Complementary and Alternative Treatments for Cancer
What are alternative or complementary treatment options? Do they work? Read the post for some practical advice on choosing your treatment. The weather has turned pleasant. The showers have given the much-needed respite from the classic Indian heat. I can hear the children playing outside, the happy shouting mixed with the noise of the…
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR MIND TO NOT BE ANXIOUS
There seems to be a recipe for everything these days! There’s one and many for baking a laddi pav or Indian bread, making a dream-catcher, creating a garden for herbs and vegetables and even for developing a vaccine (not one that you can try at home though!). For not being anxious? There isn’t one, in…
‘GOD HAS BEEN KIND’
The grass was green, the sky was blue and life was nice… It was the summer of 2011. I was posted in Kolkata. Life was coasting along rather satisfactorily for me. I was in my 30th year of service in the Indian Army and had seen reasonable success by way of being bestowed with the…
CHALLENGES OF HOME-BASED CARE AND HOW TO OVERCOME THEM
Ira was given all care at home for 16 months after our initial stay at the hospital. During those months, we as a family, faced several challenges regarding daily care giving. These pointers may be useful for not only patients who have undergone critical surgeries or who are bedridden but also for elderly family members…
WHY INDIA NEEDS TO WAKE UP TO PALLIATIVE CARE?
What is palliative care? How many of you can answer this without google-ing it? (Let me know in the comments below.) Palliative care has been around for more than 75 years in this world and yet many of us don’t even understand what it means. I didn’t know anything about palliative care. Back in August…
POST-SURGICAL COMPLICATIONS IN BRAIN TUMOUR PATIENTS – SEIZURES & INVOLUNTARY MOVEMENTS
It is weird how I always believed that nothing bad would ever happen – at least nothing majorly bad. I now blush at my idiocy. Life isn’t meant to be fair. Not even for a 3 year old. I did not attach much weight to the many possible complications that the doctor had informed us…
THE BRAIN TUMOUR TYPE – A REALITY CHECK AND A MISDIAGNOSIS
Bombay Hospital is a huge place, harboured in three separate buildings- old, new and not-so-old one! A modern and tall structure nestled into the narrow lanes of Marine Lines and surrounded by age-old residential buildings, tiny hotels and even a theatre. It looks discreet and unfashionable- unlike the theatre standing opposite its gate, a commonplace…
THE CANCER DIAGNOSIS – PART II
This is the second part in the series of The Cancer Diagnosis. Here is Part I. When I first heard about the tumour, I felt lost. Consonant with the feeling of falling between the cracks. First, there was the denial. How could this happen? She has cancer! Yes. Oh! Why Ira? Never before did I…
THE CANCER DIAGNOSIS
Anyone who has known our family and Ira has always had the same question since her surgery last year. I feel like it’s the question that everyone wants an answer to: how did you come to know about the brain tumour (तुम्हला कसं कळलं?)? Remember the tremulousness that I talked about in my previous blog…
A PROLOGUE
5TH MAY 2017 16:45 IST I had to return to her side. I had been idling in the relative’s waiting area for 15 minutes now and my time for a mini-break was over. Each time the thought of going back to the Neuro-recovery Room cropped up in my mind I flinched. You know that feeling?…