Skip to main content

Surviving the choir of darkness

During the summer clinical of 2013, I met a Soul – A Patient – A Warrior– A Survivor, who taught me it is never too late to embrace life.

In July of 2012, she felt an oversized lump in her right breast on a stunning Sunday morning while celebrating her only son's sixth birthday.

She never went into detail about the medical predicament she found herself in as a result of that lump, preferring to focus on what it did to her life and how she became stronger, happier, and a better person as a result.

She does, however, want us to know that she had a very terrible experience enduring chemo and radiotherapy treatments, as well as having surgery to remove both of her breasts.

She never questioned herself - "why did it happen to me?" – from the minute she was told she had cancer. She although instinctively recognized that this was a sign. It's not a disaster, nor is it a death sentence, but it's a sign. And if she was sensitive enough, patient enough, and trusted in things larger than herself, she may realize what this sign was trying to tell her.



Before her diagnosis, she was the most realistic person her circle knew. She was a dedicated worker concerned about her financial situation, as well as what other people said and thought about her. She was well aware that everything hinged on her and her alone! Who will be for me if I am not for myself? was her only motto. Needless to say, despite having everything a person could desire in life, she remained unsatisfied. She constantly had the impression that there was something else she could do or a better way to accomplish things. She believed that this incident was the driving force behind her unexpected attitude from the moment she learned she had cancer. She recognized the illness as a wake-up call. It was a chance for her to reflect on the path she had already taken to determine which path she wanted to take in the future.

Gratitude at being alive was the first emotion that sprang to her mind as she tried to process the news. It was only then that she realized that life is truly a gift. All of the things she had taken for granted in the past appeared to be new gifts. She found herself grateful for everything she had, everything she could accomplish, and the beauty, wealth, and love she had. She developed an incredibly strong determination to win the struggle of healing her body and spirit as a result of her gratitude.

Although she was undergoing aggressive chemotherapy, she drastically altered her diet, focusing on a nutritious diet and avoiding junk food. She recalls gazing in the mirror the day after her bilateral mastectomy and thinking to herself that she still looks fantastic without her breasts. In addition, she began working out and exercising. It took some time for her to get into shape mentally and physically at first, but as time went on, she realized that she was doing very well.

The transformation she was undergoing did not end with a new diet. It was a lot more in-depth and essential. She recognized that there are things she couldn't control, no matter how brilliant, talented, good, or successful she was. The fact that she couldn't control everything was the most difficult thing for her to grasp. Trying to find a balance between 'doing' and 'letting go' was the most difficult thing she had to do as a control freak. 

She made the conscious decision to educate herself, and as a result, she studied books, blogs, and sites about this dreadful condition. They all taught her, and she taught us, that to beat cancer and live a long and happy life, she needed to fix not just her body but also her soul. What does it mean to restore one's soul, though? This was the fuel that allowed her engine to function. For the first time in her life, she decided to follow her inner instincts and thoughts. That was the start of an incredible and thrilling ride for her, which she is currently on. She asked herself regularly, "What does my heart urge me to do?" She then proceeded to follow it. It required a lot of guts and faith, but most importantly, it required her to love herself.

This journey took her to Nepal (4 weeks in a meditation resort), where she attended workshops, made new friends, continued to work hard but in a different mindset, raised her son differently, was able to ask for help and to speak about the things that bothered her, regardless of how it sounded or what other people thought of her. She wanted to be honest with herself.

As strange as it may sound, she feels better today than she did before she was diagnosed with cancer in many ways and is an inspiration for many cancer fighters.

Her experience taught me two things: We are stronger than we imagine, and life is brief and should be cherished to the maximum.

 

Farzana Vadsaria

Assistant Manager, 

Nursing Education Services, Clifton Campus


Dr. Ziauddin Hospital's Digital Platforms:

https://www.facebook.com/dzhospitals/ 

To book an appointment call us at 0321-3660249

or click on the link below:

Book an appointment


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Talking Cancer Unfiltered

This week I was doing some filming. I got asked about some of the changes I had seen during my own experiences with cancer since 2007. Back then it was still difficult to talk publicly about the subject. But the Internet was just coming into its own. Being bombarded with information booklets is what I remember most. Which was an improvement from previous years where it was hard to find. However, these days you only have to open any social media platform, and cancer posts are everywhere. Surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy sessions are there for everyone to see. People proudly displaying their scars. Also, this week I helped facilitate our regular  prostate cancer  support group in my  local cancer center . Something I have been doing for many years. Here we have members that have been attending for a long time, and also newly diagnosed patients. We kicked off the session by asking one of our regulars to tell us how things were for him. Before we knew it, we had got ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Quality Assurance System in Hospital Pharmacy at Dr. Ziauddin Hospital

Health system pharmacies, like other health care professionals, practice under a number of assigned standards. Basic perceptions of quality assurance (QA) values should be applied to hospital pharmacy practice. At Dr. Ziauddin Hospital our Hospital Pharmacy & Allied/ Satellites (clinical specialty wise) services are designed to encounter the prime needs of all our customers. Our Pharmacy services include dispensing of pharmaceuticals in accord with country regulations, proper inventory maintenance & management functions, drug monitoring, patient drug assessment functions, appropriate record-keeping, drug information, IV preparations, education services - training & development and performance improvement functions - having all the broader outlooks aligned to provide the best medication therapy for patients. Our goal is to have an error-free zone of our hospital pharmacy environment, our operation management and all the relevant services.     We focus on a princip...
Post a Comment
Read more

International Day of People with disability.

  D isability is any state associated with specially-abled person who sustain a condition from doing things in a way other person around him do. It creates difficulties for a person to do certain actions or well interactions with the world around them materially or socially. Such conditions/impairment may be rational, intellectual, mental, physical, and developmental or a combination of multiple factors, these causes of disability may be present from birth or can be developed during a lifetime. The word disability applies to everyone dealing with any form of incapacities. It is present among everyone be it temporarily or permanent, at some point of life one has to experience the disability, it’s a part of being Human. According to the research over one billion (15% of the global population) lives with some form of disability and the number of people having it is increasing rapidly. It mostly results from the interaction between individuals having a health condition i.e; down sy...
Post a Comment
Read more