Strong disclaimer : This is a post that I thought to write after reading the post by Pieter Hintjens known for ZeroMQ who opted for euthanasia after fighting cancer. This is just my personal experience and not a cry-for-attention post.

If you live each day as if it was your last, some day you’ll most certainly be right - Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement speech

I was working on my project in the last semester after my placements and being in final year of college there was ample amount of time explore upon things. But I had a little uncomfortable feeling towards having a small lump sort of thing in my stomach. It wasn’t visible enough if I eat a lot, it’s just normal and if I am hungry it’s slightly visible. I just thought it is a normal sort of thing and kept it that way for a year or so and I joined my company after finishing college. But it kept nagging from time to time that this is something that I better need to check sometime with a doctor. I checked back with my doctor and they took a scan and then it seemed like some normal tissue rupture between my chest that is not much of a problem and a minor surgery where they will just close down the rupture and 10 days of rest to get back to normal. As someone who is aversive towards surgery and syringe sort of stuff I kept prolonging it for a few months till I get adequate amount of leave and then to undergo the surgery.

First anaesthetic surgery

I chose to undergo the surgery and made adequate arrangements since it will involve anaesthesia. I haven’t underwent a surgery in the first place. I had a couple of fractures but never a surgery. It also came with certain rules that I shouldn’t drink water 12 hours prior to the surgery with an empty stomach. They also told me to shave off all the hair from my lower chest till my thighs and handed me a dispensable razor by the nurse. I rested well that night and had my body replace by a long gown of dress in the morning. The anaesthetist arrived and asked me simple questions whether I have a cold or cough and suddenly they stripped me naked among two doctors and four nurses which I felt highly awkward and within a couple of seconds I was put to deep sleep by anaesthesia.

I experienced extreme amount of fuzziness in vision when I woke up after around 3 hours in another room thankfully had my body covered and everything appeared highly delusional and I was just asking to them whether my surgery was good. I got a reply it went well that took me good 10 minutes to comprehend due to anaesthesia involved. It took me another couple of hours before dizziness cleared off and I thankfully had water after close to 18 hours. The doctor assured me everything is good and great and I can go home by night. They only advised me not to lift any heavy objects or exercise but instead I had to carry half a kilogram of cotton near my chest for a week or so till they can take off the stitches. I thanked everyone in the hospital especially the nurses who take great care of me that I will be indebted for and left home. After around 10 days of regular checkups I was approved ok to take off the stitches and to return to work.

Back to work

The thing about those ten days is that you had basically no access to computers and I was waiting to lay my hands on the keyboard. I got back to work by just a day before the weekend which I was savage enough to save my leaves and things were good. I got regular calls from home and as an extra precautionary measure they had sent the tissues to be examined and there is nothing much to worry about. The next weekend had a holiday by Thursday, Friday and it was supposed to be a long weekend and I had my tickets booked. I got a call a by Tuesday 4PM asking me return back immediately home and I said I will be returning by Thursday morning and no need to rush it off. They said the reports have arrived and they need me to be here as soon as possible and I just booked a ticket by the night and woke up for the bad news by the morning.

Woke up for bad news

My reports were sent to four different and large hospitals and I was kept away from the news for the large part which made me highly anxious. Finally as a coincidence I was sent to the hospital where I was born and one my cousin was working there that ensured I had good access to the experts and still there was no clue. I took a blood and urinal test and was sent home asking me to come back tomorrow for the results. Yet they kept eluding of the news except telling me they are not normal tissues and we don’t want tell you anything until the reports have arrived. Tissues being not normal is definitely not a good sign and then they showed me the reports that said Dermatofibrosarcoma perturbans . I quickly googled it up and honestly it was the first time I had to search a biological name and certainly wanted it to be the last too.

Well it says things I don’t want to read back again that there is no reason over why it occurs. It occurs for someone like one in a million people unfortunately and luckily it was not a malignant one except for the fact that there might be small traces of it in the region where surgery took place and might need a wider incision over the region with a graft from my thighs and one of my friends even chuckled to help me offering thighs so that I can get a little fat. They also added it with the fact that I need to undergo a whole body nuclear scan, you read it right a whole body nuclear scan to make sure there aren’t any traces of it around the body especially in the surgical region. They advised me to take it only after six months so that there aren’t any false positives in the region. I was already scared the shit out of myself to undertake the scan.

The nuclear scan

I finally went ahead with the scan after 6 months and it was taken only for around 5 members a day. I need to drink around 1.5 litres of water in half an hour before the scan and they passed me through the nuclear scan for freaking 15 minutes before it was finally over. They had me in a separate room so for an hour so that the radiations don’t affect others. I had my dosa for the breakfast and the reports came after a week that there weren’t any traces of it but just to check manually to make sure it is not recurring again. It was 2 years ago and I am still happily kicking through the day.

sort life | reprioritise

Ok so it was not the last day but there was good amount of chance that it would have been by a fair margin. I have read a lot through the years over how being on last resorts feels like but when it hits home personally it makes you reprioritise a lot of things in your life. Suddenly you only have least amount of time instead of the expected time which makes you to both dread over the time you wasted and also to appreciate a lot of things you get to experience better in the due course. It also got me to start off a lot of things I have been putting of for the years like this blog where I wrote close to 14k words this year alone. It makes me value myself and my loved ones more and better than I have done before. It took me to a lot of good places and made me more open to enriching experiences which I wouldn’t have started off in the first place.

Well things don’t come without red flags in life too. One obvious red flag was that I was not paying close attention to my health at all though there were clear signs of things being wrong. This is just case where too much of casual negligence leads to causality. The other thing that also starts take good toll is that you have to make the signs count. Once you know you have used up a chance it is easy to fallback to the old patterns and it requires a lot of discipline to inculcate the virtues as a lifestyle and not to fallback to old ruts. I will just keep sharing them in the blog.

Nevertheless I feel it is good to come across such a day and I am pretty sure we make it to other end with good points to cherish and bad points to learn from. It is just essential to keep moving and to keep exploring. Such is life :)

Questionnaire

  • How are you? Better and worse than yesterday in different ways :) I am fine and good with nothing to worry
  • But these things are meant to be personal right? Ya, I thought a lot about it before writing it. I thinks it’s just ok to share as an experience. Please don’t doss me up with this
  • Well is this life changing? I do fallback to old ruts from time to time but it at least gave me a good wakeup call to do things that I always thought to do for a long time instead of worrying/planning about it all the time

Pushes to git. Tries his upma recipe for the 7th time :)