Life is short.and other lessons by Pranata
By the time little Pranata was four her mother Shobha had consulted all the senior eye cancer specialists in southern India. At three, when she seen just three months of kindergarten, Pranata had developed a white diamond-like shine in her right eye. Within a month the tumor had grown and there was no more going to school, no ‘chubby cheeks’ and ‘machhli jal ki rani’ rhymes — only frequent outstation visits to eye doctors. A year later, Pranata’s cancer had spread outside the eye and had become difficult to control. Her family found it hard to accept the fact that Pranata’s life was ebbing, precipitating visits to more doctors.
It was a referral that brought them to L V Prasad Eye Institute, Hyderabad, on 17 March 2010. On her most recent visit nearly two months later, Pranata was just short of five years. She wanted to be back home in Salcete, Goa with just a week to go for her birthday but her doctors, Dr Md Javed Ali and Dr Tarjani Yogesh Shah, were chary of sending her home as her platelet count was too low. Twice her mother took her for blood transfusion, admitting that she could no longer afford it.
Some of the images of Pranata on this visit are her playing with a magic slate, her joie de vivre at the five ‘magic’ candles that lit up every time she blew them out and her lovely smile as she distributed her birthday cake to nonpaying patients. At such times she did not remember the pain she had felt when the doctors tapped her spine for checking her life fluid, her nausea, the loss of her hair due to chemotherapy, her bad cough, and the endless pokey injections. It was her second birthday in a hospital. She challenged our cameramen to keep pace with her, running down the corridors, careful not to get hurt. The doctors had the difficult task of telling her mother that Pranata may not see another birthday, such was the toll of her eye cancer, retinoblastoma.
It was a great birthday with a chocolate cake, toffees, balloons, ribbons, presents and little Shiva, a ward-mate with the same eye cancer as hers, who helped her blow out those funny candles. The nurses and nursing students sang ‘Happy birthday’, as Pranata’s infectious charm brought together busy patient care facilitators, nurses, optometrists, doctors, anesthetists, and some of the administrative staff. Everyone wished Pranata well (her name means namaste) for all time to come. She would soon return home to feast on her favourite dish prepared by her doting grandmother, fried fish curry, and play with her little brother Prateek who, fortunately, did not develop retinoblastoma.