Parag Pevekar
Soon after I finished my graduation, I got selected as a crew member for Air India. I flew for six years and earned good money before I decided to resume my studies again.
I was doing my masters in disaster management from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. One day, I was having lunch with a colleague who pointed a swelling in my neck. I told him it could be my Adam's apple. But he insisted that I should see a doctor.
After a clinical examination, the doctor asked me to go for an MRI. The next day, he conveyed to me with a straight face that I had cancer of thyroid and have to undergo a surgery.
It happened so suddenly that I didn’t even realise the enormity of what I was told. The doctor too didn’t prepare me mentally for the treatment.
I underwent the surgery. Post-surgery, I had a little pain but I was more worried about the scar on the neck than cancer. The doctor asked me to come for a follow-up the next month.
On my next visit after a month, he repeated all the tests and told me that I needed to undergo radiation therapy. He told me that they would inject a radioactive substance in my blood that will kill all the cancer cells in my body. And I had to be confined to a room for 3 days till the time my body stopped emitting radiation.
The very next morning, I was taken to a big room in the basement of a premier hospital in Mumbai.
The room was spacious. It had no window and had only one exit—a brown wooden door. Its walls were white. It had a television, a telephone and a bed. And yes, it had a bathroom too.
The person who took me there injected the radio-active medicine into me and scurried out fast.
The first few hours flew as I was still to figure out what had happened.
The last few years of my life flashed before my eyes. I worked as a crew member with Air India for six years. I was living my dream. I was travelling across the country. Those were happy days.
Suddenly, the phone rang breaking the ominous silence of the room. “Your food has been kept outside the room. Please eat it,” the voice said. I was supposed to pick it up and come back to my room.
I tried to divert my mind but the more I tried, the more intense my suffering became. I could feel the pain in my neck, the pain I didn’t feel even after the surgery. I could feel that there is something flowing in my blood. I felt heavy. My head was aching badly and I felt nauseated.
My eyes searched for a human figure in the corridor but there was no one.
I wanted to talk to someone. I searched through the numbers in my phone, dialled my father’s number, but I hung up before he could answer.
He too was alone at home. I am a single child and my mother died when I was still a kid. My father must also be dealing with the same loneliness; he must also be anxious and tense. I should not add to his anxiety, I thought.
I tried to divert my mind but the more I tried, the more intense my suffering became. I could feel the pain in my neck, the pain I didn’t feel even after the surgery. I could feel that there is something flowing in my blood. I felt heavy. My head was aching badly and I felt nauseated.
I switched on the television to break the deafening silence of the room-- a silence that could shatter a person faster than any high decibel noise. I flipped through the channels to find something of interest to help me divert my mind from the pain and suffering.
During those 72 hours of being confined in a room, there were moments when I felt helpless, restless, claustrophobic and lonely like never before
When I came out the third day, I wanted to breathe. I enjoyed the sunlight and the blue sky. I had always felt irritable in the hot and humid weather of Mumbai, but I was quite enjoying it that day. I liked the hustle- bustle on the streets, the honks of the vehicles, even that nauseating smell of the fish.
At home, when I looked into the mirror for the first time, I saw a different me—my face was swollen. It was because the thyroid gland had been removed during the surgery and I had yet not taken the hormone replacement.
I knew that thyroxin hormone would help reduce the bloating. But somehow, I was in a rush to regain my 'looks'. I started running and exercising, beyond my physical capacity. But as I had not recovered, I faced severe knee joint pain.
I realised that the person in the mirror was not me. You are how you feel in your mind, how strong you feel within.
I decided to heal myself. I had to do it gradually. I first focused on my immunity and increasing my physical strength.
For the first time in my life, I realised how loneliness and uncertainty can devastate you. I felt that when I was diagnosed with cancer, I needed someone to hold my hand and prepare me for the treatment mentally. That was as important, or may be more, than just treating me with medicine.
I was alone in my fight against cancer, but I wanted to help people in their fight with a deadly disease and that’s why I became a psychosocial counsellor and therapist. I counsel patients suffering from drug resistant tuberculosis. Each of my patients reminds me of those 72 hours I underwent and I try my best to pull them out of that dark shell I found myself in after being diagnosed with cancer.
It has been three years since my cancer was detected. My latest report suggests that it might have come back. I have to go for an MRI scan again and I may have to undergo radio iodine therapy and 72 hours of isolation again. But I am better equipped this time.
The writer is a counsellor with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Mumbai