Swarn Jayanti Park Indirapuram

Visiting the Swarn Jayanti Park in the October mornings is a beautiful experience. The Park is a boon to the residents of Indirapuram area. It is quite big but not expansive. You can take a round of the Park in about twenty minutes walking with a reasonable brisk pace along the outer most pathway which covers almost the entire area  but is not exactly circular. Men, women and even children walk. There is an area earmarked as Play Area, where mostly children entertain  either themselves or through their indulging parents or grandparents. There are rushes and swings too. Perhaps this area is more in use in the afternoons or evenings when children are more free from their schools and tuitions . By the side of this play area  there is a musical fountain,  which spews water perhaps in different colours and in different pitches, usually  in the summer evenings. In the month of October it is, however, dry. There are busts of eminent  people who contributed significantly in the freedom struggle of India.Incidentally, these are only female busts. Rani of Jhansi, Kasturba Gandhi,Sarojini Naudu, Anne Besant, Meera Ben and many other well-known and lesser known  women  have their busts there adorning the inner perimeter of the Park. The Rani of Jhansi occupies a place of prominence. Her bust on a horseback is the tallest and is located centrally. A brief description of what they contributed is given underneath each bust making a visit to the Park an educative exercise as well. At one corner,  there is a restaurant selling tea, coffee and soft drinks.Cool drinking water is also available  at a water-cooler.For a change, the Park is not without toilet facilities which I sincerely hope, are of a reasonably adequate standard. I have not used any till the time of writing but I hope they are. Then there are  sculptured representations of animals at different places some of them carrying cans for collecting garbage. There are kangaroos and pelicans and tigers and bears all giving an amusing look .A portion of the park  which is closed is marked as 'Ghaziabad Haat'.May be it is aimed at emulating the Delhi Haat which, of late has become fairly popular amongst  the young upwardly mobile Delhites.The Park boasts of a number of trees also. Unfortunately I am not a person who would like to know their species or genres. Unlike a botany man I just enjoy the company of trees without bothering which species they belong to.The trees are not tall but have a promise. In years to come they would become  highrise, shade- giving and flush with leaves. Of course, they will not be fruit-bearing, for then they may create a problem of disposal of the government property leading to calling for bids and tenders and consequently to corruption.
People do yoga exercises, laugh out loudly(this too is some exercise, they say).At one corner RSS people hold a SAKHA i.e.doing  physical exercises and chanting  'sada vatsla matribhumi'...etc. There are a few enclaves where women do yoga exercises. perhaps they bond more cohesively while stretching limbs.
For me the Park provides a place to walk in the mornings full of oxygen and the morning sunlight highly conducive to generating vitamin D in our bodies,which is a natural anti-dote to cancer as some websites would like you to believe.
The problem is how to reach there from my place of residence.If I walk down from where I stay, I am considerably tired by the time I reach there. And a tired man can not enjoy either the walk or the sunlight or the trees. Going by the car is an option but that works out rather expensive given the steep hikes in  petrol prices that the oil companies have been effecting  at  regular intervals. On top of that one is always mindful of the safety of the vehicle, given the rampant car thefts north India is notorious for. How can you enjoy a walk or for that matter anything when your mind is preoccupied with something as important as the safety of your vehicle?I am going by car these days but I don't know for how long I can afford this little luxury.     

Two Milestones

Last week it was Steve Jobs and yesterday it was Jagjit Singh. Of course the people outside India may not be very much aware of the existence of  the latter. Singh was a singer of light classical music who had made a name for himself mainly in ghazal singing.What made him unique was his style which was not rigidly classical but contained elements of modernity as well. Not only did he experiment with harmonium in place of sarangi, he used guitar too as an accompanying instrument in rendition of a ghazal which was unthought of before. Add to that the velvety voice of the singer and the enjoyers of ghazal  would get transported to a different world altogether when Singh sang.Jagjit Singh was born in a sikh family.His life is an example how bigotism is given a good bye when someone achieves something remarkable. No so called guardians of sikhism raised any voice at Jagjit Singh giving up his hair.Obviously, he would have been as good a singer and a musician with kesh or hair as he was without it. A personal tragedy made him turn to singing  divine songs -bhajans and sabads.It also lent a certain poignancy to his singing which endeared him more to his fans.Most newspapers have made a mention of his wife Chitra Singh stopping singing after the tragedy but no body has come up with what she has been doing of late. There is just a photograph of hers in some of the newspapers of  12th October-that of a distraught wife who has lost not only her husband but also a fellow singer. As for experiencing pleasure, man (and that includes woman also) has immense capacity for enduring sorrow too. When their son died in an accident,the Singhs must have thought that that was the ultimate limit of sorrow that they could endure. Now after the death of Jagjit Singh, Chitra must be wondering whether she was not wrong in assuming so.
This is my homage to a person who made a name for himself  through his hard work  and his stupendous talent.
Much has been written about Steve Jobs before as well as after his death on 5th October. A man has hailed him as the greatest inventor since Edison.I think it is rather pre-mature. Only after a century will we be able to make such a comparison. For only then, will we be able to assess the impact of the inventions of Jobs on the life of common man.Only then will we be able to gauge the usefulness and ubiquitousness of his inventions,which, incidentally, were not created by Jobs alone-there was a team of dedicated men and women who worked very hard to produce what Jobs wanted.People of my age i.e. above sixty may not be very much appreciative of what Jobs and his team did but for people younger than what we are  he was almost God.And as was expected he did not tread the straight and narrow path always. He did some kind of hacking also and made money. But then who cares for these things in today's world where means are not important- only ends are.
The important thing about Jobs , so far as  I am concerned is that he too was suffering from cancer as I am suffering.His death has left  me with the thought that one can not win a battle against cancer even if he may be Steve Jobs--rich and famous and highly original a thinker. But then he was able to manage it for four -five years.I do not know how long I will be able to manage mine.
It is true that both Singh and Jobs were high achievers in their fields but then the world goes on even when they are not here now.And it will go on.     

AIIMS

Shri Santosh Sharma had made valiant efforts to get me an appointment with a cancer specialist at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He made Shri Rao, a joint secretary in the Union Health Ministry, to speak to one Mr. Rakesh who was the personal secretary to the Director of the Institute. I visited the Institute on a Thursday to request Mr. Rakesh  to arrange a meeting with Dr. Rath., the head of cancer department there. Rakesh informed me that both Dr. Rath and Dr. Julka, his second in command had gone out of the country to attend a conference and that they would be available only on the 7th of October at the earliest. He suggested that I should get in touch with him on telephone on the 5th to ascertain whether Dr. Rath would indeed be available on the 7th for consultation.On the 5th October when I spoke to him on telephone he asked me to call him on the 7th of October. When I called him on the 7th October he was kind enough to speak to Dr. Rath on intercom and get him agree to see me  at 10am on the 8th of October which would be a Saturday. I then requested Ankit and Lipika to depute their driver to drive me to the hospital. The driver was supposed to have come  to my residence at 8am on the 8th October. My wife and I had planned first to visit the Hanuman temple before going to the Institute. However, since the driver came around 9am and we did not want to miss the appointment with Dr. Rath we decided to go to the hospital first. The driver took the Barapulla overbridge and we reached the office gate of Dr. Rath at 9:25 am. The man at the gate informed us that Dr. Rath was not in the office and his secretary too had not arrived and that he could not let us in unless either of them was present in the office. I scribbled my name on a slip of paper and the fact that I had an appointment with the good doctor at 10 am.We then called the driver to reach the same spot where he had earlier dropped us  and we then directed him to take us to the Hanuman temple.
After returning from the temple, we came back to the Institute. It was 11o' clock. Dr.Rath was still not in his office. His secretary therefore asked us to wait and arranged to seat us in what was perhaps a pantry. After what appeared an interminable wait, a young doctor came to where we were sitting and asked us to gve him our papers. His young age betrayed that he could not be Dr. Rath who being the head of the department should be  at least in his fifties, which the doctor in our room certainly was not. He disappeared for a short while and when he returned he was accompanied by Dr. Rath who however did not enter the pantry. I walked up to him and tried to convey to him what my problem was. He was a cheerful person but told me that he was sending his man the young doctor with me to his colleague Dr. Julka who was the expert in the field.According to him, the subject was his concern, and therefore I should go to him.On being asked whether he was not a surgeon he answered in the negative. I was disappointed because I had earlier met Dr. Julka on two occasions and my assessment was that the person was not sincere. Anyway, the young doctor, whose name, as we discovered later, was Dr. Harish took us to where Dr. Julka was seeing the patients. Breaking the queue the young doctor placed my PET-CT report before Dr. Julka and waited for the pearls of wisdom from his mouth to drop. Dr. Julka never had a look at the PET-CT plate but went over the concluding part of the written report and stated in no uncertain terms that there was a definite requirement of not only radio but chemo therapy too.He said he did not give much importance to the FNAC test result which had indicated that there was no cancer in the region that was  shown in the PET-CT as carrying a recurrent tumour. Dr. harish then explained to us what further we were required to do .There would be five weeks of radiotherapy, five days a week and there would be chemotherapy too. My wife and I were shattered. We told him that we would decide and then inform him soon.
On 9th Oct. which was a Sunday, I telephoned Dr. Zaidi of RGCI&RC and asked him how much reliable the FNAC test was. He said it was 99% reliable. I further asked him that since he had seen the hard copy of the test  result whether he could confirm that the test was conducted correctly. He did but a doubt continues to linger in my mind.

Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre ----Part 3

On Monday, the 3rd October,2011, Aishwarya, my son,.brought the report of FNAC test conducted at Sir Ganga Ram hospital. Before he could get it home he had read it out to Ankit, my son-in-law. Ankit gave me a phone call. His voice sounded elated. He said Aishwarya had read out the report to him and that it was good. I was a little apprehensive, for I thought that Aishwarya might not have been able to understand the medical terminology in which such reports were generally written.
Ankit and his parents came to visit in the evening, Soon Aishwarya also reached home. I took the report from him and read it. As expected, there was a lot of jargon in the report but a layman could still get the drift. No cancer was reported. Somehow I was still not convinced but we could all feel a sense of well being Now we were to show the report to the doctor who had advised me to undergo the test. Dr. Zaidi was kind enough to have given me his card and therefore, his telephone number was available with me. However, I did not want to disturb him at night. So I decided to wait till the next day. On the 4th October I spoke to him in the morning and sought an appointment for the day. He was considerate enough to ask me to come around 4pm although it was his OT day. Aishwarya and I drove down to the Dilshad Garden metro station and boarded the train  which would take us to the Rohini West station. Ankit was to come direct to the hospital.  When we reached the office in front of the operation theatre, it was 4:27pm. The lady sitting there informed me that the doctor would be available only later as he was busy in an operation and that we should wait. The doctor came out for a few minutes around 6pm and asked us to wait some more. At 6:30pm he sent a message from inside the OT that he would be out in about ten minutes time. He could come out only at 7pm and straight away apologised for keeping us waiting. Then he had a look at the report and asked me whether the procedure was conducted by Dr. Mandhir Kumar himself. It was then that the sweetest words came out of his mouth- there is no cancer i.e.there is no new growth and that I could continue with my daily tasks unhindered. He also said that I should continue to get reviews done at an interval of three months either from Dr. Anil Agrawal , the surgeon who had performed the surgery or  from them i.e. RGCI&RC unless there is some problem in between.. On being asked whether there was a need   to consult Dr.Doval ,the medical oncologist, he answered in the negative saying that there was no need of any medication at this stage. We thanked him profusely and came out. Ankit said that it was reassuring to hear from a doctor's mouth what we had ourselves  derived from the report the day before.  We  reached home around 8:15pm first reaching the Dilshad Garden metro station by metro and then by car which we had parked at the station. We  dropped Ankit on the way. I was tired but reasonably satisfied. It was as if I had come out of jail.  

Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

Dr. Chaturvedi of RGCI&RC finally wrote his observations on the slip of paper, the substance of which was that there is only about 10% chance of the needle reaching the place where the lesion appears to be located. Dr. Zaidi then suggested that I would need to undergo a  test  viz. endoscopic ultrasound guided FNAC to determine whether the sub-carinal lesion appearing in the PET-CT plate is malignant or not. The Google informed us what FNAC meant. It means Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology.This process involves a fine needle being guided through ultrasonic waves to the place in the body where the lesion is seen to be located.The needle thereafter sucks up tissues which are then sent to cytology lab for examination to determine malignancy. Dr.Zaidi advised that the test could be got done at Sir Ganga Ram hospital because the RGCI&RC did not have the facility. As the cost involved was rather high (Rs.15000 approx.) I rummaged  through the internet again, hoping to find a lab. in Delhi where this test could be done. I was hoping to locate a lab. on the approved list of CGHS so that I might not be required to pay the money myself. But I was not successful. It is not as if there were no such facilities but they were in hospitals- mostly cancer hospitals. And the cancer hospitals wanted that I should first get myself registered with them so that they could fleece me (or the Government, which would pay the bills). My dispensary would not grant me the permission to avail treatment from another hospital unless  the permission given to RGcI&RC in the first place was withdrawn. This did not seem feasible as the RGCI&RC had already charged me for a number of tests and consultations.  Finally, I had to seek an appointment  with Dr. M. Kumar a senior consultant at Sir Ganga Ram hospital. Although the website had informed me that I would need to be on an empty stomach for about four hours, Dr. Kumar wanted me to be  so for twelve hours. Of course I could drink water but nothing more. Dr. Kumar was not willing to advance the time for the test which was after 10:30 am . Since I normally take my last meal of the day between 8 and 9 pm, I would be without food or nourishment for more than 13-14 hours the next day when the test would be undertaken. But I was helpless. Helplessness is  what a serious disease leaves a human being with. I had to take the test, there was no option And therefore I had to abide by what the doctor had wanted me to do.So I had to go to the hospital at the appointed hour.As apprehended, the test would not start at 10:30 am. There were many formalities required to be completed. The completion of formalities consumed another 15 minutes. Then there was that mandatory wait for about half an hour before I was ushered in to the testing arena which was a cubicle large enough to accommodate the necessary machines and beds and tables.They asked me to lie down on the left side . After injecting me with the necessary amount of sedative they inserted the tube and needle . Of course I barely noticed anything as the sedative had begun to have its effect. The process was over in about thirty minutes. When I came to, I found myself lying among two three  patients who too might have gone through some similar procedure.Ankit and Aishwarya went about paying the money which I had given to them before I was taken to the test arena. I was still groggy when I got in to the car. I ate something in the car and came home. The report would be available on the following Monday. The effect of the sedative was huge as I continued to sleep till about  5 pm. Now I am waiting for the report, keeping my fingers crossed.