Shivaji Lande was shocked when he was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, an uncommon but serious type of malignancy that affects the food pipe and makes swallowing difficult. Read about his struggle to survive and how he dealt with his worries.
I was 34 years, happily married and working for an engineering company in Bangalore, when my world turned hellish. This happened in October 2014. One night, while having dinner I suddenly noticed difficulty swallowing and began coughing while…
Stories
Smoking is known to cause and effect many systems in our body with adverse consequences, but how does it affect fertility in women? Dr Sarita Bhalerao, an established OBGYN from Mumbai helps us understand the subject in more detail. 1. Is smoking a growing concern for infertility in women? Smoking and consumption of tobacco have in general been a growing concern for women all over the world. It is a major health problem affecting developing countries especially amongst the youth…
Cancer patients are prone to infections and the home environment must be kept clean. Precautions to follow if they are on chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatment. Dr. Shital Raval shares practical tips for cancer patients and their caregivers to follow with cancer at home. SELF: Keep a pair of gloves handy at home and wear them to clean any spills, cleansing surfaces or disposing trash. Remember to wash hands with soap before and after wearing gloves! Use antibacterial or bleaching…
Rajalakshmi Siva, caregiver of a person with cancer and co-author of 'When Thoughts Invade the Cancer Conqueror’, recounts her days of a caregiver and how she coped with it right through the ordeal. What started the journey to hell and back was a pool of blood with a few drops of urine trailing him all the way up the driveway, to the parking lot, into the lift, and into the house and thence to the washroom. It was reminiscent of a silent scream that seemed to reverberate: Hell is empty and all…
Nilakanta Siva recounts how his smoking habit caught up with him later in life well after he had kicked the habit. He now lives without a bladder, prostate, several lymph nodes and a solitary kidney. And wishes he had not started smoking. “Hey, Siva, you know what. They are asking for volunteers to join the National Cadet Corps,” shouted Vijay. You get credits for the hours you spend at NCC. You need not even attend Biology classes, totally exempt.” “That is great. Long live the NCC option.” We…
Why become a victim of cancer and other ugly diseases, when life has so much to offer, says Dr Lancelot Pinto, consultant respirologist and smoking cessation therapy specialist at Mumbai's PD Hinduja Hospital. How important is it to stop smoking? One cannot emphasize enough the benefits of stopping to smoke, both in terms of the gain in quality of life, and the prevention of smoking-associated illnesses, which cover a very wide spectrum. What is encouraging, however, is that…
By Geetha Paniker, a survivor of triple negative cancer with double mastectomy. A believer of being positive against all odds who pens, all that the mind can reason with the heart. A teacher, turned home maker, she loves reading, writing and handicrafts. Life after cancer teaches us to look at how we want to live in the future. Some may want to do things they’ve often thought about but never got a chance to do in the rat race of life, perhaps visit places they’ve…
Breaking bad news to patients can be daunting and difficult, especially for caregivers. Maya Ramachandran narrates her experience when she and her husband were caught in such a catch-22 situation. My husband’s close relative was experiencing sudden onset of bleeding after almost 25 years post-menopause, at the age of 75! Fearing that it could be cancer, she had shied away from meeting doctors. After a whole year of having struggled with this almost alone, she …
Harmala Gupta traversed the journey from being a cancer survivor to founding CanSupport, a home based Palliative Care service in Delhi and NCR. CanSupport also runs out-patient clinics. Harmala Gupta shares her views with PatientsEngage on Palliative Care. PE: According to the ACHEON study ("The non-interventional, anonymous, non-biased ACHEON survey was the first and largest cross sectional evaluation of physicians’ and patients’ perspectives on cancer and non-cancer pain management…
An awareness film made by Indian Association of Palliative Care based on excerpts from over 200 interviews conducted with working and retired nurses across India
