London based Parul Banka has published a book in which she openly narrates her encounter with breast cancer. During her journey, she learnt that talking about cancer in the open enables us to choose – awareness over ignorance, courage over fear and empathy over judgement. Here she validates her viewpoint.
My name is Parul Banka. I was diagnosed with an aggressive grade III (the fastest growing type) breast cancer in September 2012. The entire drill of cancer treatment - chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy (poison, slice and burn as goes the cancer humour) in addition to Herceptin and lots of hormonal treatment helped me survive cancer. I am currently going through the final leg of my treatment – oral medication, the drug we love to despise Tamoxifen, which shall be my daily companion for at least 5 years. As you have must guessed by now, cancer treatment is often a long journey – in my case it will be a minimum of 6 years.
Currently, I am about 4.5 years old in the world of cancer. My cancer journey was facilitated by several people and factors. Brilliant and empathetic doctors, a great healthcare team, therapists who made it their mission to help me recover and enormous support from family, friends and colleagues made sure that my cancer journey was not harder than it needed to be.
I want to share with you how these people helped me and what I did to make sure that received the best help possible. I did two things:
- I spoke about cancer openly
- I let them help me.
Please allow me to explain.
I believe that the support from other people helped to make my cancer experience easier than it would have been otherwise. In general, the awareness about cancer is high in the UK, where I live. People may not know the specific details of the treatment or the challenges and fears a cancer patient faces daily but they appreciate that cancer is a difficult medical condition. They know that it can be a life-changing experience. The general attitude is that they should try and support people who are facing this monster.
Sharing the diagnosis
As soon as I was diagnosed, I shared the news of my diagnosis with my work colleagues. Talking about cancer openly helped me to enlist the help that I needed. For example: between my manager and me, we worked out how to juggle my deliverables alongside regular hospital appointments….and believe me there were an awful lot of appointments. Often, I worked from home so that I did not have to spend time and energy travelling. This also minimised my contact with other people thereby reducing chances of infection when my immunity was compromised during chemotherapy. Because I was open about my diagnosis, people came forward to help. They shared my workload, took me out shopping when I was too weak to travel on my own, made sure that I was comfortable when I was around and listened when I needed to be listened to. The ‘normalcy’ goes out of the window the moment a cancer diagnosis is pronounced and it was great to have them make sure that there was some semblance of ‘normal’ in my life.
Support from friends and family
My friends and family could look after me because I talked about cancer and I let them know what I needed. Being quiet would have been the worst thing I could do to myself as well as them. Expecting them to mind-read what I needed would not have been fair, would it?
What I also found helpful was the fact that most of the people around me saw cancer as a difficult illness and not a judgement on my Karma. Yes, I did have instances where some people blamed me for my cancer diagnosis or judged me but they were few. I believe that such instances were prompted by their ignorance about what cancer is and their fears of what it can do. Talking about cancer in the open helps to build awareness about it. When people understand something better, they fear it less. When they are not afraid, they are more likely to be supportive of others in need.
Talking about cancer
Talking in the open helps to reduce the stigma that accompanies cancer in some parts of the world. When we talk about cancer, we pass on the message that it is okay to do so. We affirm that cancer is a medical condition and not something that we need to be quiet about. We let people help us and we offer help to those who could benefit from it. Talking about cancer in the open enables us to choose – awareness over ignorance, courage over fear and empathy over judgement.
When the awareness about cancer is high, people are likely to visit their doctors sooner when they notice some symptoms. An early diagnosis gives us the best chance at beating this beast. Many times, it can be the deciding factor whether a person survives cancer or not. In my case, it certainly was.
My book
With the intention of building awareness, helping other people and challenging the stigma around cancer, I published my cancer experience in the form of a book. My memoir ‘My Cancer Journey - A rendezvous with myself’ was published with Balboa Press, a division of the Hay House in May 2015. It is my humble attempt to be the change that I want to see in the world.
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” ~Barack Obama
P.S. You can pick up a copy from your local Amazon if you want to know more about my cancer journey. Some Amazon links are:
Amazon UK: http://2one.in/80
Amazon US: http://2one.in/81
Amazon India: http://2one.in/89
For reviews and links to her book click here.
