Since when did cancer become an adventure?
"I want to make cancer sexy. It wasn't easy for me. And it's not easy for anyone. So come as an empowered patient. Support system is crucial. Be selfish, if you have cancer."
- Lisa Ray, actor and cancer survivor
Is it my imagination, or are we, in our effort to send across a message of hope, downplaying the devastation that cancer can bring to patients and their families?
In an evening arranged by India Today, we met women who have battled cancer and are on top of their lives now. What struck me was the way they described the disease. Someone called her years with cancer an "adventure": "I took it as any other disease. The journey turned out to be an adventure. That's what I tell all the cancer patients I now meet." Someone else narrated the way she "lived life" - diving, paragliding, visiting Manas Sarovar - during her cancer years. Someone talked about having a sense of humour as a cancer patient. Yet another described her family's pragmatic attitude: Okay. So now that you have been diagnosed with cancer, let's get on with life (and treatment). A psychologist, who counsels cancer patients, questioned the word "survivor". Why should cancer patients be called "survivors", she asked. We should have a better word for them. Some suggested "warriors", some "adventurers", some "celebrators".
Despite the uplifting mood and tenor, the evening brought me a sense of unease. I kept remembering someone - an IIT topper, a former student of MIT (Noam Chomsky was one of his co-supervisors), a professor of maths at Chicago University at a young age of 40, a father of four-year-old twins - who was diagnosed with a malignant grade IV glioblastoma in his brain one fine morning. His symptoms? He had crashed his car against a tree just the week before (he was planning to go to an eye doctor) and he just couldn't get his arms through his shirt sleeves the day before. The man who took pride in never writing down phone numbers (yes, he was one of those geeks) after 29 months of surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, clinical trials with wonder drug Avastin, had ended up with a memory like a sieve. He could not remember anything, recall faces, recollect relationships, before he finally succumbed to cancer. Today, his university has instituted a chair professorship in his name. And the book he was writing on novel geometry has been given away to his students. Perhaps, some day, someone will finish it. So much for "adventure".
Yes. You can call cancer an "adventure" if you are diagnosed with low-grade, initial stage, common cancers. If your cancer has not spread to other parts of your body. If you haven't got lung, pancreas, liver or oesophageal cancers. If you don't have to worry about your support system, access to good doctors, medicines and hospitals. Or if you know the cost of your treatment - in India it can range from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 20 lakhs - won't devastate your family.
I have seen enough cancer patients to know what awaits for them is nothing less than a holocaust. Cancer can strike anyone, at any time, for no apparent reason. Who gets spared, and who doesn't, is often a twist of fate: from getting diagnosed early to getting the most mature doctors. For many, returning to life as it was before, is impossible. Surviving cancer takes superhuman effort - physically, financially, socially and psychologically. About 30-50 per cent cancer patients go through deep, clinical depression, reports a study done by the AIIMS psychiatry department in 2012.
Doctors know all that. Hence, the idea of cancer "cure" is determined in terms of "years survived" - because, a lot of cancers come back in the first two to three years of diagnosis. Therefore, if someone manages to live for five years, without getting a relapse, survival is equated with cure. Globally, two-thirds of patients survive at least five years after diagnosis today. But in India, 70 per cent patients do not live beyond the first year. We typically approach doctors when cancer has advanced beyond help.
It's wonderful to come across people who can look back and say cancer gave them a new lease of life or made them a better person. But in our enthusiasm, please, can we not turn cancer into swine flu?