Her name is Geeta. She is a patient of breast cancer and the medical condition is called carcinoma breast. She was diagnosed in January. She has undergone surgery followed by chemotherapy and is now undergoing a treatment with radiation. A doctor here briefly explained me Geeta’s case and I was interested in her for my story due to the fact that she is recovering at a good pace. She is currently staying at a ward for cancer patients in Shirdi Sai Baba Cancer Hospital and Research Center, Manipal.
A radiation
treatment usually has a duration of 6 weeks but Geeta is being given a newer
treatment/regimen which she will receive for a comparatively short while. She has
already received 3 weeks of radiation treatment. Every morning for 5 days a
week she meets the medical equipment called linear accelerator. She will
probably be at the hospital for a week more, before being discharged, after
which she will have to come for monthly checkups. Geeta says that the doctors
come and talk to the patients nicely and inform them well about their current
state and treatment regularly. The nurses are polite too.
She is 45
years old and the mother of two daughters; one is in high school whereas the
other is an engineering student in Mangalore. She stays in touch with her
family through a cell phone and talks to them daily. Her husband comes to meet her
once in every 3 days and her elder daughter comes once a week. Her brother too
visits her frequently. She spends her free time here in the female general ward
either strolling or watching television. She has her meals at the canteen whereas
the medicines are given by the nursing staff.
Geeta, this
happy, cute and now bald woman who was smiling all the time while me and my
friend were talking to her, comes from a village known as Teerta-halli in Shimoga
district. She at first noticed a lump or knot in her body and felt pain and
showed to a doctor; the doctor had explained Geeta her condition to her and her
family, they all were very worried about her health and life. She says that on talking
to her neighbors and family friends about cancer, they were advised not to lose
hope and that there is a cure and treatment for what she is going through. Basically,
it is amusing that people of every social background are aware of the age we
now live in. Geeta and her family then came to Manipal for the treatment.
She is afraid of the future but she still tells
me that every morning after she goes through her daily radiation session she
feels good after so many months and has hope that she will be completely
alright and that she will get cured! She personally senses it in her body that
she is being cured and that all the medication she has gone through is worth it
and she feels ‘good’. She said atleast 3 times ‘achha lagta hai’.
Here comes
the best part, me and my kannada speaking friend explained to her that I was
taking her story for an assignment on ‘how a person’s life had been positively
transformed by technology’ and that we wanted to know her opinion on this. Firstly,
she states that she is ‘Happy’...’Khush’.
Secondly, she is very grateful for the doctors and the medication that she has
been able to receive because of being here, in the cancer block. She says that
if technology is harming anyone or anything then it is no good, but if it is
helping people then it is a very good thing. It is a very simple thing but none
would expect it from an ordinary person of such a simplistic background to say
that. She further added that technology is helping her to live more, that is, a
longer life. She does realize that she is luckier than the people who had such diseases
a few decades back, diseases that are so complex and not easily treatable without
advanced medical science. Moreover, she also says that technology is giving ‘hope’
to people.
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