How Does Modern Healthcare Touch Lives?

Cancer, the big C, the killer crab is no longer as scary as it was even thirty years ago.
Modern healthcare has made what seemed like a certain death sentence just like any other every day health issue that can be treated, cured, or at least managed to ensure an excellent quality of life.

As the survivors are wont to say,"Hey, every one has to die one day. No one is staying here forever. How does it matter if you die of cancer or while crossing a road, or of old age?"

If Anand had been a modern day movie, no body would have believed that Anand had no way to go but down. Babu Moshai could have done lots more to ensure that Anand had a longer life and wrote the book, or at least attended the book launch party.

Similarly, in the movie Safar also Rajesh Khanna would not have been considered a gone case from the word go. Who knows how the story would have moved then.

Jokes apart, Cancer has met its match in modern healthcare system.
The other day I was in a mid morning ladies meet of nine people in a small room and three of them, including your truly, were breast cancer survivors.
Where is the scare, the fear, the dread, the certain horrible death scene that prevailed earlier?
The old adage that if cancer arrives, it does not leave without taking at least one limb or organ with it is also no longer true.
The treatment is expensive, painful and long drawn but one does have a fair fighting chance to come out of it and live disease free for many years. Over time, one even forgets that one ever went through the traumatic treatment.
It has been made possible by the modern healthcare system. It touches lives of individuals, families and the entire society by making life easier.
Whatever health problem one may have can be made better or more tolerable now provided one has the means to avail modern healthcare treatment.
 It does seem like a sweeping statement because one just has to visit a hospital to see human suffering due to medical issues.
But when one also sees the tools that are now available: CT scan, PET scan, radiation delivery machines that look like space crafts, MRI, robots that perform surgery, one goes Wow!
A very senior surgeon once told me,"Surgery is so easy nowadays. The MRI shows you exactly what to expect inside the body. In our day we discovered what we were up against only after we had opened the patient up on the operation table and then we had no choice but to do whatever we could under the circumstances."

Pace makers regulate the heart beat and make sure one lives a full life despite a sluggish pumping machine in the chest.
Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) surgery ensures that a person afflicted with the debilitating Parkinson's disease can live a near normal life and so can his care givers. Imagine not having to ask someone to help you each time you want to get up or go to the bathroom! That is what DBS does. It makes one independent again.

One hears of another modern marvel, the robotic legs that help one to walk even if one has been confined to a bed and wheel chair for several years. Yes, they do cost nine crores or more but if one had the money, one could walk again.
 Modern healthcare is a miracle! Really that is what it is! Just a wonderful real life miracle!

This is my entry for Apollo hospitals' contest "How Does Modern Healthcare Touch Lives?"

http://www.apollohospitals.com/cutting-edge.php