“Can we see the sea one day?”, Palliative care volunteer Deepa Ajith was struck by the simple question once in the paediatric oncology ward of Government Medical College, Kozhikode. “Of course”, she said and proceeded to meet the doctor concerned to get permission.
The little one who asked the question had been there for a few months diagnosed with leukaemia. Deepa remembered the day when the boy had come, clinging to his mother’s arms, looking fit as a fiddle. He did not know what struck him when he went from one test to the other. Once diagnosed, his life changed altogether. He was restricted from all activities, including going to school. Even while the treatments turned him into a sack of skin and bones, he maintained his exuberance, and kept the spirit up for others in the ward.
There are quite a number of children from 3 months to 15-year-olds at the Paediatric Oncology ward. Caring for Childhood Cancer and Chronic Illness (C4CCCI), of which Ms.Deepa is the secretary, has deployed some volunteers in the ward to take care of every need of the patients, especially financial. It has been doing this for around seven years now.
A joint venture of the Department of Paediatrics and Institute of Palliative Medicine at the Medical College, C4CCCI screens the details of every child that comes to the Oncology wing and gives them individual care. It mainly concentrates on Paediatric Leukaemia. The organisation supplies free medicines and food to the children from BPL families. It also attends to their financial needs and takes care of their travel to and fro from the hospital. However, a major duty of the organisation is to track the drop-outs and bring them back for treatment.
“Paediatric Leukaemia is perfectly curable, provided one adheres to the treatment prescribed. However, due to the harrowing experience, financial problems or even search of alternative therapies, many children drop out from the treatment. This is the major reason for death in the case of children with cancer,” said Ms. Deepa.
The volunteers also strive to keep up the morale of the children, who are easily disturbed.
Recently they had organised a get-together of the patients and survivors with this aim in mind. Around 200 children had attended the programme.
“Though rare, death does occur in the ward. The children as well as the mothers who take care of them are affected deeply when someone in the ward dies. By introducing them to the survivors, we try to give them hope that it is indeed possible to survive cancer,” Ms.Deepa said.
The effort to realise the simple whims of the children like ‘watching sea’ is part of this morale-boosting act. Even severe shortage of volunteers does not stop C4CCCI from realising those dreams.
