Living with Cancer with Dignity

I am not ill. My cancer is just crazy !!

My body is my love letter and I am the author of my own health !!

Cancer! The big “ C “ word !! The word which pronounces a death sentence in our society on the patient even before the disease is completely diagnosed or even before the treatment has even started. The label that stays with the patient for his whole life.  As soon as the diagnosis is made immediately, the fear of impending death looms largely on the patient’s mind.  And this is happening when we have the best of treatments available not just for diagnosing the disease in its infancy but also for making the life as normal as can be with an extended survival and a very good quality of life. I want to ask that when we don’t call a patient a hypertension survivor, a cardiac survivor or a diabetes survivor, then why this discrimination with a cancer patient?  It is also like any other chronic disease.Will you help me change this mind-set of the society please?

Cancer doesn’t mean you have to live with fear:  

Together we can make a world where cancer no longer means living with fear, without hope, or worse. I alone can’t change the world but I can cast a stone across waters to create many ripples. As soon as diagnosis of cancer is made, a number of questions and emotions flood the patient’s mind. “Why me?” is something which lingers in the mind throughout life. The feelings of denial, anger, guilt, sadness, fatigue, loneliness, depression, resentment, cloud the mind and hinder with proper judicious decision making.  Different day, different pain, different scenario and all just because a person is diagnosed with cancer??

The patient should be involved in decision making

The decisions are taken on the basis of hearsay of friends and relatives rather than the expert specialist and then suggestions come from every Tom, Jack and Harry about a wide range of alternative treatments and also about going to a “Babaji” in some remote area(who can somehow cure everyone’s cancer with just one magic pill)follows. I know that the diagnosis is a roller coaster. It has its ups and downs. But it’s up-to your choice to scream or enjoy the ride.

I am very upset with the fact that why the patient who has to undergo the treatment is kept away from all the decision making when only a “part of his body” is affected and not his ‘mental faculties’? One must not forget that the recovery is brought about not just by the physician, but by the sick man himself, by his own power, exactly as he walks by his own power, or eats or thinks, breaths or sleeps. Give the patient a few days to be scared  and overcome the fear and then let him roll up his sleeves, let him get in touch with the physician and beat the heck out of cancer.