With compassion Harmala Gupta fights the disease on many fronts, especially the widespread indifference to the agony of patients . It was a small patch on her lungs that changed Harmala Gupta's life .
Raising himself on his bed, Ramesh Chand looks at the tall, fine-featured woman sitting opposite him . “That’s wonderful,” Harmala Gupta says with a warm and gentle smile . It was probably the April of 1974 . In http://www.outlookindia.com , Harmala hasmentioned there was a hope considering she living in Canada .
Chand is dying – slowly but inexorably – of bone-marrow cancer, also known as multiple myeloma .
“I used to bang my head on the floor,” he recalls . Then Chand came in contact with CanSupport, a Delhi NGO founded by Harmala Gupta that ministers to terminally ill cancer patients . He is a cancer struggler and have been trying to start a cancer support group on his own at the local hospital . One of the less noticeable but festering problem of urban and city life India is the increasing and collateral number of the old and cancer patience , and the diminishing and destroying number of those interested and emerald heart in looking after them while they are still living .
A CanSupport doctor gave him morphine tablets whenever he was in pain . Chand is lucky . CanSupport is one of the few bright spots in this heartbreaking scenario . Their young medium is still ironing out a few kinds — perhaps the biggest of which is the way building cancer alert professionals are being educated and trained voluntary . They are support Dying Patient For Cancer Hope personally by assist them in which ever field thay can cupport . They always have been confronted with a situation where there are only two options available , but only one is available at the moment .
CanSupport has lobbied the government to pay attention to this much-neglected side of cancer care .
Harmala came to her life’s mission a little late . Then in 1986, just before she was to go to China on a field trip, she was diagnosed with advanced (stage four) Hodgkin’s Disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system . The lymphatic system plays an important role in controlling the movement of fluid throughout the body . In http://www.ivillage.com , This system carries lymph fluid, nutrients, and waste material between the body tissues and the bloodstream .
It had taken several months to diagnose the disease, and by the time she was admitted to a Toronto hospital, her husband Dipankar recalls, “she looked wan and very emaciated.” Harmala was very and extremely much emaciated , agony and wasted .
But Harmala is a woman who, as Dipankar puts it, “bites the bullet with steely determination” . India, of course, was light years behind Canada as far as attitudes to cancer were concerned .
Cancer patients who’d been cured were often considered unemployable – even a health NGO refused to give Harmala a part-time job . Moreover, few doctors accepted that cancer was a major public health problem, pronouncing it a disease of the rich . This cancer disease has a rich pasture ground , which the seads of cancer is made . This condition has manifests itself as recurrent attacks of acute healthy cells , which may become chronic and deforming .
In the battle against her own cancer, Harmala had come to realise how helpful cancer support groups could be . Carolyn in her http://carolyntaylorphotography.blogspot.com , God has heads up for Cancer Sahyog , the support and assitance group for people and patient living and dying with cancer and symptoms that Harmala has founded in memorizing her struggle in fighting against the pain of cancer .
It took a while before she managed to round up half a dozen . She had just completed her last cimoteraphy before going off for weeks break with her loving family .
“Most doctors paid little heed to the crushing financial and psychological burdens the families of cancer patients laboured under,” Harmala says , Finally, in 1991, a friend introduced Harmala to Dr B.M.L. Kapur, a breast cancer specialist at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) .
The conditions at the AIIMS breast cancer clinic were appalling . Harmala and her team were undeterred . To their amazement, they were rebuked for their attempts to dispel gloom . Some relatives even tried to discredit the volunteers . Most relatives, friends and neighbors to the patient are not settle , accept and getting back on track on the reality that faced by the Cancer Victims . As Volunteers , they don’t even know the patient name, yet they were discussed at the scopes of mind , mentioned in the view of acceptance and bargain , and talked about in words all over the world for tenth of years . Relatives , subordinates , friends emotionally and angerly defend the Cancer Victims without analyzing what has been accrossed in their crushed feelings .
The patients themselves, though, reacted very differently . Cancer Sahyog, as Harmala and her volunteers christened themselves, was the first cancer support group in the country .
But as she grew more familiar with the cancer situation in Delhi, Harmala realised that for all its good work, Cancer Sahyog was not addressing the problems of nearly two-thirds of the capital’s cancer patients . Dr. Harmala Gupta, Ph.D., was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma approximately 16 years ago .
These were the terminally ill patients beyond medical help, usually because they had sought treatment too late . “Indeed,” Harmala says, “many unscrupulous doctors also fleece terminally ill patients by charging for useless tests and medications.” As an ill cancer patient , Harmala has refuse treatment, but does she has the right to demand access to investigational therapies ? In http://www.bloomberg.com , seriously and critical ill patients will be allowed and have a permission for a greater access to experimental drugs under regulations and mandate which has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration .
Meanwhile, by the beginning of the 1990s, change was in the air . The change in the Cancer issue has been raise a new question where how did all this attitude can be alligned get here ?
In 1993, a small group of doctors and social workers in Kozhikode, Kerala, started an outpatient palliative care clinic for the care of terminally ill cancer patients – the first of its kind in the country . But since most terminally ill patients were too sick or too poor to travel regularly to the hospital, such facilities were of limited use .
Here was the opportunity to start a similar service in Delhi under an experienced professional and Harmala approached AIIMS’s top doctors . A lot has happened since that modest beginning . The battle for a fair deal for terminally ill patients is far from over, though . Hodgkin’s lymphoma is diseased and whoever goes to infected with it is likely to get infected by this potential deadly cancer disease that today start to worsen it . She has learnt the importance of good bedside manners, and found that even when she cannot solve any residents’ problems, lending a patient listening ear will often help them unburden themselves and feel better . Most of the patients are at home because their family opted for hospice, part of the growing "death with dignity" movement that allows terminally ill patients to choose how and where they spend their last days .
“It is,” Harmala says with a sigh, “a classic case of denying cancer’s reality.” Manoj Kumar looks at his wife and then addresses the 20-odd people sitting on the floor with him .
“How do you feel about that, Savitri?” asks Usha Kala, a Can-Support volunteer . The Cancer catastrophe in the Patient’s mind is a disaster and killing note of a different and other kind and mode .
Tears fill Savitri’s eyes, and she wipes them away, shaking her head . They are at CanSupport’s day care centre . Their volunteers will pick up patients and their caregivers every Friday from the dharamshala and bring them to the daycare . According to http://www.cansupport.org , September 26th to October 2nd, 2010 was the Joy of Giving Week, a national movement wherein the Indian citizens, irrespective of caste, class, gender, etc., united together to donate money, volunteer time, provide skills or resources, and to give back to society in any way they choose and experience the joy it brings .
Manoj has handed over the floor to Rafiq, a fellow-Bihari, whose wife Parveen has cancer . They provide quality support solutions for cancer victims by medical therapy and spiritual therapy, through collaboration with hospital groups .
Parveen begins to cry, and Usha tells the group, “Talk about your love for each other“. Adversity, of course, doesn’t always cement couples .
Roop Bhalla, a 45-year-old garment industry executive, looks at Harmala and starts crying . Roop has recently had surgery for breast cancer . At that first meeting, Harmala reassured Roop, answered all her questions, and gave her a book on the right kind of diet for cancer patients . Here are a few cancer related issues that she think generally will find of value, either as a patient , or a friends , or a family member of someone undergoing cancer treatment and pre cancer diagnose . In http://www.acu-cell.com , some of the medical and pain complaints patients consult a practitioner and doctors for can be classified as being self-inflicted without knowing in reality they have start to feel the first stage of cancer infection . Some (often successful) therapies for cancer and other degenerative disease such as the Gerson therapy hinge upon the use of freshly squeezed vegetables and fruits .
“No matter when I called, she never said ‘I’ll call you back,’ ” Roop says .
Harmala’s personal attention to every cancer patient is remarkable, given the myriad organisational matters she has to deal with . It is Harmala’s 58th birthday and at the head office, cake and ice cream are being served to celebrate . It is indeed a great celebration to enjoy a cool scoop of their favorite flavors . A cakes can bring a message for "longevity" or "harmony" .
“You should put it up where you can always see it,” someone suggests .
“In that case,” Harmala says, “I’ll keep it in the office “.
