The Boy Who Learned to Stitch Wounds So His Grandmother Could Eat

There is a grandmother and a grandson. That is the whole family. Everyone else is gone.

During the lockdown, they lost two people at once. Jain Bai's husband, Jagdev Singh. And the grandson's mother. Two deaths, back to back, in the same household. When the world opened up again, it was just the two of them left, looking at each other across a small room in Gariyaband, figuring out how to survive.

They have been doing that ever since.

What Happened to Her Foot

Jain Bai Nagesh is 61 years old. She has had diabetes for years. About one and a half years ago, she had a fall. A small injury, the kind that usually heals in a few weeks.

But diabetes does not allow small injuries to stay small. The wound did not heal. It worsened, slowly and then rapidly, until the infection spread deep into the tissue of her right foot. Today the damage is severe. What started as a minor cut has become a full diabetic foot emergency, requiring multi-stage surgery and weeks of hospital care.

She is in pain every single day. And for one and a half years, the only person treating her wounds has been her grandson.

The Boy Who Stopped Going to School

He was studying after 12th grade. He had plans. The kind of quiet plans that young men from poor families make carefully, knowing there is no safety net if things go wrong.

Then things went wrong.

When his mother died and his grandfather was gone and his grandmother's foot began to deteriorate, he made a calculation. If he left for college, there would be no one to change her dressings. No one to monitor the wound. No one to make sure she ate or moved or did not fall again.

He stopped studying. He came home. And then, because they could not afford the Rs. 500 that a doctor charges per visit, he taught himself. He learned how to clean the wound. How to apply dressings. How to do what needed to be done with his own hands so that the money they did not have would not need to be spent.

He is not a doctor. He is a grandson who had no other choice.

What Their Life Looks Like

They do not have Rs. 500 for a doctor's visit. They do not have money for medicines. Whatever they need, they find a way to beg or borrow for, because there is no income, no savings, no other family member to call.

The grandson gave up his education. He gave up his future. He sits beside his grandmother every day and does what he can with what he has. He is her doctor, her caregiver, her only company, and her only reason to believe that someone in the world still cares whether she lives or dies.

She is his only family. He is hers.

What Treatment Requires

The doctors at SK Care Hospital, Raipur have assessed Jain Bai's condition and laid out a clear plan. She needs multi-stage surgical treatment for the diabetic foot on her right leg, followed by 25 to 30 days of hospital care including ICU monitoring, medicines, investigation, surgery, and skin graft support.

The total cost of her treatment is Rs. 10,67,000.

For a household where Rs. 500 for a doctor's visit is out of reach, this number belongs to a different world entirely.

Two People. One Room. No One Else.

Jain Bai did not choose to get diabetes. She did not choose to fall. She did not choose to watch her husband die and her family shrink to one grandson who loves her enough to give everything up.

He did not choose any of this either. He chose to stay. That is the only choice he made.

He should be in a classroom somewhere, building the life his mother would have wanted for him. Instead he is changing wound dressings with hands that were never trained for it, rationing medicines, and hoping his grandmother makes it through another night.

They have each other. That has been enough to survive. It is not enough to heal.

Please donate. Please share. A grandson gave up his future so his grandmother would not be alone. Help make sure that sacrifice was not in vain.