Untitled

I don't know what title to give to this post.  That is the reason I have named this untitled.

It was October 1st 2012 - my birthday. I come home in the evening and our family doctor calls from Bangalore. As soon as I finish my Hello, he goes.. "Your father.." my heart starts racing.. "He was here a couple of days back with some blood work results. I asked him to do a CT scan and we found that he has cancer in his stomach... We have to operate on him immediately so you come to bangalore tomorrow."

Cancer was detected in people who smoked, drank alcohol all the time and had unhealthy eating habits. Not in a person who had been a vegetarian all his life, who never smoked, who very rarely had alcohol. Not my father. Not he who was scared of getting a blood test done. Not he who had never been to a doctor except for his cataract.

So we first get and endoscopy done where they show us in colour the vehement devil called cancer. He gets admitted at Sagar Apollo for blood transfusion to improve his RBC, haemoglobin and platelet count before they could operate on him. The date of the operation is fixed. One day prior to the operation they discover through a immunohistopathology report that he has non hodgkins lymphoma, cancer in his lymph nodes and the stomach was a secondary infection. Operation is stalled and we are referred to an oncologist.
After a bone marrow test which classifies him at stage 3, chemotherapy starts. We get him into the executive ward in the hope that he would get the best facility and comfort.

So here we were with my father who had never been to a doctor getting shots after shots for blood tests. All through out my only prayer was that it should not cause him pain.

In those four months of six chemo sessions I saw my father shrivel up to an old man of say eighty years old when technically he was just 66. He looked healthy and full of life a few days before that birthday of mine. And in four months, he lost hair, his skin sagged, muscles were gone, he looked like somebody else. By the grace of God he didn't have any negative reactions after the chemo and took it very well.
So after six sessions of chemo, a PET scan was scheduled and we anxiously waited for the results. It was the toughest exam we had written until then. The result was out and he was not cured. He belonged to that rare % of people who are not cured completely after a round of chemo.

So now the doctor advised radiology and more chemotherapy. My father looked so frail that it was obvious he would not withstand radiation and more chemo sessions.

The doctors told us that palliative care was the only thing we could give him. And on the other side he refused further treatment.

We stayed exploring alternate forms of medicine and on the advice of our homeo doctor who had heard this from her professor while she was studying medicine, gave him a dose of ground neem leaves and raw turmeric paste in equal proportions, the size of a small dice,  two times a day.

He took this regularly for a month and followed up with a PET scan. There was a significant reduction. He continued for another couple of months and he was clean!!

We don't know if he would have a relapse, but for now we are good. It's been about two years now, he still takes the alternate medicine as a preventive cure.

I am no doctor to prescribe anything but I had to share this so that people know that the could be hope. I don't know if this would cure everyone who has this dreaded disease. But sharing information helps and doing my part in sharing the experience, just in case it helps someone...