Soma, India

Soma was amazing. She was a force of nature. She and I met 25 years ago. And believe it or not, I think it was within the first few minutes of meeting her that I was fairly sure I'd met the person I really wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And the two of us got married on the 22nd day of meeting each other. I feel very fortunate that she decided to spend her life with me. Soma was misdiagnosed five times between March and August 2016, and there were multiple doctors, six, in fact, oncologists, who had come and seen her, and nobody really knew what was happening to her. When we were told that Soma literally had months left, it was very, very abrupt. You know, this gentleman walked into the into her room, leafed through her papers, and the next thing he turned around and said was, you're a late stage cancer patient and you don't have much time. Soma's only sister was also diagnosed with cancer two years prior to Soma being diagnosed with cancer. 

When her sister passed, five weeks before she was diagnosed, the family hadn't even had time to grieve from the loss of her sister. My in-laws were there. They were with me in the hospital and my daughter was in school. It was difficult to get them to understand that things could go so horribly wrong when they'd lost one daughter at 35. And they just put it to rest, and the next one, the only other one, was diagnosed and given less than six months, there was this feeling that we'd had enough and we needed to get Soma to the best cancer hospital in the world to try and figure out what was going wrong. To be honest, I didn't know where to take her. So I actually went up to this gentleman and said I think I've had enough of this because your doctor number six, and I need to get her to the best cancer hospital in the world to figure out what's wrong with her. And he turned to me and said, if you've got the means and the money, take her, but it won't make a difference. And I said, well, that's for God to decide and for us to try. So this was the 4th of August. On the 17th of August, we were on a flight to Houston. And on the 21st we got her to meet the physician in chief of MD Anderson. It was almost like moving into mission mode. Right. And I not only had my wife and daughter, I actually took my in-laws with me as well, because I wanted them to see and wanted everyone to be together because I've always believed that we were and we are much stronger as a family unit, rather than individuals. And I wanted all of us to be rallying around trauma together and not let her go into periods of self doubt. I sort of kept my spirits up and kept my strength up by looking to Soma. Right.

She was an incredibly strong woman and an incredibly positive person. And even right through to the very end, nobody could tell if you met her. You know, outside the periods of intense chemo activity, nobody could tell that she was unwell. She travelled extensively, she wrote extensively, she lived life to the fullest. And it was her joy, the strength of her, of her character, that gave us the strength to keep positive ourselves. Soma was very clear that she didn't want her daughter to be too caught up with, all the treatments and all the relapses, 74 rounds of chemo, six relapses. So she wanted our daughter to chase her dreams. And that's exactly what she did. She's a design major. And she spent her first two years of her Bachelor's programme at Parsons in Paris and the next two years in New York, and, you know, and then got into her master's programme at the London College of Fashion. 

I think my daughter, as well, found strength in the fact that Soma really wanted her to live her dream and not get lost in, um, I won't say the hopelessness and the negativity, but, you know, the surety that was very clearly a part and parcel of our lives, you know, for that period. Over the last six and a half years, we've lost probably a couple of dozen friends to cancer. And in most cases, what we've really seen is that people just give up even before they start to try. And what we saw in Soma was this strength to live life to the fullest, to not give up. And and that's what, you know, the message that I want to share on her behalf to everybody, you know. That's what what we realized at MD Anderson as well, we saw kids from school and college, we saw working professionals. We saw elderly people. We saw people from around the world, you know, everybody coming in, receiving their treatment and going back to work, going back to living their lives. 

And that was a very valuable lesson because typically, you know, when you hear that your loved one or anybody for that matter has terminal cancer, everybody gives up on that person. Your friends, your employers, even your family, your doctors even. And Soma didn't give up. I think the first thing to remember is, this person, your wife, your spouse, your partner, your husband, your whoever he or she is a person first and then a patient. Right? So don't don't forget them, or lose sight of them because of the fact that they've got an ailment or a disease that they had no control over to begin with. I'd request, friends and family members to empathise with them and not sympathise with them. You know, try as you might, you haven't a clue. We don't have a clue what's going through the mind of these people and what they're going through. You know, try as you might, you're not feeling the medicine's coursing through your veins. So, leave your crocodile tears at home and don't make matters worse by trauma dumping and trying to tell them that you understand and you've got more pain or somebody else, you know, has more pain. Listen carefully to what that person is saying, right, to what that person really needs. You know, too many of us get into this situation. We meet people who are terminally ill or families and you know, that are going through this. And and we quickly relapse into our problem solving mode and we try and dump them with our misguided kindness. And they don't need it. When our friends, very well meaning friends and very, very dear friends, you know, asked us multiple times, so what can we do to help? And we said, you know, in many cases Soma would say, no, you know, we we don't we really don't need anything. What we do need is a slice of the normal. Don't treat us in any way as if we're special or, you know, unable to do things or do anything differently. Just give us a slice of the normal sit down, watch a movie, go somewhere, have a meal, laugh, joke. We don't need anything special. Don't call us out for being, you know, incapable of doing something. I think way too often people, people assume that, you know, they know what the person needs, rather than taking the time to ask them what they really need. 

And at times, all these people need is a little bit of attention and a little bit of time, because that's what's been snatched away from them. Enjoy and cherish every moment you have together, because that will have to last you a lifetime. The last seven years, it was the family's purpose to keep her well, to get her the best medical care in the world. To make sure that we landed. Well, one of the biggest challenges that the family faces, the caregivers face after the passing of the person that we lived for, is identifying a new purpose because if you have loved and lived and loved and lost, you need to find a new purpose.