Hope prevails: Overcoming the fear of cancer

Working day & night with cancer patients, Dr Anitha Ramesh shares an intimate account of why awareness for cancer is curable is important.

“Working in the areas of cancer management and treatment since the last two decades, I think the impact of the diagnosis of cancer is often the initial problem, where we have to disclose the news to the patients and their family. The uncertainty of the diagnosis, unawareness of the disease and the fear of death breaks the hopes of the patient. Adding on the issues of changes in family dynamics and their social network, body image, loss of autonomy and functionality during the treatment, the patient feels lonely and helpless.

Patients associate cancer with a death sentence. They, however, don’t know that when you talk about cancer, you also talk about a hundred different diseases. You might as well say, I have heart disease. But what is it? Is it heart failure? Is it coronary artery disease? The same thing is true with cancer as there are many, many different types of cancers. Some of them have an excellent survival rate.

With my experience in this domain and with 600 survivors in my foundation, I will opine that cancer is treatable especially when diagnosed early. I believe ‘Cancer is Curable’ is an important message that should be spread across, as there are many myths associated with the mortality of cancer patients. So, this Independence Day, we decided to collaborate with Cadila Pharmaceuticals to organize a bike rally in Chennai from Sholinganallur to Mahabalipuram. The rally saw participation of over 100 passionate bikers, where they covered around 50 km of distance to deliver a strong message on how cancer can be treated and cured, especially when diagnosed early and that cancer diagnosis is no longer an absolute death sentence.

In the end, I would like to reiterate that if you have any symptoms of a cancerous lump in the body, don’t ignore them. Go to your doctor as soon as possible and not be scared of cancer but deal with it immediately. This is a curable disease and there is hope.