STORY OF PROSTATE CANCER

Dec 02, 2025

After he suffered from rather severe aches and pains in various parts of the body, accompanied by frequent coughs and related respiratory problems for quite some time , my 62 -years old husband and I decided to have him consult an orthopedist,recommended by a friend.Two weeks of medication and physiotherapy did not seem to help, till a young family member, a surgeon, recommended further tests under the supervision of an experienced doctor at another well-known hospital. Between July 2007 and September 2007, he went through a large number of tests of all kinds, at many hospitals in the city, though both of us were rather skeptical of the genuineness and seriousness of the expertise involved. One of the tests indicated PSA ( Prostate Specific Antigen) level of 1766ng/mL , compared with the normal level of 4.5 ng/mL .The supervising doctor was quite certain there had been a mistake. Angrily, he asked for a revised test. Two days later , the results came back: PSA had gone up to 1866 ng/mL. After an endoscopy followed by biopsy, the results at the end of these three months or more of non-stop investigations told us: PROSTATE CANCER STAGE 4, metastasized all across the body. I had just turned 60 , and that was my birthday gift, I cynically told myself.

The doctors decided my husband needed a surgery to have the prostate glands removed, after which he was put on bicalutamide tablets, a group of testosterone blocker drugs that help the growth and spread of cancer cells. This medication continued for about 14 months and regular tests showed a reasonably stable PSA level between 10 and 20. We got back to living a more -or-less normal life, including my full-time employment as a senior academic at a business school, and frequent visits down to our cottage in Lonavala, which he loved driving to, telling himself and me that that was part of life.This inspite of the fact that after the surgery, the doctors gave him another 18 -24 months to live. It was only then that my husband told me he had noticed some pain and bleeding in his urine before we visited the doctors, but decided to ignore it, thinking he must have hurt himself! And he had never mentioned it to me before the visits to the doctors!

Even so, restrictions on travelling and sitting for long hours put physical constraints on him that ultimately resulted in his having to wind up his small technology business. Our US based son , who had completed his Ph.D. and was teaching at a university there ,would come down from time to time, tense and uncertain about the future of my husband’s health. In the neighbourhood where we lived, all the children, for whom he had always been a great friend, would come running the moment they saw him, wanting to play all kinds of physical games they were so used to playing with him, while I would have to keep chasing them away, afraid that they would want to continue their usuual ‘push-and-pull’ games with him, risking his bones that were getting increasing more fragile.It seemed as though of the three of us, my husband was the ‘coolest’ about life at the time.

This was too good to last . The PSA levels once again began to fluctuate after a while, and the oncologists kept fighting it , changing the medication every now and then to keep it under control. Tne medicines, the hospitals as well as the doctors were being changed frequently for that purpose, my only relief (!!) being that the deadline of 18 months had come and gone, and he was still around, even if not quite as active as he had always been. However, the trend was downwards. Driving a car gradually became too difficult for him, climbing up the stairs to enter the hospital premises began to require a wheelchair. We lived on the 4th floor of an old building that had no elevators, so each ‘visit’ to the ground floor was a source of tension.Everytime he came down, he would look at his motorcycle which he had bought with pride and affection many years ago and which, given his condition, he was no longer allowed to ride. For some time he resisted the idea of selling it off, telling me that over time he would improve enough to use it again.That did not happen. Over time , he had to stop taking our dog down for a walk, since this also meant their having to climb down four floors atleast twice a day. This, though it was quite obvious that the dog preferred his company to mine while going for these walks.

Friends and relatives living in Bangalore began to insist that we move from Mumbai to Bangalore, so that they could share looking after him. For a man as greagarious as he was, this held the promise of another opportunity for enjoyment, for making new friends and for taking up some new activity like taking up responsibilities related to the residential colony’s managing committee, that kept him mentally occupied. That his PSA levels were steadily going up and chemotherapy sessions and blood transfusions had become a regular part of everyday life, gradually became acceptable , perhaps more to him than to me. The pain in various parts of the body was something that had become routine for him. His food intake was going down steadily . Even so, to the extent possible , he helped out with domestic responsibilities, insisting that I continued with my teaching assignments, atleast part of the week. There was an occasion when I got busy working on a paper that had to be presented at an international conference. Reason enough for him to take charge of the kitchen . Once in a while I would get worried about his spending so much time standing in the kitchen , and would try to go and take over the responsibility, so he could go and rest. His response, with anger in his eyes : “ What is the matter ? Why are you not working on your paper? Are you looking for excuses to not complete it ? Not submit it?” This inspite of the fact that he could hardly eat anything. The paper ultimately got accepted and had to be presented at the conference. I had decided to request my co-author to attend the conference in Chennai and present it . No way. The emotional pressure my husband was capable of exercising even at that stage ensured that I went and presented it at the conference. That was the routine! Even so, the cancer did affect our daily life, and I had to reduce my occupational engagements to part-time teaching.

Things gradually came to the stage when his movement got restricted to visits to the restroom, and diet had got limited to some soup and soft fruit, and that too, I had to feed him. While going to the restroom, he was not always able to control his excretions, and I needed to clean up after him, since he would not allow anyone else near him when he needed such support. That made him miserable and often he would curse himself for ‘making me do it’. I tried making light of it, saying that he would have been doing it if the roles had been reversed, but ofcourse that did not carry any weight.

And then , one day , sitting on his bed, he told two of his friends who had come visiting, that he didn’t know how long this scenario would last, so they had better come and visit him every day. After that, no matter what happened, they would do so regularly, even if that meant landing up at nine o’clock in the night. But can anyone imagine what his older-than-eighty year old mother must have been going through during all this? She lived with his younger brother in another part of the city, and would be driven down almost every day to spend time with him.
All this went on for a while. Close to six years had passed since he had initially been given the “eighteen month” deadline. I had begun to tell myself that he was getting better and would ultimately come out of this loop. Friends would come and visit, our son had come down to be with us, and my husband’s favourite cousin would come and do Reiki for him every evening, only to have him making fun of her for ‘believing in such things’. But after a while, I could not continue with that belief – the deterioration in his condition was becoming apparent and steady. Even though having people around helped to a degree, and late night medication would atleast help control his pain, and also help him doze off, even if erratically . One such night the pain worsened a bit , though he insisted it was not much different from other days , other moments. Rather late in the night, he touched me and uttered a sentence that has stayed with ever since. At the time , I just ran my hands over him, hoping that would help gradually reduce his pain. Next morning arrived as usual, and I got engaged with preparing his medication to be followed by whatever breakfast I thought he would be able to have. His cousin came , sat down near him, holding his hand and doing Reiki. After a while she called me , and said she thought his hand and his body seemed cold. That was it.