Emperor of Maladies — Cancer, strikes back our family.
In 2013 Mom (and us) fought Cancer for 16 long months but succumbed. This time with Dad, we all are fighting and determined we will win.
Note 1 — This is NOT a post to attract sympathies. On the contrary, this is a post to share honestly and candidly how as a family we are dealing with Cancer in the hope that it will give strength to others who are unfortunately battling the same God-forsaken disease.
Note 2 — For confidentiality reasons I may choose not to reveal certain information, nevertheless whatever I write here will be factually correct the way I have inferred.
Note 3 — I may suggest a few things, this is NOT to be taken as expert advice. Always reach out to a medical doctor by qualification if you are someone else who is battling this disease.
11th October 19, 7:20 AM
It was dad’s 74th Bday. I had just woken up and was yet to wish him.
I got the following message from my sister (who had come from abroad for our new house-warming function which happened less than 72 hours ago), which was sent to her by our family GP (General Physician) of 8 years and whose opinion and diagnosis we sought whenever in discomfort or doubt and had full faith in.
There has and had been a few cases in our extended family who had liver cirrhosis and I was a tad concerned by the first line.
It was the second line that shook me, so much so that I felt dizzy for a few seconds. We had lost our Mom to Cancer (Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma) on 21st October’13, her Cancer was diagnosed very late on 2nd Jan’13 and I knew and was with her the whole time during the sheer ordeal which she as a patient went through and we as a family went through.
The word “cancer” can shake anyone and we were no less different. What was different was that after the initial shock, anger, denial and then acceptance…I was fairly calm and instead of the outcome (which most of us naturally think of and get paralyzed) I just kept thinking of what we should do next.
I went out of the room, Dad was doing his usual thing — sipping tea and reading newspaper. I saw him and my eyes became moist. Here was a 74-year-old man whose birthday was today, led a and he is oblivious to the fact that he has Cancer. I somehow gathered courage and wished him Happy Birthday.
Next, we (my wife, my sister and myself) got into the motion of how should we handle this situation. Family GP suggested a colonoscopy (done by a Gastroenterologist) at a hospital which was fairly far. Since I was visiting a Gastroenterologist relatively closer to our home and had confidence, I suggested we go there. I called to make an appointment, but since that Doctor was quite popular all his slots were booked, I requested if we can get a slot as it was an emergency case and thankfully they said we can walk-in but we would have to wait. Seeing the predicament, we decided to go there.
We were asked to come after 10 am, I saw the time and it was 8:15 am. We had some time to breathe and soak in what happened for the past an hour. Never on any birthday did we go through this extreme mental roller-coaster and I pray no one ever goes through it.
We all hurried up and left for the Gastroenterologist whom I have been visiting. We waited close to 1.5 hours as we didn’t have an appointment, every minute felt like we are heading down a dark spiral staircase more and more.
Though clinical investigation and confirmation of the dreaded word CANCER were still pending, we were already thinking of how the history has repeated and how we will go through the ordeal what we all went through in 2013.
It’s strange that negative thoughts make it look as if it's real, whereas positive thoughts hardly give us any relief.
Our turn came, we had already shared the whole medical history for which we had come to meet the Doctor to his assistant. He was going through along with the CT Scan report and films. The silence was ice-cold and it felt chilly considering what was happening in our minds.
The reason I came to this doctor besides his obvious expertise is the way he talks and handles the illness. We as patients tend to both downplay and exaggerate our medical conditions when not required in either case.
For doctors, it's their everyday job to tackle illness of all kinds and instead of getting bogged down they see it as a riddle or a challenge to deal with.
All he said was, there is something in the CT Scan, may not be malignant but needs further investigation. As there were 2 issues, endoscopy and colonoscopy were scheduled for the next day morning.
With worry still on our minds and yet a bit of relief in the way Doctor handled it, we went home.
At home, we all were under the constant worry of what will happen tomorrow and what if what we dreading actually becomes true.
No wonder, “staying in the present” is key to ensure we don’t overthink and don’t get overwhelmed.
Being Dad’s birthday we had already arranged for a small celebration, but boy it was the most emotional moment for all of us to celebrate his birthday among all the medical circumstances around us.
We all tried to be normal and yet we were really struggling to hold back our tears. But for Dad and to give him psychological safety, we did.
Little did we know the roller-coaster which was planned for us in the coming days. More on this in the subsequent post.
