The Life of Krishna

I can’t believe that Krishna is gone.

He died last Monday.

I received a text from his wife Susan, that he had passed away, and I still can’t believe it.

I thought for sure he had beaten the cancer.

We had eaten lunch together two weeks before he passed. Yes, he had lost his hair. Yes, he looked a little puffy from the steroids. But he was still smiling and still his jovial self.

We talked about what plans he had for his condition and what options were available. He was going to see a doctor in Phoenix about having surgery to remove the right kidney and ureter which was the initial source of the cancer.

Krishna had a rare uroepithelial cancer that is typically aggressive and malignant. He had told me that the survival rates weren’t good, but that was nearly two years ago.

He was still here!

So I figured naturally that he was.going to beat this malady.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was still with us. Krishna was a workhorse. He could work harder than anyone I knew including myself, and that’s saying something because I didn’t think anyone could outwork me.

But he did.

Krishna ran the PICU in our town (two of them), and when he wasn’t doing that he was running the hospitalist service at the HCA hospital.

He was the first PICU doctor in our town.

He was a pioneer, and he made my life as a pediatrician a sweet dream.

Whenever I had a patient who needed to be admitted to the unit, I would call Krishna and give him a few details, and he would say send him over.

Many times he would sort these issues out when he was in India on vacation.

I had a lot of chronic patients back in the day, a lot of sick kids, and Krishna never turned me down once.

He trusted me and the other doctors he worked with.

I didn’t have to give him a large report nor go into obsessive detail. I gave him the basics, and off the patient went.

Krishna had enough confidence in himself that he could handle anything that came his way.

He was also smart enough to know that it’s not a good idea to second guess a doctor who thinks a kid needs to be admitted to the unit.

It’s always better to play it safe.

We were lucky to have Krishna. I was lucky to have Krishna.

For 25 years, I had the privilege of working with him.

He made my life easy. In a way I guess I got spoiled.

There were many times that I sent him a patient and then thought afterwards: “My gosh, why did I send him that patient? The patient didn’t need to go into the unit.”

A week later, Krishna would call me and tell me that the kid was still in the unit.

Well, I thought, I guess he did need to go in.

Of course, I must’ve sent Krishna some garbage admissions over the years, some stuff that really didn’t need to go in.

But Krishna was smart enough to know that pediatricians were just as liable to underestimate as they were to overestimate their patient’s level of sickness.

So he took everything that came his way. And he never argued.

He was one of a kind.

I’ll never see his likes again.

His death has frightened me and prompted me to think of my own mortality and what my legacy might me.

I shouldn’t be frightened though because Krishna was not frightened.

Surely he must’ve known the end was near, but yet he persevered right up to the very end.

He worked up until the end.

He felt comfortable with his legacy.

He knew what he had accomplished.

This was the life of Krishna.

To find and to do that one thing that God has placed you upon this Earth to accomplish.

Sincerely,

Archer Crosley

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