The Visit I Almost Didn’t Make

I went to India in February 2025 for the first time in four years. When you live thousands of miles from your family, every visit carries weight. You try to see everyone, fit in every relative, every meal, every conversation you’ve been putting off over video calls. My aunt, who lives in Pune, was someone I really wanted to see. I grew up spending summer vacations at her place. She would cook for me, take me around the city, and make me feel like her house was my second home. But when I called her to plan the visit, she told me she was traveling to another city. Our schedules just didn’t line up. I told myself it was fine. I’d see her next time.

Two weeks after I landed back in Seattle, my phone rang. It was my dad. My aunt was in the ICU. She was paralyzed, unresponsive, and the doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her.

I remember sitting in my apartment after that call, and all I could think about was the fact that I was just there. I was in India. I could have seen her. I could have sat with her one more time before everything changed. That regret sat heavy in my chest for a long time.

The weeks that followed were some of the most difficult my family has been through. My aunt, who is nearing 70, was lying in a hospital bed with no diagnosis. Her left side was completely paralyzed. The doctors ran test after test, trying everything they could think of, but no one could tell us what was happening to her brain. For a family sitting in a hospital waiting room, that kind of uncertainty is its own form of suffering. You want someone in a white coat to tell you what’s wrong and how to fix it. But the brain doesn’t always give up its answers easily.

I called my dad and my uncle regularly, trying to understand what the doctors were saying, trying to piece things together from halfway across the world. But there wasn’t much anyone could tell me. The doctors themselves were uncertain, and all we could do was wait.

After three to four weeks in the ICU, they finally had an answer. It was meningitis. On top of that, she had also suffered a brain stroke, which is what had caused the paralysis. Having a diagnosis brought some relief, but it didn’t make the situation any less serious. She was still in the ICU, still unresponsive, still fighting.

The toll on her family was enormous. Her kids were the ones holding everything together, taking turns staying at the hospital through the night, talking to doctors, managing her care, all while keeping up with their own families and jobs. Other relatives came to help when they could, but it was her children who carried the heaviest load. Their patience and dedication during those months is something I deeply admire. I truly believe that their presence and persistence played a real role in bringing her back.

Because of the paralysis, she couldn’t eat on her own. The doctors had to insert a feeding tube through her throat. For roughly two and a half months, she stayed in the hospital. There were countless sleepless nights, moments of panic, and long stretches where the family just held their breath and hoped for the best. Eventually, slowly, she started to show signs of recovery. She was moved out of the ICU and into a nursing care unit within the hospital, and later, she was finally brought home.

Even at home, the road ahead was long. She has two nurses with her around the clock for all of her daily care. A speech therapist is helping her regain her ability to speak, which she lost, possibly from the time spent on the feeding tube. A physiotherapist is working with her to rebuild the muscle strength she lost after being bedridden for so long. She went from not being able to move at all to sitting up on her own, eating by herself, and now walking with the help of a walker. Every small step forward has been a victory for our family.

This February 2026, almost a year after her hospitalization, I went back to India. And this time, I made sure I visited her. There was no scheduling conflict that was going to stop me.

Walking into her house hit me in a way I wasn’t prepared for. This was the same house where I spent those childhood summers. The same rooms, the same walls. But the person I remembered, the woman who would greet me at the door, cook my favorite meals, and take me around the city, was now sitting in a chair, needing help with things she used to do without thinking. It broke my heart.

What made it even harder was learning that the brain disease had caused her to lose her short-term memory. She has no recollection of the last four to five years. She didn’t remember that I graduated. She didn’t know that I moved to Seattle. Family events, milestones, conversations, all of it gone from her memory.

I sat with her and showed her pictures on my phone. I told her about my life, my work, the things that had happened since we last saw each other. And even though her speech was broken, even though she couldn’t recall the details, she responded with the same warmth and love she’s always had. Some things, it seems, go deeper than memory.

She’s still on the road to recovery, and I hold on to the belief that the next time I visit, she’ll be the one to open the door for me. Maybe she’ll cook that same food. Maybe we’ll share old stories and make new ones. I’m choosing to believe that.

This experience changed how I see my work at Moberg Analytics. We build software that helps clinicians monitor and care for patients with brain injuries. I’ve always taken the work seriously. I’ve always understood that reliability matters, that even a small error in our systems could affect a patient’s care. But there’s a difference between understanding something intellectually and feeling it in your bones.

My aunt’s case showed me how mysterious the brain really is. For weeks, some of the best doctors available couldn’t tell us what was wrong. The brain doesn’t come with simple answers, and that uncertainty is terrifying for families. What I kept thinking about during those long weeks of not knowing was how much it would have meant to have better information. Better monitoring. Better tools for the doctors who were trying to figure out what was going on. And better ways to keep families informed about what was happening.

That’s exactly what we work on at Moberg. When a nurse is watching a patient’s brain activity at 3 AM, the data on that screen has to be right. When a family is calling from another country, desperate for answers, the clinical team needs tools that help them understand what they’re looking at. I think about my aunt’s kids, exhausted after another night at the hospital, trying to make sense of what the doctors were telling them. If our software can make even one moment like that clearer, more accurate, more trustworthy – then the work matters more than I can put into words.

If there’s anything I want you to take away from this, it’s simple. Don’t put off the visit. Don’t wait for the next trip. Pick up the phone. Show up. Because you never know when things will change. 

My aunt is getting stronger every day, and I’m grateful for that. This experience gave me something I didn’t expect. A deeper purpose in the work I do, and a reminder that behind every patient on our platform, there is a family just like mine, waiting and hoping.