Tarun Jacob, 34
24-year-old Dr Tarun Jacob was walking past the X ray department of CMC Vellore when he remembered the slip he had been carrying in his pocket for more than 10 days. A bad cough had been troubling him lately; so much so that he had even been asked by the senior surgeon to leave a surgery he was assisting with and not come back till he got it fixed. He had also lost about 16 kilos of weight but had blamed it on the grilling medical college schedule. He popped in and got an X ray taken. “When I saw the digital image, my heart stopped. There was a huge tumour compressing my lungs and airway. That had been causing my cough.” In the corridor he ran into a radiology post graduate who reassured him saying it was probably tuberculosis. The CT scan and biopsy proved Tarun had non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. There was a fast growing tumour in his chest; he was in the middle of his MS and his wife (he had married his college sweetheart) was three months pregnant. Tarun was a State level basketball player, he didn’t drink or smoke, he had been his college sports secretary, he was a handsome, fit guy driving around on his bullet, having a good time in life. Did he ask himself: Why me? “I believe that’s a question not worth asking,” says Tarun. “If you ask me what was the best thing that ever happened to me I’ll say my malignancy. Though my wife doesn’t agree; she feels it’s meeting her,” he laughs.
Tarun’s dad told him that “Tarun” meant gift from god and he was leaving Tarun in god’s hands. “I got all my strength from god,” he says. He got admitted and started undergoing treatment. He also started writing a blog - a day to day account of his fight against cancer; what his mind and body were going through. “Absolute strangers reached out to me; people I didn’t think would even care wanted to help me; I made so many chemo buddies.” Other cancer survivors started writing to Tarun; he still writes to as many as 40 of them. Amongst these was a chemo buddy who died, but his wife has now become a family friend.
It has been 10 years. Tarun is now a paediatric surgeon at CMC Vellore. He smiles and laughs a lot. On his cell, he keeps pictures of his chemo days when all his hair had fallen off. He makes it a point to show these to the kids who come to him, unwell and undergoing painful treatments, with veins burnt down from chemo. Tarun puts lines into their hearts so that the drug can be put right in, he jokes with them and gives them and their parents hope and courage with his personal example.
Cancer hasn’t changed Tarun’s life much. He and his wife travel a lot, they drive around on his bike, they have even been holding medical camps in places like Lahaul and Spiti “I know my cancer can return, I know my heart is at a little higher risk of heart attack so I take precautions; I exercise, I’ve cut down on fats, but other than that I have not made any lifestyle changes. I had my second kid after my chemo, despite the fact that it is supposed to interfere with sperm generation. And I’ve put all this on my blog since I want cancer patients and their families to know,” he says.
Tarun’s message to others fighting cancer is: “Staring death in the face is not a good experience but it doesn’t mean you walk away a loser. You can also walk away a victor.”
You can reach Tarun at http://tarun jacob.blogspot.com
Tanweer was 30, with a promising career, a lovely wife and an adorable kid when a recurring low grade fever sent him to the hospital. It was diagnosed as tuberculosis. When the treatment didn’t seem to work at all, he went for a recheck up. He says he was prepared for something bad; but even then, the diagnosis came as a jolt – he had non Hodgkin’s lymphoma - a form of blood cancer. His chances of survival were fifty-fifty. “When you get something like that you have no option but to face it bravely,” says Tanweer very matter of factly. “So I told myself that fifty percent was a good chance”.
He started treatment. He also started reading up and researching his disease on the net. He remembers how he would have a laptop next to him even on his hospital bed. “In fact, at one point I had read up on it so much that I felt I knew more about the disease than the junior doctor who came to look me up,” he smiles. It helped that no one in his family over reacted – they continued being their usual selves with him. His wife and mother were a constant source of strength. He says his faith in science was so much that he was willing to do anything his doctor said. “I trusted my treatment protocol so completely that had it required me to drink poison, I would have done that too”. Tanweer says he would like to tell cancer patients that cancer is a disease largely conquered by science. Proven and time tested treatment is the only option so don’t waste time by going in for alternative therapies. There is only one treatment and it’s not easy, he says. “You lose your hair, your nails fall off, the steroids you are given make you put on weight, you get depressed and miserable; but stay focused and walk the path. That is the only way”. The treatment was painful and also very expensive. At one time he was taking injections that cost Rs 1.5 lakh each and he had to get four of them. Tanweer says he was surprised by how many people, some of them complete strangers, came forward to help him. They helped him to source expensive medicines, gave him moral support and made him feel stronger. Tanweer has been free of cancer for seven years but he still treasures photos taken when the chemo had made him lose all his hair. The effects of cancer treatment should be worn proudly like battle scars, he says. He was featured on CNN IBN as a citizen journalist and writes a blog. He can be reached at baawara@gmail.com
Delicately framed with high cheekbones, large eyes and a wide smile; Nidhi, 31, looks much younger. As she goes about sourcing material for the indo-western apparel exhibition she plans to hold shortly, it’s difficult to imagine that she fought a rare brain tumour five years back. It was a fight where she endured radiation that made hair fall out in tufts from her head till she decided to get it all shaved off; chemo that made her veins swell up painfully; and a surgically planted port in her chest that made her stifle a scream every time an injection was given through it. Cancer changed a lot of things in her life but what it could not change was her never say die spirit. “I was always a happy go lucky person; if anything, the cancer made me more positive,” she says.
Nidhi was 25 and married for three years to IIM Ahmedabad graduate Siddhartha Choudhary (they had fallen in love when she was studying psychology at LD Arts College), when she woke up one day to incessant vomiting. She thought it was because of viral fever and ignored it. Some time later, while playing Scrabble with her husband, she flung her head back to laugh when she was again overcome by a bout of dizziness followed by vomiting. She went to a general physician who prescribed drugs for vertigo. “I felt I was getting better when I noticed one day that while walking I was veering towards the left,” she says. She blamed it on her shoes. A few months later, she noticed she was getting double vision. “I got seriously worried when buying material I realized that I was not being able to comprehend the prints. That was when I felt there was something wrong, not with my eyes but with my brain.” The very next day she went to a neurosurgeon who prescribed an MRI. The results showed a tumour in her brain. The biopsy proved it was malignant. She had Medullo Blastoma, a form of brain tumour common in kids. Within ten days, she was operated upon. The surgery was followed by radio and chemotherapy.
Nidhi says she will never forget the cold radiology room where she had to lie on her face with her head in a claustrophobic mask for the radiation; or the chemo that burnt her veins and made them swell up so much that once she cried and made her husband take her back home without getting it done. “We returned the next day because I wanted to live and knew I couldn’t take any chances”. It is a painful narrative of how Nidhi had to get a port put in her chest so that the drug could be injected straight in and how nursing carelessness got her septicemia soon after her last chemo was done. She lost her hair and her strength to walk and became wheelchair bound. However, after the treatment ended she slowly found her strength and health back. Nidhi walks now though stairs are still a problem. She and her husband travel a lot and enjoy exploring new places. “My husband left his job to be by my side for that one year of treatment. He was my source of strength,” she smiles. It has been five years now and Nidhi is once again preparing to have the indo western apparel exhibition she had to postpone when cancer first struck her. She is looking for a venue in Hyderabad where she is now based. Her message to others battling cancer is: “Don’t be afraid, treat it like any other disease. Have the will to come out of it.” You may reach Nidhi at nidhi.choudhary@gmail.com
In the 20 something Xavier’s Dance Studio troupe that recently performed in Bengaluru, there was one girl almost twice as old. Yet her smile was as radiant and her moves almost as fluid. That was cancer survivor Usha Krishnaswamy. Usha was 38 and teaching in a Noida school when she felt a small lump in her breast. “The previous day another teacher had been saying in the staff room she had found a lump in her breast and I thought I should check too,” she says. When the biopsy showed it as malignant, Usha was shattered. “I felt cancer meant death and I had two small boys.” However, being an Army wife she believed that if life dealt you a problem, it just had to be faced. That was what she did. She would get admitted in the hospital on Saturday, undergo her chemo, rest on Sunday and return to school on Monday. She got herself a nice wig from Dubai. Very few people knew about her cancer. Three and a half years later the cancer returned. The routine check up she had gone for showed a lymph node enlargement at the thorax. The FNAC showed it was malignant. She had to undergo 30 sittings of radiotherapy followed by chemo. It was also a time when she had to set up house in a new posting, put the boys in a new school and travel to Bangalore every month for her treatment. “I became like an elephant thanks to the steroids, my hair fell off but in spite of that I used to participate in all the ladies meets, fashion shows, plays, I would sing and compere programs etc; I got another wig made from Berkowitts and again, most people who met me did not even know that I was fighting cancer.” Usha has been free of cancer for more than 10 years now. She says the fear that it might return is always there. She makes and exports beautiful hand painted chiffon and crepe saris and other apparel. She has traveled the world and does jazz classes. “I recently come back from a trip to Boston where my son is doing his PhD from MIT. I paint, I sing, I dance. Cancer taught me to value life more. Life is so precious, she says, I keep telling people, do whatever you want to and do it now.”
Srinivasan Krishnan is on his way to Leh and planning to take a high altitude trek to Goecha La, Sikkim, this summer. The keen mountaineer had testicular cancer when he was 33. “I was the secretary of Explorers and Adventurers, which is an old trekking club in Mumbai, when I got a fever that just wasn’t going away,” he explains. A general physician referred him to a radiologist since he seemed to have a swelling in one testicle. They discovered that he had second grade testicular cancer which was spreading. After an orchiectomy and three sittings of chemotherapy, Srinivasan was ready to face life once again. “My onchologist introduced me to Lance Armstrong and I latched on to him as an anchor. My wife Charlaine was my pillar of support,” he says. To celebrate his fight with cancer, Srinivasan went on a trek to Prabhatgarh near Mumbai with a close friend egging him on. “I took twice as much time to walk and couldn’t finish the trek because I would keep vomiting, but it was my way of saying I’m fine now”. He has climbed Prabhatgarh many times since then and continues to take treks to the Sahyadaris and the Himalayas. “I used to take life for granted. Cancer was like a wake up call to pay respect to life. It taught me to live life to the fullest.”
IIT Kanpur graduate Kartikeya Misra had lost his father to cancer of the oesophagus and his mother to rectal cancer when – after a year of excruciating pain, stomach cramps and bleeding - he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer. He says he had thought about it so much that it was almost as if he had wished the cancer upon himself. “I had been in class 12th when my father died and it had left with a lot of bitterness. When I was diagnosed as a cancer patient, my son was just five. One of my biggest worries was how would he manage,” he says. When Kartikeya first learnt of his cancer and when he had a relapse some time later, his biggest question was: Why me? He says he will never forget what a junior doctor told him. “He said cancer was like an accident, it could happen to anyone.” When he had a relapse, the same doctor told him that if you have an accident once it doesn’t mean you couldn’t have another one. “His words were life changing for me,” Kartikeya says.
Kartikeya had intestinal cancer at the C2 stage where the survival rate is very low. People usually don’t live beyond five years, he says, though his doctor did not tell him that. “He just told me to enjoy life and not think about the ailment”. As Kartikeya moved from one week to another he realized that there was life even between two chemos. “I would get my chemo done on Saturday or Sunday. The same evening I would hop onto a train and go to different parts of the country for the Training of Trainer (ToT) courses conducted by the government for trainers of various Administrative Training Institutes. I would return on the weekend for another round of chemo.” His dedication to work gave him a ranking of four out of about 250 trainers and he was even sent on a trip to three foreign countries. “Here I had been waiting to die on my bed some time back and suddenly I was doing foreign travel,” he grins. Kartikeya says cancer taught him that life was beautiful and that it is never over till it is finally over. He has written a book titled ‘There is life after cancer’. His son, then 10, was his first reader and he says he is really proud of that. He can be reached at kartikeya_msr@yahoo.co.in
Film maker Sunitha Tati, was 31 and had just moved to India from the US when she felt a lump in her breast during a self examination. When the lumpectomy and following biopsy showed it as malignant she was shocked. For six months she tried alternate medicine like homeopathy and hormone therapy but when the pathology report showed that in this period her cancer had infected her lymph nodes, and that she might not survive beyond six months, her parents insisted she should go in for allopathy. Six cycles of chemo and 28 cycles of radiation had Sunita crawling to the toilet. “The radiation was targeted directly into my breast and back. Those wounds kept bleeding for nine months, my veins turned black, I suffered a rib fracture, my hair fell, I had no eyebrows and through all this I kept working 24x7. That was my only support, my reason to wake up and look forward to each day,” she says. It has been 13 years. Sunitha gives talks about her disease, she is a founding member of the Support Cancer Foundation, she has brought our books on survivor stories and has started Guru Films, her own production house. She says she looks at cancer as an opportunity to work towards a better lifestyle where you eat better, you exercise and you nurture relationships. “The joy of being a cancer survivor is that you wake up every morning knowing what a gift life is,” she says.