"Don`t get scared of the Big C,” Dr Shubham Mane from Aurangabad tells us on the eve of World Cancer Day. “If you are in the right hands, miracles do happen.”  Dr Mane’s 70-year-old father Rajaram (name changed), a retired MSEB employee from Parbhani, had a lump on his right thigh for a long time. Over the last six months, it suddenly started growing in size, increasing up to 30 cm, and made walking difficult for him. “My father was scared of getting inside the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine and it took a lot of convincing. The MRI report confirmed liposarcoma (soft tissue malignant tumour), but the pain and lump growth persisted. A subsequent biopsy of the tumour at a hospital in Aurangabad, too, confirmed that it was malignant,” recalled Dr Mane.

An oncologist in Nanded recommended a PET-CT scan and to the Manes’ horror, it showed lymph nodes around his abdomen and cervical area. “I was told that the cancer might have spread and that surgery was not advisable, as my father was in the fourth stage of the disease. The oncologist advised chemotherapy,” said Dr Mane. Dr Mane then brought his father to Mumbai.