Ganga Prem Hospice patients

Asadi Devi: In need of palliative care

Poor Asadi Devi's case came to the attention of Ganga Prem Hospice through a man from her village who happened to meet a Hospice supporter on a visit to the city of Dehradun. His phone number was given to the Rishikesh team who managed to contact the patient's husband and retrieve her medical history. A call was then made to Dr Rajinder Kaur, a volunteer oncologist who specialises in women's cancer. Asadi Devi's husband was advised to bring his wife down to Rishikesh before the clinic and have some tests done so that the visiting oncologist could see what could be done to help her.

Asadi Devi undertook the arduous nine hour bus journey from her snowbound village in Chamoli near the bank of the river Alaknanda to reach Rishikesh two days before the Ganga Prem Hospice cancer clinic on the 29th of January. With the help of Divyae, the Hospice manager, she had her tests done at a diagnostic centre giving free tests for Ganga Prem's poor cancer patients.

Asadi Devi and her husband at the January clinic

Small, under-weight and with her body afflicted with metastatic cancer, Asadi Devi had to be lifted on a make-shift palanquin to traverse the distance from her village to the main road where she could catch a bus. Asadi was diagnosed with cancer three years ago and had undergone surgery to have her uterus removed in a hospital in Pauri Garhwal, but the cancer then returned to her breasts and since then she has had no treatment.

"Ghar khaali hai," says Dalip Singh, Asadi Devi's husband, pointing to the fact that they have nothing left in their home now. When asked what he does for a living, Dalip shows his calloused palms and says that he was a daily wager but has no job now. One of the couple's two daughters is married, while their son works in Haridwar to earn a living. Asadi Devi's cancer treatment was the last thing they could afford.

There is nothing that can be done for Asadi other than give her palliative treatment at a hospital, said the Ganga Prem Hospice oncologist who saw the patient. At the clinic in Rishikesh, Asadi was very quiet and her steps were very slow owing to her body being devoid of any energy. Coming from a very impoverished economic background, perhaps it had never occurred to her that she could be any other way, that she could choose to reject something or ask for something for her own self. If she was asked to sit, she would sit down, and if she had pain, which she did, she did not tell.