Breast Cancer...

In August of 2010, I miscarried two months prior to our first year wedding anniversary and I was diagnosed with breast cancer two months later, nine days before our first year anniversary.

I felt the lump when my body started going back to some form of normalcy, after the pregnancy. I put off getting it looked at for a couple of months, but when it started hurting, I knew I should get in to see my doctor.

My Grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 82, so I always made sure to have my yearly mammograms, and they have always been normal even the year before.

The diagnostic mammogram that I had did not show my tumor, so my doctor ordered an ultra sound... and there it was. I wanted it out, no matter what it was! I immediately did a biopsy on a Thursday. I went home to wait for my results, which I was told wouldn't be until Monday. On Friday, October 1st at around 3:00 pm, I received the call. I'm pretty sure all I heard was, "Kelly, we see cancerous cell growth." I don't remember anything else, except for my body going numb. The following Monday, we met with my breast surgeon and laid out a plan of action - I was going to win this battle!

I was diagnosed with Stage II invasive ductal carcinoma, an aggressive form of breast cancer, which, for me, meant lots of targeted drug therapy. I decided on a lumpectomy to remove my 2.5cm tumor and came out of surgery on November 3rd, 2010 with clear margins and a sentinel node biopsy that showed no lymph node involvement. By December 2nd I had my port in place and I was about to start the fight of my life to make sure this never returned to my body. I completed six rounds of chemotherapy, 33 rounds of radiation and an additional 11 rounds of Herceptin, which ended on November 2nd 2011, the day before my 1-YEAR CANCER FREE ANNIVERSARY!

I learned right away that when you don't have a choice, you can do anything! In the beginning of this journey, one of my radiation oncologists said to me, "Kelly, we caught this early and it is very treatable. Is the next year of your life going to be hell? Yes! But you will be so thankful that you did all of this." I'm not going to lie. It was hell, but here I am and I am so very thankful to my amazing medical team for everything.

I did my first American Cancer Society's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk on October 16th 2010 in the and I will continue to walk, because I dream of a world where no one will EVER have to have their body go numb with fear after hearing those words. Because people need to be educated - EARLY detection saves lives... I am proof of that. Because WE have nieces, nephews, daughters, sons, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, husbands, and wives... Because breast cancer does not discriminate against age OR gender... Because I am a SURVIVOR and I want to stay that way! I am walking in honor of everyone that has been touched by breast cancer... those that have fought hard and lost their battle, those that are still fighting, those that have survived and all the AMAZING people in our lives that took care of us!

They gave a beautiful life to a beautiful child!...

So, this is something that happened in my immediate family. My aunt and uncle loved and had known each other for over two years before they tied the knot. It seemed like a rosy story. Everything was all good and they were having the best days of their life. They both loved each other as much as they had done on the day they met. The family was also very supportive. Things were all good and they decided to take the next big step almost after 2 years of enjoying the marital bliss when they decided to extend their family. And that is when the trouble started, they tried initially for some time but it didn’t work. They went in for a lot of tests, took all the medication as prescribed by the doctors. Nothing happened. At first they had a lot of hope that something will happen and they would get the happiness in their life but with time they lost all the hope. And it was always a sad affair when the relatives and people were more worried about you being childless and like it meant the end of the world. I had seen that look in their eyes and that they wanted to share the love in their life with a third someone and craved for it every day when they see other happy couples with kids. The sorrow in their life seemed unending but their love for each other seemed eternal.
Then one fine day, we received a call from my auntie that they had adopted a beautiful baby girl and she is there at their house. We couldn’t contain our joy and it was at the peak when we finally visited them and there she was-the sweetest and the most beautiful thing that we had ever seen. She lit the whole room with her presence. My aunt told me that they had told someone in their village that they would like to adopt a baby girl. So, when they got a call from that person, they couldn’t wait and left immediately and brought home this 3 day old bundle of joy after doing all the legal formalities. Her parents were poor and couldn’t believe her luck that her child is going to an affluent family. A week back was that baby girl’s 1st day in the school and it made me feel so proud of my uncle and aunt who not only lit their home with this beautiful child but also gave a beautiful life to this sweetest child.

My sweet short love story!...

I haven’t had what you would call the most successful relationships, and never did experience a gist of cute love stories until this incident in my life.

Most of the guys I’ve fallen for have been unavailable, taken by a friend or taken by a friend and having an affair!

Makes for a nice short cute love story of comical errors, don’t you think?

But there have been some ‘awww…’ moments that should warm the cockles of any romantic’s heart.

No matter how much girls may protest, they’ve all fallen for at least one guy just for his looks.

If a girl says they like a good-looking guy because he’s got “personality”, “a good heart” or God forbid, “intellect”, then you know what she’s really after.

My cover was that he was a hotel management student and he, presumably, would cook for me. At least my mother wouldn’t have to despair of me never being able to get a decent meal once I was married. I can’t even boil an egg.

I knew this guy, Amit, from way back. Family friends and all that. The first time I met him, he wouldn’t even look at me, which I thought was strange, considering that I was what they call an early bloomer.

He seemed more interested in hanging out with my kid brother. Anyway, a few years went by, during which we had graduated from school. He went out of town to complete his hospitality management course and I mooched around the suburbs studying arts.

My mother met him at a dinner a couple of years later and came back raving about him. “You’ll never guess who’s blossomed into a wonderful young man, Sapna. Amit! He’s turned out to be not so bad-looking and he can carry on a conversation quite well,” she said. A year went by and I eventually met this “late bloomer” and wow! I didn’t care if he could carry on a conversation quite well.

This guy was hot! And as a bonus, he was funny, smart and had excellent conversation skills. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite exhibit mine because I was so tongue-tied.

Another year went by and I got a call from Amit’s dad, inviting me to spend the weekend at their place. And Amit was even more good-looking than I remembered. Must have been the air in U.S. (Did I mention that he’d gone to study his masters there?) We went out with some friends of his, had a few laughs and a few drinks. On the way home, we just generally talked. He, about how he wanted to go and work in some big corporation I can’t pronounce right, and I, about how I didn’t know what I wanted to do. It was easy. I didn’t really have to think much about what I had to say next. I could even rib him a bit and he didn’t mind as long as he could rib me back.

As I got out of the car, he asked me for my number. “I’ll call you”, he said. But I knew better than to expect that he actually would.

He did call.

But then I was confused. He asked me out to dinner, but was it a date? Or did he feel guilt pangs over saying he’d call me even though he didn’t intend to? And then the inevitable question. Was it a pity date?

The day came. He even showed up early! As he opened the door, he asked me, “I hope you weren’t expecting flowers or anything.”

“Flowers? Oh no! Anything living that’s entrusted to my care dies.” It’s true. The several potted plants in my balcony devoid of plants are testament to this.

“Good,” he said as we got into the car, “Look in the back.”

I looked and thought, “Yikes!” Because sitting in the back seat was a bouquet of yellow flowers. “Hmmm… maybe this is a date after all,” I thought. And I was roused from this happy thought by Amit saying, “You’re sitting on something!” And there I was, sitting on five CDs that he had written for me. Things were indeed looking very date-like.

We were on the road and he asked if I would mind going to one of the gazillion lounges in the city. By then I was in demure-girl mode and responded appropriately, “Oh, I’m fine with anything.”

“And you don’t mind if someone else comes along? My friend’s sitting at home and has nothing to do tonight.”

“Oh sure,” I said, all the while thinking, “Flowers: check; gift: check; alone time: … Oh well, two out of three isn’t bad.”

We picked up his friend and got to the lounge. And we did the same thing, some more drinks and some more laughs. Then we went to one of the gazillion clubs. After a bit, we left the friend in one part of the club and stood in a corner near the dance floor.

And that’s when he told me that he had liked me for a long time. Ever since we had met for the first time. And how he wasn’t sure if I felt the same way. And that’s where my own cute love story unfolded

The First 60 Seconds of Cancer ...

The word. The Cancer word. It doesn’t have to be a death sentence.

I’m told that I have cancer.  It’s terminal.  I have only two months to live.
I’m instantly wrapped in an empty void.  No one is in there with me.  I’m truly alone.  A door has slammed shut, and I feel it lock tight.  I can’t touch the key because it’s only a word.  Cancer is the storm that blew the door closed, and it is the key that locked me out of my right to live.  I’m terrified.  I’m broken.  I take my next breath.

My oncologist is saying,“ I can’t treat you”.  No! I need help!  I want to fight for my life!  Someone has to help me do what I don’t know how to do.  Someone has to help me do what I can’t do alone!

So, I find another oncologist.  This one says, “I won’t treat you”.  “Why”, I ask?  “Because there might be more cancer in your liver than shows on the PET scan”.  “What do you mean… might?”

Three oncologists, a GP, and two surgeons all delivered the same grim outcome.  I had nine cancer sites that had spread from the original site in the colon.  All the help the oncologists were willing to give me was advice:  Go home and get your affairs in order.  This is where I found myself in November/December of 2005, just three months after my husband dropped dead at my feet.  I wish I had known then what I know now.  But, of course… I didn’t.

This is an autobiography, only inasmuch as I have to tell you my story, where I was in the beginning, in the middle of the fray, and how it all turned out.  I need to tell my story so a victim with cancer…any type of cancer… can dredge up the courage to fight the disease, have the faith to renounce their death sentence, and the hope they need to keep them alive.  It’s a hope that is born from their own grit and nurtured by God to see their battle with cancer through to a positive outcome.

The Long Road Back

Many, if not most people, have no idea there are options to consider in their battle with cancer.  Victims of cancer aren’t concerned about their choices and options when they’re first diagnosed.  They’re looking at an oncologist, a man or a woman, who is driven by statistics that he or she uses to predict the patient’s outcome.  The doctors know all about the drugs, the surgeries, the pain, and they’ve seen the desperation of the patient’s circumstances.  However, our medical universities don’t teach them about other options: Options that could very well save their lives.

Doctors have seen the drugs and surgeries used to treat cancer fail too many times.  So, somewhere along their way, too many of them have lost the ability to bring along compassion to the treatment table.  It’s as though they’ve forgotten that the patient’s heart and soul are not just by-products of the patient’s self. Our hearts and souls are the very spirit that gives us meaning.  Our spirit is an essential part of our recovery.  Some doctors seem to have forgotten that our spirit is that part of us that makes us tick, that helps us fight, that allows us to believe that we really can win.

My brother and sister-in-law helped me find an oncologist who would give me the right to fight my disease, and one who was willing to do whatever he could to give me the chance to go on with life.  I had to drive 220 miles each way to get the treatments that I couldn’t find at home.  But, I didn’t care one bit.  I had to do what I had to do.  I took the help I was offered, and I thanked God for the one doctor who would fight for me, and the only one I could find who would fight with me.

Time, however, was all he could offer.  My cancer was too aggressive, he said, and had spread too far to hope that it could be cured.  He felt he might extend my life to a year if I chose to take his treatments. He sent me to a colorectal surgeon that he had faith in.  The surgeon who examined me felt I should have colorectal surgery immediately.  However, my oncologist told me that I didn’t have enough lifetime left to consider the surgery.  I needed to get the chemotherapy drugs started as quickly as possible.  So, I was given 51 hours of three different chemotherapy drugs, and one drug booster, every other week for six months.

I nearly died of pneumonia after the first chemotherapy treatment.  I wanted to die after the second, as the drugs were burning my esophagus so badly I could barely sip water.  I couldn’t take the third treatment because my blood counts (neutrophils) were so very low.  It was at that time in my battle with cancer and the horribl

Kiran is right. It’s unpardonable, what everyone is doing to h...

Sitting on a cot on the semi-terrace outside her room, 20-year-old Kiran (name changed) pulls the strings of the jute chaarpai, murmuring in rage. It is anger tempered by the presence of her mother-in-law in the courtyard downstairs. It has been five months since Kiran has gone out to answer nature’s call alone. Women like her are not trusted to be allowed out alone even for that. Kiran was raped by four men repeatedly over four days in different parts of Haryana like Panipat, Sonepat and Kurukshetra before being dumped at the Panipat Railway Station. That was on 28 September 2012. Last month, on 24 April, she was sentenced to a ten-day imprisonment. “The judge, my father, my brother, my husband, my mother-in-law and the biraadari—they are collectively raping my head. Still,” says Kiran.

The month she was raped, 12 more gangrapes were reported. Yet, in many quarters, her case has become a cautionary tale—the risks of a woman, especially one of a ‘lower caste’ landless community, exerting her free will and demanding justice.

In caste terms, Kiran is a Dhanuk.

Banwasa village is in Gohana town of Sonepat district. It is crisscrossed by paddy and vegetable fields. The Dhanuks who live here, like in other North Indian villages, are considered untouchable. Their houses are on the outskirts of the village. Their traditional job was to remove night soil from ‘upper caste’ houses, but they have long switched to working as agricultural hands, basket weavers, midwives and construction labourers. Landless and ostracised, their only sense of security is their biraadari, which acts as a tool of social control and an informal welfare association.

As she talks about the rape for the first time in many months without the fear of being judged, Kiran starts crying.

“Don’t cry, they want to break you down through character assassination,” I tell her. “Can you tell that to my father and my husband?” she says.

+++

On 28 September 2012, Kiran was at her parent’s place in Banwasa, when Sunita, a neighbourhood housewife, gave her a message that her husband Sudeep had come to meet her near a local railway crossing.

“I had told him once that I want to meet him outside the house like they do in Dilwale Dulhaniya le Jayenge. When the boy comes to get the girl? I thought that’s why he had come to meet me,” says Kiran.

As soon as she reached the outskirts of the village, two men of Khandrai village— Sunil and Sanjay—kidnapped her and took her to a rice field on the Gohana-Kakrohi road. They were later joined by Anil of Ahmedpur Majra village and Sarvan of Hadtari village. Two of them pinned her hands down while the third and fourth raped her. “They laughed as they ripped my clothes with a blade and described my body parts to each other. I was a toy they were trying out.”

From the paddy field to a mini-van to the Brahmsarovar in Kurukshetra to a small room next to railway tracks in Panipat, the ordeal continued. “I begged them to let me go.” They didn’t. She was asked to discard her clothes and change into an old salwar kameez. She remembers waking up the fifth day and fleeing.

Kiran registered a case with the Sonepat police. It took over a week to arrest the four rapists and Sunita, who had allegedly helped them.

According to Yashpal Singh, DSP, Gohana, “We registered Kiran’s statement under Section 164. Once a statement is recorded under this section, rape is confirmed. During the interrogation, the rapists confirmed Kiran’s accusations.” A medical examination conducted at Gohana civil hospital also indicated rape.

Over the next three months, however, Kiran was labelled a prostitute, a thief, a serial offender and a Dalit nymphomaniac. Her in-laws threatened to abandon her, the parents wanted to get rid of her.

“They kept saying, ‘Why did you leave the house? Why didn’t you tell your parents [where you were going]?’” she says. When she was 17, Kiran had eloped with a lover. That episode was cited as justification of her rape, as if her past record had called it upon her. “She ran away with a mechanic from a nearby village,” says a relative of hers who does not wish to be identified, “Her brother Gurmeet brought her back and tried to hang her. We intervened and saved her life. She has always been like this.”

Kiran is the second of five children born to a beldar and his daily-wage labourer wife. They share a two-room hut made of corrugated tin and decaying wood, and led a simple life until what happened to Kiran. “We suddenly did not deserve to be talked to because our daughter was raped and she filed a case. She did not know that poor people do not fight cases in courts,” says the mother. The family’s primary source of income is the daily wage of

My brother got a new life!...

Today I want to talk about the most difficult phase of my life. Almost 6 months back, my brother, 23 years of age then had a major operation in emergency when his intenstine bursted all of a sudden. He would complain of excruciating pain in the abdomen for years and we had gotten many tests also done but nothing ever came out in the tests. Little did we know what lay ahead.

He was admitted in the hospital immediately and we were told that he had to be operated immediately since the intestine had bursted so everything inside was turning poison. Before the operation, my bro was cold and had no pulse. He was given pulse so that he could be operated. The doctors told my dad that the chances that my bro would make it were very slim and that he might go into a coma or other terrible things could happen to him. But we had no option. After almost an hour of operation, the senior doctor came out and told my dad that everything was fine and almost after a 3 long hours, the operation was completed and my brother was saved after his intestine was mended.

But the doctors said that it was a major operation and that they had not closed the stitches because there’s infection and that until the infection is gone, they can’t stitch it. My brother and dad were in the hospital for almost a month where my brother had to struggle every day. Sometimes, he would be totally hopeless because of the pain and because of not being able to do the things we all take for granted. And he would doubt it if he would ever make it. The infection was taking a lot of time to go away already when my brother caught fever which would not go away. He had a temperature of 105 degree Celsius which didn’t go away for a week. The doctors were all worried and tried everything but the fever wouldn’t come down. They finally took to the last resort of going for the very high medication for pneumonia. Luckily it worked and my brother’s body found way back to the normal body temperature. Also, the added advantage of the high dosage brought the infection under control which went away in a week and then finally my brother’s stomach was stitched.

He came home along with dad after a month. It was no less than a miracle for all of us to see him today getting back on the feet. He still reminisces the time he had fought for his life every single day when being normal was a luxury and a far-fetched dream and still owes it big time to the team of doctors which included Dr. Lavneesh along with Dr.Keshav and Dr.Sanjay due to whom he got a new life!

Don't just feel sorry, learn the joy of giving