ꜱᴄʜʀᴏᴅɪɴɢᴇʀ'ꜱ ᴄᴀᴛ

Literally giving this vibe.

I wrote this back in February 2020 . CoVID was still a fringe random disease. World was different. A lot has changed in 6 years. Just felt like posting it here again. My father was diagnosed as having Acute lymphoblastic Leukaemia in December 2019. I thought it was some sort of ironical joke universe is playing at me. I never wanted to be a doctor. The thing that made me stick around with this profession was my love for one subject and one book in particular. Emperor of all Maladies and Hematology . I just loved everything about it. And one thing in particular I loved and will always remember is a line from my pathology textbook which made me want to do Hematology and be an Hemat-oncologist in particular was this – ‘Paediatric ALL is one of the greatest success stories of cancer chemotherapy . 90% of children achieve remission and 70–80-% have >5y survival’. This line stuck with me. Intoxicated me. Made me passionate. Made me wonder and marvel at human achievement – that we had conquered cancer – cancer which is essentially nothing but our own body cell’s way of achieving immortality. We had conquered immortality to prevent our own mortality. How beautiful . How seductive. My association with Hematology and ALL increased with my thesis on Neutropenic Diet in Paediatric leukaemia patients. My world my work my fantasies revolved around leukaemia. Till the time I didn’t want it too. Till the time my own father had it. When I read that line from my pathology textbook again and read the line after it – ‘Prognosis in adult ALL patients is generally poor’ It felt as if my intense desire had somehow contrived the universe into my father having this disease. I thought I was unlucky. Till I again met someone. I don’t know her name. I have only met her once. Her and her child. But some moments are so powerful that they change you. I was posted in Paediatric casualty when my father was diagnosed with ALL. I met a mother with an infant. There was something peculiar about her. A closer look revealed that she was blind. She was in the casualty since her infant had guess what – ALL. Infantile leukemia also carries a very poor prognosis. I didn’t say anything to her, I couldn’t . She asked me – would her child be alright? She told how her husband too is blind. They belonged to a poor socioeconomic strata. Did not have the money to afford the treatment. The child was a girl. The grandparent and the society had told to let the child die since she was a girl. And she told me all this and said – she wants her daughter to be all right. She wants her to live and asked me – would she? Will she? I couldn’t say anything . I just told her that right now she requires blood and platelet transfusion and we will do that. You only have as much courage as your inner demons. But this was something beyond that. My SR told me that pragmatically she should be allowed to die peacefully. AIIMS should treat cases with better prognosis or better outcome. She would consume a lot of resources with a dismal prognosis. But my friend told me something else – something so powerful. That she is precisely the case the biggest tertiary care centre in this country should try to treat. Our institution is not necessarily meant for pneumonia and abscess. It’s meant for these particularly challenging cases. For these people. For people with these complex socioeconomic challenges. We should give our everything for these children. After all a life is a life and no one ever can put a cost on that. I have not met her again. But that moment made me realise – everyone amongst us is fighting a battle. A battle we have no idea about. Kindness costs nothing and could mean the world to someone. Be kind . Be sweet. Laugh. Live. No one’s getting alive out of here anyway.