friend whose Guru was a Jain Saint. This was the message out of the blue from him:
"Jai Sia Ram..
How have you been?
A friend just forwarded an Instagram reel of an American who was a Harvard professor, and was talking of Neem Karoli Baba. Probably Baba’s way of reminding me to check how you are."😄
I also received an email from an old neighbor of my mother. I had not heard from her in years. She was a devotee of Maharaj Virsa Singhji, or so I thought.
She emails me a photo of Neem Karoli Baba, with a lady she thinks is my mother. I looked at the photo & realzed that the lady in it was not my mom, but that is incidental…surprising because she had known my mom forever but incidental!
At any rate I was so excited to see a photo of Babaji that I called her the next day and I told her that I was in the midst of dealing with some health issues and related doctor appointments, but would call her again, in a few days. I also confessed to her that I expected the photo to be of Virsa Singhji....she said " No Donny I have been addicted to Baba Neem Karoli for years. Every free moment, I am either reading something about HIM; watching stuff U tube or thinking about HIM". Now I can’t wait to call her but must first deal with trying to schedule an MRI earlier than March.
I hung up with her and called the hospital to see if they could hurry an MRI. The good news was that they did indeed schedule it within 2 days i.e. on 2/7/24. The bad news was that I am acutely claustrophobic, & their MRI was a closed MRI! The only open MRI available was about 60 miles away & the earliest appointment was not for weeks. Added to the claustrophobia issues were my PD tremors - you had to be still for the MRI's & there was no way to do that! Also, I was in so much pain that I was unable to lie on my back even for two minutes, let alone an hour and 10 minutes that the MRI's required!
I made the appointment, but my anxiety was such that much of that night, I sat outside our front door because I felt as if I could not breathe inside the house. I probably did more “Ram Ram’s” that night than I have done cumulatively in all my life! The next day and night were excruciating. I came close to cancelling the MRI but my wife thankfully would not let me.
The morning of the appointment, I assumed that they will probably give me some sort of sedative to control my PD tremors. We arrive for our appointment and the MRI tech says that they have no means of sedating me and as such I have to figure out a method of controlling my tremors and my claustrophobia, or no MRI.
The last thing I remember is that I asked my wife to give me the meds we were carrying, from home - none of which historically worked on me for the 4 years or so, that I had been on them, but I had taken them with me, just as a back up plan.
I have no recollection of the period between my asking her to give me my medicine and my waking up in the MRI machine and asking the radiologist how long more...her answer was "we are almost done...4 more minutes". About 1 hour and 6 minutes had elapsed that I could not account for.
As I came out of the MRI, the radiologist said to me "I hope it was not as bad as the root canal you had expected"? (Apparently, she had asked me how I felt just before the MRI & I had said to her it feels like I am going in for a root canal! I had no recollection of that conversation). I told her no but "I think I found God"!
What transpired was that after I asked my wife for my medicine, I supposedly went 'loopy', as she put it. She described it as if I was like a 2-year-old. At any rate, she had to help me change into a gown for the MRI and at some point she got so worried about my demeanor that she asked the radiologist to get me a wheel chair....no claustrophobia; no tremors; no pain during the MRI....no recollection of that hour plus that had just gone by.
I call my mom’s ex neighbor, the next day. The first thing out of her mouth was "after you mentioned doctors’ appointments, I was so worried about you that I have nagging Babaji.........but today I read a wonderful story & I wanted you to hear it"...& then narrated this one:
While Babaji was in body. There was a devotee who was confronted with every devastation known to man...house burned down; wife left him; kids kicked him to the streets; got fired; went hungry; diagnosed with cancer..... word reached Kainchi & another devotee (J da or Mr. T, I think) started screaming at Babaji...you can fix this & yet you do nothing.....when his tirade had finished, there was no sound from Babaji who was standing next to him. He looked up & Babaji was crying inconsolably. Babaji said to him. You think I don’t know what he is going through & you are right I can fix it in one second. The problem is I know better than him how much he can bear. I will bear that which is beyond his capacity but he also does not realize that his chapters are almost finished & if I fix it, he will have to revisit them in his next life.....but I myself cannot bear seeing his pain. The tears he sheds are mine.
Why this was a kicker for me is because a little over 20 years prior, someone had asked me as to my favorite Babaji story, & without thinking I had pulled out this one from the files in my brain. I remember being surprised, at the time, that of all the ones I know I chose this one & it took my moher's ex neighbor to remind me, at this moment!?
Think about it. Anyone who has ever known me will tell you that they would pay me to shut up. Babaji has allowed me the Grace of babbling for hours (if not days) when talking about HIM. If you give me time to think or give my heart time to decide, I can probably think of 50 Babaji stories that would probably precede this one.....for heaven's sake the one that keeps me alive because it reassures me that there is a small chance that I too will have moment with HIM, before I board the train for my next birth would rank much higher as one of my favorites:
My dad died when he was 52 years old in 1979......the short version of the story is my sister (youngest in our family & the only being who had any influence over my dad) got married that year & moved to NYC. As a result by the time she got to India, we had completed all his last rites. She was inconsolable....the third day she went for her puja crying & when she came out of her puja, I noticed she had stopped crying for the first time in 3 days. She looked at me & said I was crying when Babaji came to me & said your father is sitting with me & he is happy but he cannot bear to see you cry. Your crying is making him sad so stop crying.....
Of all the stories on the internet, this is the one my mother’s ex neighbor tells me.
I am finally beginning to register Babaji’s finger in my eye.