9 life lessons my mother’s cancer taught me

‘The tree of hope’, clicked at MSR Hospital

July 4th, “Hello, I am Uma patient’s attender, my mother has been vomiting profusely….”, I realized that I was panicking and spoke very fast, I took a pause and continued “…..and she is feeling extremely weak, can we come to the hospital now?”.

It was a Sunday afternoon and I was unsure if the doctors would be available.

“Let me check and call you back”, replied the nurse.

A couple of minutes later, I got a call.

“Hello, is it Uma patient’s attender?”, “Yes”, I answered.

“Get her to the Emergency unit immediately, the duty doctors will treat her”.

I rushed to the hospital with my mother who was now hardly responding to what I was saying, I was panicking even more and I tried my best to keep calm and drive safe. The second wave of Covid was starting to die down and the traffic on the roads was lesser than usual. We reached the hospital within 20 odd mins.

Columbia Asia hospital was our most visited place in the last six months and ‘Uma patient’s attender’ was the new title I had got, here’s why….

A few months earlier…

April 8th, there was a new project kick-off meeting at the wee hours of the day, I did manage to wake up and join the meeting but I couldn’t sit through it till the end, the fever kept getting worse and I was feeling increasingly weak, I had to leave the meeting in a hurry and crashed on my bed. The RT-PCR test done later in the day came out to be positive.

I isolated myself immediately and got locked in my home office for the next 21 days, I had gotten paranoid and took all the necessary precautions to avoid the virus spreading to my family members at home, which included my 9-month-old child.

Constant monitoring of body temperature, oxygen saturation levels, and gulping of tablets followed. I was worried to know that the Covid cases were increasing at an alarming rate across the country and I was extremely worried when I heard anyone at my home cough or sneeze.

May 2nd, I had lost over 5kgs in less than a month and my body hadn’t felt weaker. It was the end of my quarantine and I could step out of my room according to the Covid protocols. I decided to go for a walk, the roads were deserted and every shop was shut, it was a period of strict lockdown in Bangalore. After 10mins of walking, I started feeling uneasy and I wanted to return home. That is when I got a call from my mum. “How much longer would you take?”, “10 mins and I’ll be home,” I said, “I am feeling a little feverish, I think I should do an RTPCR and isolate myself until the results come”, said my mother.

The results did come the next day evening, exactly 1 day after I thought my Covid ordeal ended, my mum had tested positive. It was the peak of the second wave, the infection in my mum was more severe than mine, the scans showed a moderate to high spread in the lungs, the cough was persistent and unforgiving, the SpO2 levels fluctuated a lot and the fever kept running high for over 2 weeks.

The doctors said I had to make arrangements to move her to a hospital or at least get a home ICU. There was a massive scarcity for both and I was struggling to get either.

More than 16 days had passed by, the fever was in control but the cough wasn’t. I cringed every time I heard my mum cough uncontrollably, I felt responsible for the pain she was going through! I felt guilty and helpless for having possibly passed on the virus to her.

May 24, my mother's fever had gone but her cough still persisted, but what bothered her more was the lump on her breast which had more than doubled its size in the last two weeks. The day my mum was allowed to end her quarantine, she urgently wanted to meet a gynecologist.

The doctor rubbed it off saying it’s the work of the hormones and a few vitamin tablets would help bring the lump size to control, unconvinced we went on to meet 6 other doctors, which was followed by many tests, follow-ups, and FNACs. It was the biopsy that ended this mayhem, but it also started a new one. A new one that would turn my life upside down.

June 9th, I was in a meeting, when I got a call from my mother, “Come to my room”, she said softly. I cut the call and rushed downstairs. She handed me the mobile, with a pdf open in it, and said she was not able to understand the biopsy results. From the look on her face, I was sure she did understand the results and I knew something was wrong.

‘Locally advanced ductal carcinoma, Grade 3’ read the results.

I wanted to believe I couldn’t understand what I had just read either, I typed the words and searched the internet quickly, one of the random search results said ‘Life expectancy of Grade 3 cancer was around 50%’. Reading those words felt like being hit hard at the back of my head, tears swelled up and I broke down. My mother now understood the true meaning of the test results and that day I learned that the unending coughs were not only a symptom of the flu or Covid but sometimes can also be for Cancer.

June 14th, the Chemotherapy sessions started, so did the marathon of me trying to keep my sanity and save my mother.

Each chemo session was a day-long activity, in those sessions what I saw, heard, and experienced was both heart-wrenching and eye-opening.

I have witnessed a lady in her early 30’s yell and scream out loud when she had just been informed that she has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

I have witnessed kids as young as 6 years old crying not to have the cannula with chemo medicines inserted yet again into their tiny veins.

I have witnessed an elderly lady in her 70’s have her ECG go flat during the chemo session, the skill and experience of doctors brought her back to life.

The doctors used all the weapons of cellular mass destruction on my mother, cutting(surgery), burning(radiation), and poisoning(chemotherapy). The treatment would last for over 9 months.

During the day-long chemo sessions, I couldn’t take many meeting calls or do any focused work. The constant beep sounds in the chemo wards, the anxious wait for blood test results that would determine if my mum could take the chemo that day or not, and running around to get the insurance approved for each session were way too many distractions to be able to focus on work. I ended up working 4 days a week and the only silver lining was to be working in a company with colleagues who were both empathetic and accommodating.

While I couldn’t work, I ended up doing something else productive. I got into the habit of reading books and one of them inspired me to write this blog.

There have been quite a few important lessons I learned from my experiences during the treatment. I’m jotting them down here for my own record, and also others who could possibly find it useful.

1. To make yourself the primary priority. Family, friends, every other relationship comes next. If my mum had taken better care of her health, with diet, exercises, and periodic screenings — we might have detected the malignancy months earlier. The earlier the cancer is detected, the chances of recovery go up exponentially.
2. To be grateful and not be greedy. If you have food to eat, a roof above your head, a family that loves you, and a healthy body — you are lucky and you have it all. There are millions who do not have even one of these. Anything that you seek beyond is truly meaningless.
3. To stay away from fake and negative people. Always stay away from people who think and spread negativity, a single word pointed at the wrong person at the wrong time can collapse months of motivation and mental recovery.
4. Get your financial basics right. Get your health insurance and emergency corpus sorted, medical procedures and treatments are exorbitantly expensive and remember that no one gives you an insurance policy after you have been diagnosed with cancer (or any other critical illness).
5. Be compassionate. Be kind and don’t be judgemental, you will never truly know what the other person is going through.
6. Make donating to the needy part of your monthly budget. I have witnessed many families in the recent past who stop the treatment midway because they have absolutely no financial help whatsoever to fund the costs.
7. Cancer is not a death sentence. There are many variants, stages, grades, and subtypes of cancers, not all of them are incurable. The treatments have gotten so advanced today, the true challenge is one’s ability to stay mentally strong when bad luck hits you.
8. Trust doctors, do not depend solely on online search results. When in doubt talk to the expert, there is a reason why certain medical courses last over a decade.
9. Seeking help for Mental health should not be taboo. I felt uncomfortable showing my vulnerable side to my family during these difficult times and risk making them also feel helpless, I chose to do it with a therapist instead. I believe I am sane today because of the sessions. What an oncologist does to Cancer, a therapist does to the malignancy in your mind.