Amit Agarwal (Breast Cancer Caregiver) Hold on to Your Hope

How it all began (Symptoms)

It all started in December when initially she found a lump in her right breast, but we did not take it too seriously and neglected it at that time. She did not show any symptoms, but at times felt uneasy. But as time passed, she started feeling some discomfort, and hence we decided to consult our family doctor. After the recommendation from our family doctor, we decided to go for a USG test. To our surprise, malignancy was detected. Later on, a Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) test was also undertaken to cross-check the results, even though this confirmed malignancy. The doctor advised her to go for the Tru-Cut biopsy for 100% surety, and so in July, her test results confirmed that she had triple-negative breast cancer.

Confronting up and winning over it

After the confirmation, the first thing we did was to contact my brother-in-law, who is a doctor at AIIMS. He advised us to consult one of the heads of the department there. After going through the test reports, the doctor suggested immediate surgery and also provided us with a detailed plan for the same.

 We decided to go with the specified plan. She then underwent a series of chemotherapy. After the chemotherapy session got over it was revealed that cancer has been significantly reduced.

After a long fight with cancer, my wife finally came back home. Very soon she started  her recovery back too. Everything was going on smoothly as she had joined back her office and started her work too.

It recurred again

In 2019, she again started experiencing back problems. I took her to a physician where he asked her to get the X-ray done to know the root cause of the problem but nothing could be detected. Later in the regular checkup session with Tata memorial, the doctor told us that bone scanning needs to be performed and when the test results came out it pointed out a few issues again. So, the doctors asked her to go for another test. Hence PET was also conducted and the recurrence of the malignancy was revealed.

After the test results were out we tried consulting different doctors but no one could give any hope. They even told us that chemotherapy would also not be of great help at this time. But we decided to go with the conventional chemotherapy and parallelly opted for Naturopathy as well. I decided to take some consultation from UK-based medical agencies and also from the integrative oncology center of ZenOncoIo. 

What went wrong

I feel that I should have consulted a few more experts and also should have taken their views right after the completion of the first surgery. I believe if proper consultation was taken earlier we could have saved her by taking preventive measures .

Side effects 

She had to face many side effects due to all her chemotherapy sessions

Message for everyone

My advice to all the patients and caregivers is to make sure you always stay strong and try to be positive and inspiring for your loved ones. I remember that with her positive and strong attitude, my wife did not let anyone in the family feel emotionally weak. During this kind of situation, we should try to be happy and uplift the morale of others.

Another piece of advice is to live a healthy lifestyle no matter what.