28 Aug Overcoming a life-threatening disease
Nisha was unaware of her disease until a timely intervention by CAPED. She is now on the road to recovery and a pain-free life
Nisha is 50 years old, and is a mother of five grown up children. For the past many years, Nisha endured lower abdominal and pelvic pain. The pain was sometimes so excruciating that she hunched over when walking. Whenever her pain become unbearable, she would go the clinic in the basti and take pain killers to relieve herself of the pain. The pain killers worked for a few hours, but the pain would return in the same intensity afterwards.
When CAPED conducted a door-to-door awareness drive and a Cervical Cancer screening camp in her village, she finally found the reason for her pain. Nisha had never heard of Cervical Cancer or any of its symptoms. However, since there was a medical camp being conducted, she thought about speaking to someone at the camp about her pain. That is when Nisha met CAPED’s community mobiliser and explained her symptoms. The community mobiliser knew immediately that this could be a severe case of Cervical Cancer. She facilitated Nisha’s tests at the screening camp organised in her village.
Her test reports showed Nisha had Cervical Cancer. She was taken for further diagnosis – an HPV test and a biopsy to Fortis Hospital. Nisha and her daughter struggled a lot to get the tests done. They were both quite scared, because of the disease and also because of the slowness of the system at the Hospital. After six months of back and forth, with no concrete treatment steps, they finally switched to Safdarjung Hospital. It took about 3-4 months for all the tests to be conducted, due to the sheer number of patients at Safdarjung Hospital. Nisha’s treatment finally started in April 2018. The doctors informed Nisha that she required a surgery. Currently, she is now undergoing treatment at Safdarjung Hospital and preparing to undergo surgery soon.
Nisha is positive she will be cured completely soon. She is very thankful for the timely intervention by CAPED, that helped her identify the disease and saved her life.
*Name changed to protect privacy.