People who get admitted to hospital for some ailment wish and pray that they don’t have to stay there for long, that they get a quick discharge after being treated of their disease. But, shocking as it may sound, an elderly woman has been staying at the Anandaban Mission Hospital in Lele, Lalitpur district, for the past 44 years for treatment of a disease that tainted her whole life, reports Kantipur daily.

Maisani Tamang, who is originally from Ichwok of Sindhupalchowk recently celebrated her 82nd birthday in the same hospital. After contracting leprosy at the age of 38 she left her husband and son to come to this hospital for treatment, never to leave it again. Since then some 10 thousand patients have returned home after being treated at the hospital which was built some 50 years ago.

She is the only patient who has stayed in this hospital for so many years, Gopal Pokharel, a hospital staff, told Kantipur daily. Patients at this hospital are provided with free treatment and food.

And unlike other patients, one doesn’t find only medicines scattered at the side of her bed in the women ward of the hospital. She has a bible by her side (she converted to Christianity after she started living at the hospital), while few cooking utensils, gifts and decorative items adorn the table at the other side of her bed. A small tape-recorder left by a foreign doctor sits safely against her pillow. This keeps her amused all the time while she ceaselessly weaves sweaters and other woolen items. For her toil she gets Rs 300 a month from the hospital.

She also has a wooden cabinet, a suitcase and lots of clothes, and because of this the hospital has arranged for her a separate room so that she could safely put away all her belongings.

At the age of 38 dry spots started appearing all over Maisani’s body. Soon her sister-in-law found about it, and fearing that it would taint the family prestige, she separated Maisani from her husband and son and told her to shift at the cow stable.

“Their treatment towards me started getting worse even after I decided to divorce my husband,” she said.

After she could no longer bear the constant taunts of her family and the society she had no option but to leave her village. Then a sympathetic neighbor brought her to the Anandaban hospital and since then she never had to look back.

At the hospital she received the kind of love and care, she says, she never even imagined and soon she started recovering and gaining her health. Now 44 years later one can hardly say that she had ever suffered from leprosy.

But because she gets boils in her hands and legs from time to time and possibly out of sympathy for her that the hospital has thought it better to let her stay in the ward.

But then where would she go even if she leaves the hospital. She rarely thinks of her home, she doesn’t even care what happened to it after she left. She says her three-year-old son died soon after she came here and her husband and sister-in-law died through natural causes.

Her chief responsibility at the hospital is to sing religious songs to women patients coming here for treatment. Besides she also teaches other women patients how to weave sweaters the wool for which is provided for by the hospital.

I learned to read and write here, Maisani said while continuing to weave the sweater deftly. I also try to cheer up those who come here after contracting leprosy. nepalnews.com ag Feb 09 08