Musings

Yesterday was bad....I saw for the first time the beginning of the end. But then that is like skipping to the last chapter even before I have really got started on what I want to say.

And what I want to say is what these last few months have been like to me and my family ever since my wife was diagnosed as having HCC (Hepato Cellular Carcinoma) - that's Liver Cancer in medicalese (did I invent a new word?).

What I want to talk about is how friends and relatives have reacted....what the docs did....how my employers reacted...my kids...

And about what I have learned about the disease...

About God...Religion...Astrology....

About alternate systems of medicine....

About other similarly placed people I have met....

About my renewed views on what I think constitutes "family"...

About some really wonderful people who instinctively knew how to support my family...and others who had no clue...

About people who thought that if they speak to me I would ask them for help..and hence avoided me altogether...

About a doctor who was more than a doctor...and the most wonderful person I think I have ever met...

About a very special friend who helped me keep my sanity even when my world collapsed around me....

And above all about a very brave person...the bravest I have seen...Sujatha, my wife.

Soon..

Gururaj

 

Elephant in the room

Well...here goes. The elephant in the room is that my dear wife Sujatha has been diagnosed with Liver Cancer. This happened in November 07 and by all accounts it was already in an advanced stage. We decided to fight it as best as we could.

Manipal Hospital, Bangalore is where we went. It took us all of one day to get the verdict and the prognosis...that's one for technology. The doctors attending her jointly met me and in their own oblique way told me what to expect. Not that they needed to...it was written all over their faces and their body language said it all...the situation was bad.

Now what? Over the years, I have learned that most professionals aren't. I guess this hold for docs as well. (I wonder if anyone remembers the humorous Doctor series of books by Richard Gordon!) But then not having any medical knowledge myself, I was left no choice but to trust the doctors and be guided by them on the course of treatment.

The first thing the docs told me was that the treatment was going to be expensive (not if there was a chance of success, not the statistics of how other similarly placed patients have fared or a word of encouragement on how to cope with the devastating revelation they had just made....nothing....just that the treatment was going to be expensive!!!). Well...guess many years in the profession has made them immune to the finer human feelings...may be they just see a human body as an agglomeration of parts finely tuned to perform a function....forgetting that there is something called the human mind over which they have little understanding and hence choose to gloss over it...

I told them that I am not rich but can definitely afford the best for someone who has shared over 20 years of her life with me and given me two wonderful kids. They seemed relieved. In hindsight, I now know that it was similar to the glee that I have when I find a new gadget...software....car....the glee at being given a chance to experiment...only in this case there was a human life and the future of a family as we know it at stake!!!

More in my next......

Gururaj

I could not think of a better way to begin blogging in a meaningful way than to talk about "Life". And I thought someone had done it better than I could....for now!

Please watch a very inspirational video here

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Now why begin with this apparently "not very happy" kind of stuff? Well...there is a very good reason....in my next posting...

After nearly 4 years, I finally decided that I must blog....there are a lot of thoughts that I have been metally composing which need to pour out.
But first I need to crack a couple of technicalities and make sure I get it right..
Gururaj