There are times in our lives, among our successes and failures, remorse and gratitude, when we look back at specific instances of our life and wonder if it was avoidable. A lucid memory of an ailing father comes with one such instance. The acquaintances visiting have appreciated my efforts towards my father's treatment of the dreadedColorectal Cancer. The situation I talk about is unavoidable, yet I can't help but think about how the trauma could be dealt with better. My experiences with my deceased and beloved father speak more of it.

My father, diagnosed withColorectal Cancerlater in his life, was a strong-willed man characterized by his struggles towards the ailment. At the beginning of 2018, we learned of his health condition, specifically ofColorectal Cancercells with grade 1 lineage. Within no time, we arranged his treatment in a local hospital in Gwalior. The doctor had been catering well to our glimmer of hope. He had been first subjected toSurgeryand was then given six chemotherapies. Soon we could see him recover, and normalcy was reiterated in our lives. It was, short-spanned as the cells started to reoccur after a couple of months; Reoccurrence becomes extremely difficult to accept for the patient and his family. You have just begun to register gratitude towards life for having blessed you out of all the suffering when it's all a utopia again. The treatment began again, but the cells had already spread to more parts of his body, including the liver. The disease had reached a state of being beyond cure. He could no longer digest the medicines that were prescribed to him. Soon after, his weakening body had overtaken his spirits, and he succumbed to the disease.

What I believe is the circumstances we were in played an enormous role throughout the process of his treatment. We are based in the Gwalior city of Madhya Pradesh. Although a city, Gwalior is not very developed in terms of healthcare. The attitude of the people in this city towards the cure for this fatal ailment is pessimistic, and they do not endow much faith in healing after one is diagnosed. My father, after a tough fight, had given away this pessimism. There are zillion things that can affect the struggle of the patient. It's the responsibility of the people around to make the struggler believe that it's not a lone battle that he's fighting.

Researchers have given up lifetimes on bringing new forms of diagnosis and followed treatment. However, how long will it be before it reaches the common mass that is made of people living in interior towns of yet-to-be-developed countries? My father had been prescribed anUltrasoundwhen his body had first shown symptoms of the ailment, it had been diagnosed as an occurrence of a stone in his stomach, and the perils have been shrugged away. It was only later and after cases of more evident symptoms that he had been diagnosed withColorectal Cancer. Aren't cases of such negligence by the healthcare system corrigible so that lives, irrespective of socio-economic status, can be saved?

I believe health is not prioritized by most of us until it's too late. We are not ready to give up on habits for something which has only a probability of malfunctioning. Very insensitively, we fail to realize the gravity of the probability of a health condition and the trauma it can bring to our lives and families. I speak of lived experiences that are way more grave than our careless minds can think of. Let's pledge towards a healthy lifestyle, one that is remarked by physical exercise and nutritious food, one in which we have given up on habits that could lead us to a distorted health condition.

If you are going through the long and tiring phases of cancer, you must stay strong throughout because it's a long way to go that demands patience. A victory against the ailment is about the patient's willed solid resistance against it. The struggle echoes the desire to live and to defeat the ailment from its very roots.