Title: Into The Painless.
Sub Title From one
cancer patient to another
Special Notes: Printed as a service to the Oncologist and Cancer Patient by M/S. Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (India) Limited, Rhone-Poulenc House, Worli, Mumbai 400025.
Publisher: Mrs.Shobha Phani Raj, (wife of the deceased author)
Abstract: This is a small booklet of 28 pages, written by Late M.R.Phani Raj, in November 1998 during the last days of his life.
The author was diagnosed to be having cancer in 1994 and lived for about five years thereafter undergoing various treatments. He describes the common reactions arising out of a diagnosis of a terminal illness such as shock, gloom, helplessness, fear, worry about the future of the dependents,
mental preparedness to face the anticipated
Pain (both physical & mental, as well as that caused by the
treatment & the disease itself) and lastly but the most important one, to resolve to plan the rest of the life with a goal to
achieve satisfaction.
The author
brings out the emotions and impulses on one side. He analyses the positive and negative
aspects. The difference between the pain arising out of an accident such as a cut or a fracture, wherein the pain practically starts at the peak without any advance notice and gradually comes down or is brought down and the pain caused by the disease which gradually increases and even the treatment produces pain. At the same time the person is to overcome the physical aspects and build enough drive to achieve the goal set with the time running out. The development of the “feelings and the past” as well as the “feelings and the future”, and correlating it to the present are touching features, when one reads.
The author dwells on the “attitude on death” and “beyond the body – beyond the mind”, and brings in a concept of viewing internal issues from outside with detachment. Issues of mental preparedness and how some of the practices like yoga, meditation, self-awareness, “remain unattached” or detachment, how to transcend also find an appropriate treatment.
This development is what makes the short book so interesting and would be of interest not only to the patients, but also to the doctors and those around the patients.
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