Returning to (ab)normal life.

Returning to activities construed 'normal' takes lot of doing, especially you have the surgery wound across your abdomen. However this is the most common question you get, 'when are you going back to office?'. Well, I would like to get back to the grind as soon as possible. It would be quite a distraction from the pain and other things (e.g. having cancer).

In medicinal parlance there is a term called, 'quality of life'. Doctors claim that they try to improve patient's 'quality of life'. This generally covers, all the inflicted injections, see-and-don't-touch nurses, surgeries, etc. Of course they mean well. In doctor's opinion a walking and standing patient with little grin on face is an assurance that they treated patient well.. (or earned day's salary). Doctors would always insist that you should resume your regular activities as soon as possible. They want to make sure that you can stand, walk and work after their deeds. What nerve, one would say, but that is their way of ensuring your quality of life. I remember when my brother had angioplasty, the doctor was insistent that he should start working again as quickly as possible. Probably he wanted to make sure that the blood is flowing after he put in the stents (one can never be too sure, you know!). In my case doctor should be happy if I can stand again(!).

All said, there is no normality to resume to. After you have been diagnosed with a major disease, every small symptom is looked in a different light ('you have dandruff? I guess we should better check it out!'). Ordinary people can get away with headache and broken limb with simple treatment, cancer-patients, no way. If they get headache it must be some form of metastases, if they break their leg, it must be because of weakened bones. If cancer patients lack the desire of sex it must be those injections of chemo, ordinary people can simply get away with 'headache'.

Then there are multitudes of suggestions on how to resume normal life. Some people advocate to take it slowly (of course these people never worked in IT services field), others advise to jump into it. I like the later approach. It is more attractive than answering one mail at a time in my inbox of 1733 'unread' mails. It is amazing how quickly a large inbox with multiple 'cappings' can get you back in circulation.

Returning to normal life takes little getting used to. For example, driving the car around the block. I felt that I had almost forgotten how to drive. Fifteen days of compulsory bed-rest and no bath can make a man lethargic. However, the overbearing thought of disease seem to diminish over a period of time. I no longer worry about tumours or their ability to grow or the fact that I have to live 'an-injection-a-month-life'. I am more worried about mundane things such as what is happening to the engagement I was involved in, why the steering wheel of car is making so much noise and why Kareena Kapoor is having affair with Shahid instead of me.

For all good reasons, I like to return to normalacy. It would make me forget all the treatment and blood sucking nurses (you may not believe it but I have distinct marks on my body where nurses used their teeth to suck out the blood from my body... I can prove it). However, I would be a changed person now. I would be more educated about cancer and related treatments. I would also know what an enima means ( ok.. I did not know about this procedure before!) and for sure I would know how painful hospital diet can be. Like I always say, it is a great learning experience. At a cost of course, but there are no free lunches.

I am looking forward to getting back to the normal life. Like an injured warrior returning after a big fight, I would resume my life where I left it, as if nothing happened. People would look at me with an awe and whisper quietly about my courage. Young people would respect me and aspire to be as courageous one of these days. In short it is going to be a grand return. It does not happen every day that people return from celebrity hospital without meeting Bipasha Basu, especially when she was there to meet them. It requires lot of courage!

Pain, Pain, Go Away

After operation the first thing that hits you right in the middle of abdomen is acute pain. There is no escaping it. You try to run, hide, walk slowly, it simply stays with you. It wants entire body for itself. I consider this very selfish nature of pain. Of course you resist, but that is generally very feeble exercise. It gets into your back, it gets into your legs, hands, you name the body part the pain is there. Every activity then becomes a painful activity, like turning on your side. The injections and drugs try to make you sleep so that you forget about the pain, but you wake up and there it is, waiting like your pet cat ready to pounce on you. I have tried ignoring it, I think that has made it more angry and increase its dosage when I am least expecting. My doctor advises that is better way of handling pain rather than paying attention to it. He also advised talking loudly about how the pain does not affect you and perhaps sing about it. The pain listens and eventually disheartened, leaves your body. It seems to be working.

Like most operations they cut open larger part of my abdomen and then subsequently 'stitched' it. This stitching is merely act of stapling together two pieces of skin. So my scars look like second copy of expense report, highly stapled! No wonder it hurts. This confirms my belief that my surgery was closed in hurry. It was late and they thought, 'Ok, what else is remaining? Ah the skin is not together is it? Let us staple it!' Now I am running around finding a right doctor who would remove the staples and put something meaningful there, like good dressing with some anti-septic. I don't think my pain would go away till somebody does that.

Returning home I was worried about the post-operative care. For example, in hospital if it pains they give you injection to make you sleep. You complain more, out come the tablets that go in various parts of your body. At home you do not have this proper care. At home more pain generally causes a long discussion to one's lack of exercise, and how in the first place that started the whole thing. My family is of strong opinion that my cancer is entirely caused by my eating non-vegetarian foods. Consequently they do not see any reason why I should complain. For them it is simple situation of a person who desires cancer. ('You eat cow meat, well you were digging yourself in it!'). It is different kind of pain but you see there it is.

Another painful exercise after operation is working through the beauracracy of insurance companies and hospitals. So I call various people, and they inform me that things are in progress or that they would take some time. Insurance companies and agents however are more humane lately. So everytime I call, they make it a point to tell me that I should pass on their best wishes to the patient and the fact that they strive very hard to make patient comfortable. I assure them that the patient is comfortable and acknowledges their best wishes. It is not considered polite for patients to call hospitals or insurance agents. They generally expect the relatives to do the grunt work. I think it is fair too, they probably expect relatives to carry some pain rather than patient getting lion's share of it and being selfish about it.

I remember the old song about pain (or was it love?); The song goes like this:
'Wherever you go, whatever you do,
I will be only minutes behind you'

I think it must be about pain, there is no other feeling which follows you so closely...

Slaughterhouse and sheep

Once a lamb went to slaughterhouse and asked, "why do you slaughter the sheep?"
Slaughterhouse said,"I don't. The butcher does that".
So the lamb goes to the butcher and asks, "why do yo slaughter the sheep?"
Butcher said,"you see, those sheep make me cut them. I particularly do not like slaughtering."
"how come?" asked the lamb.
"well you see, they come to me with extra weight and sheepish look. They try very hard at being a roast chop or stew. I take pity on them & cut them. It is not easy thing to do, but I guess the sheep like it."
"oh really?" asked the lamb,"can you show me how to cut sheep?".
So the butcher slaughtered the lamb and hung him up to sell. The message of the story is: don’t waste your roast mutton chops. Remember the sheep have worked hard on it... No wait, that is not the message. The real message is 'be careful about what you ask for, most likely you will get it.'
I was thinking about this folk tale on the next day of operation quite a lot..Ok you would argue that you don't have lot of other things to do when you are in ICU, bed-ridden and entirely wired. The story sounds very familiar. I went to the doctor, told him I have cancer. I asked him what would be the treatment & he thought I am interested so he cut me open. As simple as that.

The entire surgery went on for 8 hrs and they charged me for overtime of anasthecist, the RFA guy and even the attendant in operation theatre. No wonder they forgot to cut the larger portion of tumour on the right side (their reasoning: it would have been fatalastic touching right hepatic artery; my reasoning: they were simply tired and overworked and possibly hungry too! It was well past dinner time). After such a long surgery I was anyway tired so I told them let us finish off tomorrow but they wouldn't listen. This is the problem with medical profession, they simply have no commitment to the work (unlike let us say software engineers who always carry working on the problem to next day;never finish a thing in a day,that is our motto). Well being under anasthetic and all I could not really convince them and they sewed it up and put me at the mercy of ICU nurses.
ICU, like other hospital departments is mainly run by nurses who hate their jobs and subsequently their patients. One could argue that they are so dedicated to cure the patients that they do not care for the pains of patients in the process. They do the dressing, they clean you, they give you bucketful of drugs, they inject all sorts of needles in your body, they search body cavities for disease. In short they do everything in their capacity to cure the patients. What if, some patients get wrong dosage in the process or suffer pain while dressing or get reactions of the drugs. I think it is human nature to complain, especially about small things like being unconscious. Just another day a patient next to me became chronic because of wrong dosage, and relatives were all blaming it on the poor nurse. I mean how could they, besides how could a nurse remember sophramycin for a day? For a change you try to spell it after seeing once! See how difficult that is? And doctors are always at hand in hospital, so all the ruckus was really unnecessary. Doctors could always solve such problems, e.g. In this case doctor just put him to sleep. Simple solution to simple problem. Life is much too complicated at the age of 82. He is better off without it.
The nurses being serious people, don’t laugh. You don’t joke with them. I tried once but was punished with a tablet in the lower back (literally, I am not joking). In any case the stay in ICU was more like being tested for astronauts. You have plenty of tubes coming out of your body, including one which allows you to pee and another one which allows to breathe. There are set of tubes to monitor your body performance. Sitting up or sleeping down is very painful process of entangling or dis -entangling various wires, tubes, etc.

In short you learn what an operation and aftermath feels like. The worst part is when they start removing bodily attachments. The first one to go is your anasthetic, and thus goes your painfree life. Why do they have preferenc for this, they cannot explain. My guess is that they wanted to give me special treatment and let me experience the pain first hand, unlike other patients who are kept on extra dose of painkiller out of pity. I earned my firsthand pain, what can I say? It is just my charm!

However, now I can say with atmost authority that I know what an operation is. my expertise lies in long, excruciating liver operations (patients wanting to know about less than 6hr operations or smaller than 6" scar are not entertained) with follow-on chemo or radiotherapy. We can also add ICU experiences as a feature.

I have now officially survived my operation. Agreed it is a small victory against cancer, but how many sheep can know about slaughtering and survive to tell the tale?

Life of pain

I recently saw the ad for movie on Christ by Mel Gibson. The critique was that the movie shows gory details of crucification and pain. I wonder how people had suffered the pain in the days when anasthetics did not exist? Maybe that should explain why witch doctors were burnt so frequently in good old times. The eminent danger for me is the pain of operation and pre-op procedures. They told me about putting a needle in my spinal chord. For some reasons doctors want the bowels to be sparkling clean (well looking at average human insides, I won't blame them) thus meal follows the enima.. It hurts like hell (ok no jokes about backend jobs!). Followed by series of pricks on hand and neck and thighs. The operation is one hell trip you don't want to take, cancer or not. I was getting inclined to chemo, but my brother reminded me of the pains involved. I told him I can take loss of hair (there aren't any!) and vomitting to, 'what is this green thing?... Let us cut it anyway doctor, h
e has paid for it' kind of operation. If I visualize (and my imagination is wild!), I could see bunch of doctors handling my interiors ('hey did you see these? Even Amitabh doesn't has these large kidneys', 'great, what do you say we keep one of these for ourselves? ..would look good in my new office') and cutting at random till they are exhausted. Apparently the pain would be made bearable by anasthetics injected in spinal cord, no less.

People would imagine that I would be ready for pains now that I know I have cancer. I am going to say one word to them, 'marriage'. No matter how many experiences you have seen or been through, one can never accurately predict the pain or suffering their own marriage can cause them. It is same with cancer, no predictions only anxiety.

More you think about pain more scared you get. Especially around future. I guess I should prepare my mind now about frequent pricks on hands, occassional IV fliuds getting in body and chemo cycles. I do not know how long I will live, it is difficult to predict with cancer, but I know certainly that I will die because of cancer (of course if other things such as income tax do not take their chance before!). And for certain it is going to be life of pain. There would be bottles of pain killers that I have to carry around. The travelling life is almost finished (that is probably good part), and occassional wine is ruled out (what me? tee totaller? OMG !!!!!). I wonder how wine sellers are going to make living in Pune area, guess they will have to lump it. Such is life, and I am not saying anything about sex yet(!).

Perhaps it was better life without diagnosis, it would have been easier to face the pain without prior knowledge. Now I know what to expect and that has changed my lifestyle forever ('no more brown sugar just painkillers and absolutely no sex in the morning, it intereferes with my chemo, you know..').

It is going to be painful life, especially when your brothers are drinking the scotch that you bought (which they would, I know) and you can only watch. Such is life, artist and creative people want suffering and pain to get the idea and they don't get any (van Gogh had to cut his ears), whereas me, who likes to keep pain 10 feet away and watch it in glass cabin, get the pain in abundance. I blame this all on capitalist policies of the government, which is going to rule for another 4 years. I do not know how much pain and suffering I can keep up with...

Anxiety Quotient

Is there a thing like anxiety quotient? The doctors informed me yesterday that there is a problem with the machine they use while cutting people open. Apparently the machine being tired of cutting too many people and doctors getting all the credit, decided to call it a day. The engineers are working on it. If they can fix it by the time my surgeon is ready, they might have to cut me open. Otherwise it is another day of anxiety and discussions of pain. The good part is the view from the room and 86 channels of cable TV. Life is never so good. Room service is quick and good. So far I am on fasting(in the anticipation of operation) but they regretted the inconvenience and allowed for late breakfast in case operation does not take place.
I keep pondering over the cancer types and what would have happened if I ignored it long enough. Neuroendocrine cancers do not show the symptoms. In fact I would have never known about it for rest of my life (however short that could have been). The knowledge I have cancer is very...let us say, unsettling. It makes one very anxious. It leads you to the path of writing a will (& spending some money on your lawyer friend so he can take his family out for dinner), false impressions that you might die soon and allows for freak ideas such as brazilian bikini wax. If I live long enough to remember these things, I am sure to have some fun with it. In the process however, my anxiety is going up. I am worried that this anxiety would kill me earlier than cancer. Now I really know what chicken in poultry farm feel like. They never know when they would become chicken biryani, for example. One day happy life of clicking and chucking genetically modified food and another day being served
up with onions and tomatoe gravy. It is very insecure state of affairs. Also when you are in hospital doing particularly nothing and watching seedy movies, the thoughts about when this is going to end are very profound. Every time they tell you about dooms of operation, one gets more anxious about the operation. How it would be painful, what would be after life(i mean after operation.. Not after after) and whether you would be able to get a date with Aishwarya Rai just under the heading of humanitarian cause. My anxiety quotient is going way up. I remember the movie, Holy Grail, where even God wants Sir Lancelot/Zoot to 'get on with it' in castle Anthrax.
Well doctor, don’t wait any longer, can we get on with it?

A room with a view.

Day one at Lilavati. The admission procedure was smooth. Given the fact so many celebrities with ordinary diseases (sprained ankle while killing innocent bystanders after mid-night drinking binge) get admitted here, it is difficult to find place for ordinary people with serious disease. There was some discussion around room availability, but my charm (yeah all with cancer patient look and Arizona cap) won us a good room.

The ho(spital)el is well located. The room has splendid view of Bandra reclaimation and flyover, 24hr hot water, TV, spacious bathroom, full-size mirror, exercise room, personal barber and attendance of pink ladies. In other words an ideal get-away for overworked executive like me. The charges are not very high and generally guests are required to leave behind a body part as tip; prior appointments are recommended.

Hospitals are queer places. Every hour or so a junior doctor walks in and explains you the hazards you are going to face and makes sure that you understand them (make you sign too!).

Doctor1:what’s wrong with you?
Me:well you see there is this tumour...
D1:ok..ok; dr.xxxx would remove that. As part of the procedure, you will have brain damage, liver malfunction, loss of limb, headache and perhaps you will have to leave the country under false identity. Do you agree?
Me: Would I be able change my wife?
D1: No. What do you think this is? We are going to operate on you liver. Wife change requires different procedures..ok enough joking, now sign here and here and put the blood spot here.
Me: What is this one for?
D1: It says that we get to keep your liver and tumour in it if we feel like. Do you want to know anything else?
Me: When is dinner?
D1: No food, liquid diet only (contains no alcohol).

Things happen in repetetive fashion, every doctor explains you the procedures in detail. I joke around but my wife gives me stern looks. An anasthecist walks in,
A: ah, mr. Kulkarni, I will be the anasthecist for you. Do you know what anasthesia is?
Me: no..not really. Is it something that makes you unconcious during surgery?
A: see half knowledge is more dangerous..anasthesia is more of art than science. We make sure you are unconsious and then very cleverly take the bank informtion, ATM pin numbers, password and other personal details so that we can blackmail you once you gain cosiousness.
Me: what about pain?
A: oh you would soon get over it and we never overdraw from our patient's accounts. Besides there would be a catheter in back to continuosly keep you dizzy, so you would never really feel it.
Me: and what if the anasthesia gets over me forever?
A: oh that..don't worry about it, it is called coma and happens to few lucky ones. You see, we are not gods, but we try.
Me: what are those tubes?
A: well.. Let us see, there is nose tube, the neck tube, the lung tube and the catheter and few others that we forgot. But you get used to it. We never keep it more than 6 mths.
Me: would I ever be able to walk again?
A: that depends.. You should drink lot of water, exercise and remember to thank anasthecist instead of the doctor.

I was so scared by this time that it was impossible for me to keep straight face. I signed on all forms and told them that being a poor man I can not really sign on the one which required me to fund fully paid trip to Las Vegas for the ward-boy and his girlfriend. Ward-boy took more humanitarian view and agreed to go to Singapore instead. The doctor was, however pretty crass about compromises, but things being as they are he lumped it.

The nurses apparently are very forgetful, for example, each nurse takes my blood pressure at different times. One of them is called Florine. She made me eat same colored tablet three times in the day. I made a point to repoprt her like flowers or not.

The best part of admission process was the body shaving. I would never have got such a nice brazilian bickini wax so cheap in India ( and barber who explains liver operation to you ).

Barring few gliches the hotel is pretty good. Once the payment of organ parts procedure is finished tomorrow I would have more time to test various facilities (breathing exercises, heard of them?)

Now I must return to my porridge, they tell me that is the star attraction of liquid diet, and helps you forget the suffering of operation. Looks interesting..

How scared are you?

The first thing that strikes you when somebody says you have cancer is, how many days I have got to live. It is natural for humans (who, by the way, are accidents on earth) to be worried about the life span. Every doctor I met was impressed with my +ve attitude, and told me that I would survive this cancer.
I go fooling around, I tell them examples from physics. Explain difference between practical reality and visible reality. The tumour well concealed in my liver is harmless as little puppy. Once cut open I would have series of problems with it. First two third of my liver would be gone, then I have to get chemo cycles to remove whatever is left of it. Then I will have cancer officially (Generally you don't have a cancer till you have chemo. It is important step in social standing of cancer patients), and I will have to go through series of test periodically. In short what is theory now would become reality once operated. This scares shit out of me. Now we are happy people, me and my tumor. The liver is also used to large non-functional encroachment. My liver functions are normal. Everything is hunky dory. We occassionally plan for picnics and outings. But things are going to change now...(see this fooling is going to cost me).

Doctors keep wondering about my jokes. One guy told me candidly that I would recover since I am taking this very lightly. Part of the light-heartedness comes from my inexperience about the cancer and the fact that I have no symptoms at all. I joke about the operation, the procedures, nurses and doctors. I am literally enjoying all the attention. My wife's relative was asking whether I am scared. I told her, 'yes a bit' which is true. Mostly I am worried about the pain of operation. I have already passed the phase of being scared of my life because of cancer. Here today gone tomorrow...what? Inexperienced in pain and suffering (barring few meetings and trans-continental flights, or listening to wife..ok let us just stop here), I have no idea what having cancer feels like. Only people who seem to be scared are the doctors. Ignorance is real bliss here. No fancy blood vomiting or pains in abdomen, just plain cancer (only visible thru ct scan).

It turns out that doctors are generally disappointed if the patients are not scared. They want to play the role of saviours. Not a happy situation when the patient jokes about surgical procedure. For them it is complex procedure involving life and death (and day's pay which could be substantial). No wonder they are scared when they get a patient with cancer. I mean really scared. The treatment and councelling time depends on the scare quotient of the patient. High sq qualifies for long sessions and assurances. Sarcastic remarks get nothing!

Am I scared? Not really. It is my firm belief that the people who are going to operate should be scared, my loan officer should be scared, my insurance company should be scared, not me. I am the guy who is getting operated under anasthesia and painkillers, assisted by young nurses for everything (yes including baths and what not..in case you are wondering). Nowadays even chemo does not hurt. And in case of death, having no prior experience I could not say, but definately not scared at the moment.

My mother is upset that I am not scared enough. How much scared I should be, she could not say. Lacking prior experience and guidance, my scare quotient is dwindling in -ve. Is that a good thing? I do not know..

Unusual Vs Impossible

How many times in our lives we really distinguish between unusual and impossible? We assume in good faith that life threatening diseases happen to others ('liver problems? The guy must be living in the swamp of alcohol 24x7!'); AIDS happens to the people who do weird stuff in their bedroom(s), so on and so forth. Middle class upbringing encourages the impression that it is almost impossible to have these diseases. What we tend to forget that it is not unusual to have these diseases for an average young person (even tall, dark, handsome, intelligent, not so average, such as myself.... OK I exaggerate, maybe not that tall).

The theory of life, as such, is built on 'impossibility' premise and not on 'unusual' phenomenon. My wife alludes my liver tumor to Kolkata water. I forgot the name of the philosopher now, he proposed that human minds always like to think 'rationally'. i.e. we always try to fit everything in cause-and-effect box. Thus it is easier to convince people to buy more lottery tickets(?)...er sorry, got in the moment there. Actually this is a popular proposition in Artificial Intelligence systems where computers try to be as rational as possible to pass the Turing Test.

It took me long time to convince her (and internet medical sites helped too) about the time it takes to get a tumor of this size. Kolkata water or not, this was going to happen (to be fair, the Salt Lake water *is* bad, and people do die because of that, but I think that happens instantaneously rather than delayed). In all chaos of asymptomatic diseases, she was trying to find a reason that explains the cancer. Well... on the second thoughts it is just as good that I did not tell her about my drinking binge and cigar smoking or brown sugar addiction, that would have given her some reasons. On the serious note, I was practically in denial at first when I heard I had a cancer. I felt like Peanuts cartoon, 'why me?' (and then the voice from sky said, 'why not you?').

My life was based on 'impossible' premise, thus I never thought about the cancer. The best guess was heart disease (now this one happens to even the best of us). The first oncologist I met kept telling me unusual presentation of my tumor and related cancer. Like my wife, all doctors were also trying to find the cause-and-effect. They needed something to go by. None of them wanted to concede that it is not unusual for young people with no background (and no sufficient social standing) to have cancer. Thanks to the medical education system and what have you, they always thought it is impossible to study non-alcoholic young patients with liver cancer in India. Well, my case should teach them to be prepared at all times. Next time they wouldn't be making second guesses at casual breathlessness. The world of medical diagnosis as we know it, would be fundamentally changed; people with breathlessness and left shoulder pain would be checked for cancer first and cardiac problems later. There would be package advertisements about cancer checks and cardiac diagnosis would be part of routine physical. Hospitals would compete with each other to diagnose liver cancer first. In short, Cancer would no longer be an impossible disease, it would be categorized to mere unusual. I look forward to that day.

Latest biopsy revealed that I have neuroendocrine carcinoma and not HCC so I might live after all. It is unusual but not impossible!

Beauty is only skin deep

Then the wise guy argued, 'who the hell wants to see the inside?'. I agree. For past several weeks I have been going through one CT (computed tomography for you medically unsound people) scan a week treatment. The mechanism is fairly simple. They give you a colorful drug to drink and then scan the flow of that drug throughout the body using spiral X-rays. End result: a nice set of pictures printed on black(!) film showing your interiors. This is the time for men and women to blush. Every other doctor I visit, starts looking at these interiors of mine. It is embarassing, makes you feel like in slave market and the buyer is checking out your interiors. Maybe dancing girls, more appropriate. Another oncologist, I was talking to, said that these are the most beautiful pictures. Well, the beauty is in the eye of beholder. For me, I am happy with my bald head and little bit of pot belly, I do not want to see what is inside. Liver tumors or not.

Today's CT scan was to find out if I had a cardiac problem too. I was just afraid that I might be promoted from a rank brigadier to general (one star to two stars - cancer and heart disease both). It turned out my promotion is long way off, all my arteries in and around heart are performing fine (even though that was the youngest and shapely doctor around!). These images are way too detailed, some times more uncomfortably so. For example, one of the reports said, my bowels were covered due to gas. This is absolute invasion of privacy. You literally die many deaths (was is Keats?) when some doctor in broad light is looking at those films and discussing in front of all of your family members how your kidneys are in nice shape. Thankfully we do not go beyond liver most of the times, where I have star attraction (for now). I wouldn't want another pretty young doctor making guesses about life on planets beyond liver ('do you see the small thing there?'.. 'oookay doctor, I did not come here for checking that..'). The eMedicine site describes that CT scan is just like slicing the bread and looking inside it (it helps doctors to look inside your body, soft tissue and all!). Go figure what your upper body slice is going to look like. I tell you from experience, it is not a pretty picture. Then there are, of course, bone scans with radioactive isotopes. Besides the contrasts that they use, wow amazing! These drugs really give you out of body experience in 2 minutes or less (LSD anybody?).

The doctor was very detailed in explaining the pains and after effects, e.g. I might vomit or die of suffocation. Your photographer in studio does not warn you, these guys do (very professional!). Talk of advancement in clinical procedures. To be fair, Angiography was done quickly and the drug was injected through IV so no pain. I recall the days when my brother went through these procedures, he invariably had to cut his thigh every single time doctor felt like looking at his heart.

So one more digital image in collection and lot of money less we progress on our path of medical diagnosis. My wife was complaining that doctors these days depend more on circumstantial evidence than actual physical checking. I tried to convince her that these are complimentary techniques (and that we already landed a man on moon, however far it may appear to a naked eye), but no avail. These wanna-be doctors are more dangerous than the original one's.

For the moment at least, I am happy that I do not have blocked arteries like many others on this planet do (and imagine all the fuss they make about heart attacks!). In pure competetion, we cancer patients can take on these heart disease guys (sissies) any day. We have bigger terms like 'metastases', 'carcinoma' and what not, the heart patients have to live with cardiac arrest (heart attack) and 'blocked arteries'. Poor chaps. Even the treatment is a wash-out ('change in life style'). C'mon what is treatment in that? I would like to change my life style every other day. Cancer treatment, on the other hand, requires chemotherapy or operation. It changes your face (literally!) and life changes automatically. You 'survive' the cancer, you can write a book and participate in celebrating marathon. Who would buy a book by heart disease survivor (there are just too many of them out there)? And seriously how many heart patients can plan to run marathon? In my opinion the medical fraternity should wake up to the reality and start treating cancer patients with more respect they deserve. (Cardiac department, bah! why would you need that?). There are just too many inequalities in this world.

On the other hand, I was going to ask about few more things that did not seem right in my body in the CT scan. However, I was afraid it might lead to another discovery (in style my liver tumor) and would put me on bed for rest of the year. For example, I am almost certain that I am missing one of the ribs on left side, but telling this to the doctor had its own risk... and what if insurance company rejected the claim under 'pre-existing' condition (a.k.a. manufacturing defect)? I learnt my lesson and kept quiet.

Thinking it over, I am planning to spend little more time on looking at the cover and not inwards ('Do not look inwards', would be my message to the young generation, 'the picture is not pretty and you probably have a tumor in stomach!'). Hence I plan to spend more time on my tan, pay more attention to my facial, hair-cut and ever glowing skin , after all that is where beauty is.