AN EARLY DIAGNOSE CAN BE AN ANGEL IN DISGUISE

A swollen feet and a bulging tummy...that’s how I remember my uncle during his last stages of cancer as. “ I am not hungry anymore, its hard to walk for a long time and I don’t know why”, my kaka (uncle) would say with a fear in his eyes and a stammer in his speech.

It was 2 years ago when my uncle passed away due to ‘ignorant cancer’ and that’s what I would love to call it as. My mother and I would tell maushi(aunty) and kaka to check out with a doctor and diagnose the problem as soon as possible.  Both would reply negatively and carry on with their lives monotonously.  Since my mother is a paramedic, she would understand certain symptoms that were giving birth on my kaka’s body. A know- it-all kaka would not bother on such “small symptoms” as he ‘feels’ active while he is not. The sudden weight deterioration would catch hold of my attention and I would try convincing on the same but stayed adamant on his decision of ignoring it.

Later, a blood vomit made it all obvious about the whole scenario of cancer and the stages. He was diagnosed with third stage liver cirrhosis and some days to live on it. A storm of confusion and fear struck the whole family even then there was hope that someone would carry the situation up and everything would be fine. Chemotherapy was out of the remedy list we had.

The hope shattered in a few weeks when he was bed ridden for a couple of days. There was very little expectation on his survival and was just a result of a late diagnose that had crawled into the dooms day. Doctors had to clean their hands off from the situation when a helpless hurricane struck in. We had to just wait for him to die and not try to get any help on his survival when early diagnose could have been an angel in disguise for him rather than letting the cancer grow on his body. I couldn’t force him much because he was the Mr. Know-it-all to me and it was hard to digest the fact that something unknown had grabbed him from me.

Early diagnose is a necessary factor as it would be a real life saver element to every cancer patient. No one knows what can kill us and being over confident over it cannot mend things up. There are certain things that are out of our box of knowledge and we should be alert enough to know what is going on in our body. Google and Quora may not be the answer to everything and it is a necessity to see a doctor in certain intervals. The cells in our body may not act the way we want and that may not be a result of drinking or eating something. It is also not necessary that an alcoholic or a drug addict falls prey to Cirrhosis. It maybe a luck in game for anyone and there are no final destination ghosts playing on us. Cells and tissues may not be in favor of us and we should accept the fact. Kaka wouldn’t have even thought of such diseases till he was a victim himself. Knowledge may not help us to such an extent because it can sometimes blindfold us to the unknown and that was exactly what had happened to my uncle. Knowing the symptoms can help us tackle the disease much faster and safer than others knowing about our diseases apart from us.

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Author: Shruti Manmadhan Nair