Siddaganga Mutt seer Shivakumara Swami stopped consuming food two days before death

TUMAKURU: Sri Shivakumara Swami, the 111-year-old pontiff of Siddaganga Mutt, had stopped consuming liquid or solid food for two days before he breathed his last. Efforts by doctors to revive his weakening health due to a lung infection did not bear fruit, according to Dr Paramesh Shivana, the head of Siddaganga Hospital and Research Centre, Tumakuru.

Shivana told TNIE that the seer was suffering from severe health disorders from December 1. Though his recovery after a gall bladder surgery, during which a stent was implanted, showed positive signs, he was soon hit with another ailment. The doctor recalled that he was shifted to Chennai for treatment after a surgery to place a stent in his gall bladder was not successful.

“He had recovered well before being hit by a respiratory infection. This was treated for 15 days, before he spent 12 days at the Siddaganga Hospital,” he said. Apart from pleural effusion — build-up of fluid around the lung — his albumin levels were low, leading to the respiratory failure, Shivana said. Though a team of doctors was attending to him round the clock, the severity of the seers’ condition could not be rectified, he added. Days before his demise, the seer had expressed his desire to be shifted to mutt.  

Medical miracle
Doctors who treated the seer on several occasions in Tumakuru, Bengaluru and Chennai often considered his speedy recuperation a medical miracle. They were always in awe to see the centenarian in positive spirits after multiple hospitalisations and operations.

The seer had undergone 8 stent implants in his liver tube in the last two years, and there was no space for another stent when he was admitted to hospital in December 2018. His fighting spirit — he insisted that he would walk on his own and did not skip pooja while in hospital — made the hospital staff admire his strength.