My intimate encounter with Cancer
By Atreyee Saha
Writing is definitely not my forte, nor I am good with words. However, this is a unique ground. I somehow feel obligatory to express my gratitude for the cause, which is extraordinary in intensity and giant in deepness. And thus born this short piece. My first close encounter with cancer happened early enough, when I was in second year of college. And it involved the individual I respected and loved most: my father. So, it goes without saying that it really was too violent a jolt, startled my "just out of teenage" mind, which was otherwise busy planning life in hunky-dory way. I was in complete denial initially, followed by anger, which later on transformed to determination of some kind. But despite the disease brewing in his body, my father completely flabbergasted us with his profound calmness, as if he made peace with the situation. An atheist and a philanthropist-at- soul, he was possibly preparing to face that vacillating time ahead and making himself ready to reclaim life! The diagnosis was nasopharyngeal carcinoma in its advanced stage. And the treatment was several sessions of radiotherapy followed by cisplatin-based chemotherapy. That's all I got to understand at that point. For a year following that was an emotional, physical and societal imprisonment for him and the whole family. The physical suffering from the chemotherapy sometimes were as intense as the community-led atrocities. Back in 1998-2000, cancer was clandestine, and a matter of fear; not compassion. But he broke through! From a patient of advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma, his status changed to cancer free person in two years time. And my naïve mind somehow told me that his intention to live beyond cancer was a game changer in his treatment outcome. That might be true, might not be; but I clutched to that truth and I still am. My belief is empowering enough to warrant my life through various lows and highs.However, there are other pictures etched permanently in my mind too; which are his broken physique, falling hairs and excruciating pain he had to take during each chemotherapy session and beyond. And his inability to divulge his state of physical and mental condition to others, his helplessness to find a comforting and supportive mind, who understands the trauma.
Fast forward to year 2010 and yet once again the disease came close and personal to me. This time it was my mother in law. I shared a long wonderful relationship with her, where love, adoration, respects for each other were a plenty. Her disease entered the house without knocking the door, emerging from nowhere. She was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. Unbelievable to most of us! She was a woman of faith, selfless contributor and lived a hardworking healthy life till the time of her diagnosis. Though we never got to know whether she had a lung primary or it was in a metastatic secondary form. Lung cancer in its advanced stage for a seventy-year of lady certainly does not call for any aggressive treatment or surgery, so she was kept in palliative care and was gone in days after her diagnosis. It was a rather short journey unlike my father's and culminated in a peaceful (comparative) death. Apart from all the evident technical differences from disease perspective (like type, age etc) compared to my father, the major contrast to my eyes was, how we discussed her illness, treatment openly. We conversed every bit of it blatantly, without even thinking the terms of societal approval. Cancer changed; statistically, socially and so changed our outlooks towards it! cancer is not clandestine anymore!
As an oncology researcher and oncology diagnostic product developer, I have been approached by many of my close and distant associates, seeking for help in the hour of need, despite knowing that I am not oncologist by training. I felt limited, helpless, weak, vulnerable. But regardless of that, I felt more and more obligated, more and more convinced that we all stand in the same warfare, against as strong a warrior as cancer. Cancer is that constant epidemic in our modern society, which promises to grow every year. I do not want to go into it's statistical and predictive prevalence part, nor I want to
discuss the medical helplessness. I would like to focus my attention on this singular element: we all must understand that we all are defenseless and susceptible to develop cancer in our lifetime. We all are susceptible! So we have to face and fight cancer: obsessively, zealously, fiercely and fight it TOGETHER.
"When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You haven´nt¨
Thomas Edison