I lost my husband to cancer eight Sundays ago. The deadly non-small cell carcinoma got him in the end. Or, did it? This is the story of a 78-year-old man who was given a 12-week reprieve to take stock of his life and “settle his affairs” while his faculties were still intact. It is an incredible story because not only did he show an extraordinary survival instinct but lived the remaining three years of his life on his own terms.
Stubbornly refusing to believe he was carrying malignant cells in his body, he defied all medical conjecture by remaining normal and symptom-free until the end. He laughed outright when doctors recommended the usual therapies: surgery, chemotherapy, radiation. At their insistence, however, he went through the dreaded procedures cheerfully, with jokes and anecdotes galore. The oncologists were puzzled at this unconventional turn of events. I am relating his story in the hope it will enthuse other cancer patients to fight this enemy as he did. He treated it with the contempt it deserved.
How it began
It all began on July 23, 2008. I woke up at midnight to the sound of splintering glass. Shas stood there, his night shirt covered with pieces of glass. He looked puzzled. His right thumb no longer opposed his fingers. It was the beginning of a long journey. Our first destination was CMC, Vellore, where the legendary Paul Brand used to restore damaged limbs through reconstructive surgery. He had operated on my husband 50 years ago. Now, his successors had to repair the same hand. They needed blood tests and x-rays. That was when a radiologist held up a wet film and murmured “There is a shadow here. Better have a CT scan.” The scan revealed a lesion. Bronchoscopy followed. This time, the pulmonologist confirmed a malignant tumour in the lung, and our world fell apart.
We waited in the sterile consulting room of an oncologist at the Gokula Curie Cancer Centre in Bangalore. Patients in all stages of cancer waited; some in wheel chairs. Many wore head scarves to cover their hair loss. I stared vacantly when she suggested surgery. Shas remained unperturbed. He smiled and said “I don't have cancer.” She smiled back. She was used to patients in denial and ordered a total body scan. The results were devastating. The cancer had already metastasised in the other lung, the lymph nodes, brain and spine. The treacherous cells had entered the blood stream making it impossible to predict their growth and direction.
In despair, I turned to that Mecca for cancer patients: the Tata Memorial hospital in Mumbai. There, too, the doctors were baffled. They found their patient clinically fit. He had no visible symptoms. But his medical records pointed to cancer in the end stage. They advised the standard treatment again. I decided to go for a third opinion, and sent all the reports to a surgeon in Toronto. We had graduated from the same college many years ago. He promised to talk to his colleagues. Their response was not encouraging either. “NSCLC in Stage 1V was a terminal stage”, they said. It may or may not respond to treatment.
“But I became terminal the day I was born,” quipped my husband. He agreed, however, to undergo a six-cycle chemotherapy procedure. He received a potent cocktail of drugs every Friday. His white blood cells and platelets would plummet by Monday. They injected large doses of bone marrow to revive him. Until he received another dose of chemo. This went on for six months. Then, something unexpected happened. The aggressive tumour in the lung actually began to shrink. At the diagnostic centre in Bangalore, I prayed. It was too good to be true. The x-ray showed a spotless lung. The doctors quickly suggested another six cycles of aggressive oral therapy this time, to target the remaining cancerous sites. As usual, Shas remained unruffled and asymptomatic.
The next 12 months were wonderful. We began to live life once again with fun and laughter. We caught up with friends, sampled new eating places, went to theatres and music halls. We even planned a holiday abroad. Shas had finished six more cycles of ernotilib therapy, and was very upbeat when we went for one more PET scan. It was two years since that first day. The nuclear medicine specialist examined the body picture in silence. “Meet me tomorrow,” he said. “I need to look at this some more.”
Fighter to the end
I knew that something had gone terribly wrong. I was not mistaken. The malignant cells had wandered all over the body, attacking vital organs this time. The doctors in Toronto were right. So were the oncologists in Mumbai and Vellore and Bangalore. But Shas had found his own cure. He refused to admit the cancer or its symptoms. At last, I understood. He was not merely fighting for life. He was fighting for that special quality in life. He was not going to be dragged into the abyss of pain and suffering. He would meet his enemy cheerfully. I truly believe that it was the abundance of good humour that sustained him to the end.
I decided to go along with him although I knew his days were numbered. We drove to parks, listened to music, watched home movies while the clock ticked away relentlessly. A new year dawned. It was 2011. As the months went by, I secretly hoped that the doctors had got it all wrong. Whenever my husband said “I never had cancer,” I started believing him. After all, where were all those symptoms that were laid out before us in grisly detail? The breathlessness, the dizzy spells, the double vision and that unspeakable pain? Was he not laughing, joking and mocking all those medical files that I carefully preserved?
When I saw him racing on his bike one day, waving his hand and grinning at me, I knew that he had beaten the cancer in his own exceptional way. He would not be overpowered. Even when the final blow fell in the form of a severe seizure, he continued to fight with his back to the wall. And I think he won.
