Well, it's been a while since I've posted, and for those of you who look forward to my posts for your daily dose of "Rupi," I apologize for my absence! So, so much has happened since my last post, and yet on the same token, not much at all has happened. It's complicated - I'll fill you in soon. :) In the meantime though, it's fundraising time of year again, so I'm using this blog entry to ask for your support, and to take a chance once again, to tell you a bit about why I ride, and who I ride for. Before I paste my case though, I would like to take an opportunity to thank each and every single person that has supported me during this difficult journey that is my life. Your support has been so appreciated. From giving me advice, listening to me vent or just sitting silently with me, I appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
So without further delay, here it is:
I’ve waited a bit longer than usual to send out my annual request for donations, and the reason for that is simply that until now, I have been uncertain about whether or not I would be participating in this year’s Ride. A number of factors were swaying my mind against participation. Most of these factors are nothing new – guilt about being able to ride when my beautiful Rockstar wasn’t able to do the same, mixed feelings about participating in a fight for the cure, when that cure is going to come too late for my brother, dread of facing another Opening Ceremonies knowing how heart wrenching it will be, and most of all, the pain of reliving Rocky’s battle yet again. By now, most of you know that my baby brother, Bikramjit – better known as Rocky – lost his 14 month battle against cancer in August 2010. Many of you also know that Rocky is the second brother that I have lost. Our first brother, Amrinder – better known as Amar – passed away a few years before Rocky. This year, the Ride starts on what will be the 10th anniversary of Amar’s passing –June 16. I have struggled to decide whether to ride or spend that day with my parents. After an enormous amount of thinking and soul-searching, I have decided that neither of my brothers would want me moping around all day, and would most definitely prefer that I use that time to help others, and as such, I have finally decided that I will be participating in this year’s Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer.
Those of you who know me well will know how devastating Rocky’s loss has been for my family and I. Rocky was and still is, the dearest person to our hearts, and his untimely passing has left an irreparable hole in those hearts. The magnitude to which Rocky’s loss has shattered my parents and I cannot be expressed in words. The pain that we feel each and every moment of each and every day cannot be described. I can never explain to anyone the degree to which my life has been shattered by the loss of my beloved brothers. Amar’s passing was sudden – no one had time to think. But Rocky’s passing – Rocky’s passing was a long, torturous, physically and emotionally painful process during which we were all aware of what was happening – including Rocky. Knowing that Rocky was aware that he was dying, and was helpless torments us on a daily basis. Speaking only for myself, because I’m sure my parents’ pain is exponentially worse than mine, I can only describe this pain as someone clenching their fist around my heart. Even now, 18 months later, my stomach still drops to my feet at the thought of all that he endured. I still cry helplessly when I remember clothes shopping for his final journey and our final moments with him at his funeral. My head hurts to think of his final words and messages to us. My heart aches when I recall him asking to make sure his funeral was small, and just thinking about him imagining himself lying in a casket. My stomach hurts to think about what he must have been thinking. Just yesterday, as I passed by the hospital on the way home, I flashed back to the day that we left the hospital after he had left us, and it took nearly everything out of me to prevent myself from breaking down while driving. Life is not easy – everyone knows that. But our lives have gotten so much harder with the loss of my amazing little brother. My brother was an amazing young man, who deserved far better than he got. I don’t think I will ever be able to come to terms with it, but I can use it to spread awareness, and work to fulfill my brother’s wishes. I was his voice then, and I will continue to be his voice now.
On June 16, 2009 (Amar’s 7th anniversary), my beautiful baby brother, one month shy of his 24thbirthday, was suddenly diagnosed with Diffuse Large B-Cell Non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma – a particularly aggressive, yet treatable, blood cancer. What started off as a small stomach ache escalated into excruciating pain day in and day out. Because he had just started a new job with the RCMP three weeks prior, Rocky refused to take time off of work to see a doctor. Instead he reported to work and carried out his duties each and every day, and then came home and curled up in the fetal position, adamant that he would be fine, and refusing help. On his first compressed day off, Rocky finally went to see his doctor, who ordered X-rays and once she got the results, told him to immediately report to Emergency at SMH for what appeared to be pancreatitis. Little did we know that it would be 42 days, countless tests and biopsies, endless tears and prayers, a round of chemotherapy and one very depressing birthday before Rocky would be able to return home. Rocky went to hospital weighing nearly 200 lbs. He came home weighing 150.
Six weeks later, Rocky experienced an intense headache. When conventional medication failed to provide relief, we rushed him back to Emergency where we were advised that he had contracted meningitis due to his compromised immune system. He spent 10 days in hospital before he was finally allowed to come home again. Two weeks after this, Rocky had his first CT scan since starting chemotherapy. The CT scans prior to treatment had yielded alarming results. Rocky’s internal organs had malignant masses all over them –including an 8cm tumour right in the centre of his chest. Tissue in his trunk was showing signs of necrosis, and his lungs were beginning to deflate. The CT scan that was conducted after 4 of 6 sessions of chemotherapy demonstrated that all of the existing tumours had shrunk in size or had disappeared entirely. But as was the case throughout his battle, the good news came with bad news as well. One new mass had grown on Rocky’s liver since starting chemotherapy. As we would find out much later, with the growth of that new mass, Rocky’s chances of survival were largely wiped out. On his oncologists’ advice, Rocky completed the remaining two sessions of chemotherapy and went in for a PET scan in late November. The results of that scan came back on December 3 – on what would have been Amar’s 27th birthday. Rocky tested PET-positive for cancer. The battle wasn’t over. That night, as he sat quietly in front of the TV, my mom went over and gently put her hand on his head. We watched helplessly as for the first time since his diagnosis, tears rolled down his cheeks.
He was immediately set up for an appointment with a haematologist at Vancouver General Hospital and the process was started for extreme dose chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant.
Like his friends, Rocky had looked forward to the Vancouver Olympics since they were announced. Afterall, it’s not everyday that the Olympics come to your hometown. As the years passed by, Rocky’s excitement increased. But in December 2009, Rocky was told that he would not be able to take in any of the festivities related to the Olympics, because he could not risk infection. So while his friends and thousands upon thousands of people enjoyed pre-Games festivities, my brother sat quietly on the sofa at home, watching it all unfold on TV. Vancouver 2010’s opening ceremonies took place on February 12, 2010. Rocky sat angrily on the sofa watching. On February 15, as Rocky sat down for dinner, we got a call from VGH telling us that a bed was available and to report to the hospital as soon as possible. Rocky never finished that meal. Nervously, we all arrived at VGH, Rocky was admitted and assigned his bed – on the 16th floor in the Leukemia (same family) ward, in isolation. Over the next seven days, Rocky endured extremely high doses of chemotherapy that were accompanied by painful side effects, and the complete wiping out of his bone marrow. On the 8th day, Rocky received a stem cell transplant, and endured more pain as the stem cells reproduced inside his bones.
It seems that the entire world watched the gold medal men’s hockey game between Canada and the USA. My brother, an avid hockey fan, was unable to wake up long enough to watch the game due to the sheer exhaustion of the entire procedure. He woke up literally about half a minute before Sidney Crosby’s game-winning goal. Weakly, he lifted his arm in the air, whispered “Sid the Kid” and then fell asleep again. The Olympics had ended when he was finally able to go for a walk around the ward with his IV pole and chest tube, around the ward. It was then that he realized that the kitchen window faced BC Place. He was disappointed that he didn’t know this before, because “I would have at least been able to see the fireworks.”
Three weeks after being admitted, Rocky was finally discharged.
In late April, Rocky once again went in for another PET scan, and once again, Rocky tested PET-positive for cancer. When Rocky was diagnosed, he had a 60-70% chance of beating the disease. After the first PET-positive result, his chances dropped to 20-25%. After the second PET-positive result, his chances dropped to less than 3%. Because of Rocky’s age, a team of oncologists overseeing his case decided that radical radiotherapy should be tried, and on May 19, Rocky started his radiation regimen that would be carried out 5 days a week for 4 weeks. He completed radiation on June 16 – Amar’s 8th anniversary and exactly one year since his diagnosis. Rocky looked great. He had energy, he was feeling healthy and strong, and his counts were all looking promising. For the first time, he took the stairs two at a time ahead of me after his last appointment. We were cautiously optimistic that he had beaten the disease. He was so sure that he had finally made it to remission that he immediately started going out with friends and even went and picked up some groceries.
On June 27th, though, I got a frantic call from my mom telling me that Rocky was extremely dizzy. To save time, I asked my parents to bring Rocky to Emergency and I would meet them there. When my dad pulled up, I was shocked to see that this young man, who I had just seen a couple of hours before, went from looking healthy, to being pale and barely able to walk. Once again, they took Rocky directly into acute care, ran a battery of tests, and the next day, despite his protests, transferred him back up to Oncology. Rocky begged the nurses to leave him in the hall in Emerg. He did not want to go back into the ward. He did not want to stay at the hospital.
The next morning, our world came crashing down around us. We were told that the cancer had spread and that there was nothing further that could be done. I watched speechlessly as my beautiful brother, 2 weeks shy of his 25th birthday, begged the doctor for something...anything. “I’ll do chemo for the rest of my life...there has to be SOMETHING you can do...are there any experimental options available?...can I go somewhere else?” But all of the doors closed quickly around my beautiful brother...and us.
A couple of days before his 25th birthday, Rocky experienced a “pain crisis.” He had had a similar pain the night before starting with his hands feeling like they were burning, but it subsided relatively quickly. On the day of the crisis, Rocky slowly said“my hands are burning again...” and before we knew it, his eyes widened to the size of saucers and he just started SCREAMING. Rocky had been on hydromorphone since his diagnosis the year before, but had never shown us how much pain he was in. For those of you who don’t know, 1mg of Hydromorphone is 8X more potent than 1mg of Morphine. Rocky was taking anywhere from 2-12mg of Hydromorphone orally for over a year without ever showing his pain. So the fact that he was screaming is testament to just how bad the pain must have been. He was SCREAMING, thrashing his arms and legs on his bed, tears streaming down his face, begging for help...screaming that this was beyond an emergency, and that he was on fire, and that he needed help...NOW. I don’t even remember how many times I ran between his room and the nurse’s station begging for help, but finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they started administering 12mg of Hydromorphone subcutaneously every 15 minutes until the pain began to subside. That night, Rocky was placed in a private room in the Palliative Care ward – a room reserved for patients facing imminent death.
Remarkably, despite doctors’ warnings that they would be surprised if Rocky lasted a week, my baby brother recovered and stabilized enough to be discharged on July 31. Because he was a Palliative patient though, he received home care and nurses and doctors would visit him at home to check on him. My mom and I became his in-house nurses, administering powerful painkillers mutiple times a day. His doctors were amazed to see how amazing he looked when they came to see him. They drew blood and sent it to the lab for testing, and then the doctor called and said that his red blood cell count was very low and that he would need a blood transfusion. We arranged for Rocky to report to hospital on the evening of August 7 so that he could be transfused overnight and discharged in the morning. Rocky began to feel dizzy though, so we took him in a little earlier than planned. We went straight up to the Palliative Care ward, where a new nurse was on duty. Rocky said that they should be expecting ‘Rocky’ to come in for a transfusion. The nurse confirmed that they were expecting him, and then she looked at him, me and back at him and said “so, is he here?” That is how good Rocky looked even as sick as he was.
They set Rocky up for the transfusion, and we prepared to be discharged the next morning. But the next morning, the doctor said that he seemed to have an infection, so maybe it will be a couple more days. Rocky looked at me knowingly. He had said to me a few weeks earlier that “I always come for something I think is minor, and they always end up keeping me longer.” He was right – once again, he thought he was coming for something minor but they were keeping him longer. After dinner that night, Rocky told me that there was a rash on his leg that was really bothering him. He lifted his pajama bottom to show me, and there was indeed a small rash the size of a quarter on his inner left thigh. I called the nurse, who came over and said that she would need to take a closer look at it, and asked Rocky to change from his bottoms into a hospital gown. Rocky attempted to stand up but once again, started screaming in pain. The nurse had to help him change. It was around that time that my parents, who had gone to the temple to pray for their son, called to see how he was doing. I started screaming that something was wrong. It was a gut feeling – something was seriously wrong. A rash should not hurt this badly.
My parents rushed back to the hospital and about an hour later, Rocky asked my dad for help getting to the washroom. As he was moving, I got a glimpse of this “rash” again. The “rash” had grown from the size of a quarter, to taking up his entire inner left thigh, and was deep purple in colour. Later that night, Rocky’s temperature shot up to 40 degrees, and his blood pressure crashed. We struggled to remain calm as we put cold compresses on his forehead all night and nurses rushed in and out with medications to force his blood pressure up. The next morning, our fears were confirmed. Rocky had developed an internal bleed, and his body would not be able to recover. Rocky’s blood had run out of platelets, and so he was unable to clot. A simple blood test had turned his entire arm purple. There was no way he could recover from an internal bleed of that magnitude. It was time to say our goodbyes.
After a week of watching him deteriorate, Rocky passed away on August 16, 2010, a month after “celebrating” his 25th birthday – a birthday he didn’t end up remembering because he was so pumped full of powerful painkillers.
I participated in the 2010 Ride with my Rockstar as my inspiration, with the hopes that he would join me on the 2011 Ride. His goal was to get better and join me on that journey, but unfortunately, things didn’t work out as planned, and in June 2011, a small team of us, called ROCKY’S ROCKSTARS, participated in the Ride with Rocky as our inspiration. It was a difficult Ride – physically and emotionally. Mother Nature turned the taps on us last year, and we started the Ride amidst a torrential downpour. We were soaked to the bone before the Ride even started, and by the time we crossed the border into Washington state, there wasn’t a dry sock around. Once the rain finally stopped, the wind picked up, and obviously blew against us forcing us to work against it. Last year, the Ride hired new caterers who dropped the ball in a big way. Not only did a number of riders (myself included) not get lunch because they ran out, but dinner fared no better. All this in addition to the emotionally gruelling nature of the Ride made for a LONG couple of days.
The Ride is no easy task. Over 2 days, we will ride over 200km from Vancouver through the Pacific Northwest to Seattle – rain or shine. It’s a physically gruelling challenge, but nothing that can be compared to the physically gruelling challenge that cancer patients suffer in trying to get to remission. It’s nothing compared to the emotionally gruelling challenge of dealing with internal thoughts and emotions during treatment, and sadly, when treatment fails. It’s nothing compared to the plight of sufferers of this terrible disease in all of its forms. Last year and this year, and likely every year that I participate in this Ride, I ask myself“why?” Why should I care about anyone else, if the one person dearest to me wasn’t able to beat it? Why should I fight for a cure for someone else, when that cure is going to come too late for my Rockstar? Why should I care? The answer is because Rocky wanted me to.
During the last week of Rocky’s life, he was unable to move because of the bleeding in his leg, and to prevent bed sores, the doctor ordered a special “air” bed for him. They had to shift Rocky from the regular bed onto the new one, but he was unable to move and his leg was in extreme pain. My dad, cousin and three nurses had the unfortunate task of dragging him from one bed to the other with a sheet. The entire ward could hear him screaming in pain. I stormed into the room, and at that point, Rocky, who could no longer open his eyes, was yelling “where’s my sister? No one’s allowed to touch me except my sister. Where’s my sister?” I held his hand and told him I was right there. He asked me to hold his hand and help him move. My brother had all of the faith in the world in me. He knew that I would go to the ends of the Earth for him. One of Rocky’s last requests was that we – his friends and family –carry on his battle against cancer after he was gone. I failed him once by not being able to save him, but I will not fail him again. I will keep on fighting, and I will keep on riding. It’s the least I can do.
I need your support. Nothing is possible without the support of our donors, and yours has been greatly appreciated in the past and I hope that I can count on your continued support in the future. This is a cause that knows no boundaries. It knows no limits. It affects the old and young, the rich and poor, the healthy and weak, male or female. Cancer does not discriminate. Most of us have been affected by this disease in one way or another and can understand to an extent how devastating it is. 2 in 5 of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lifetime. Scary thought, right?
Many people have criticized me for participating in the Ride and fighting for a cure because they feel that at this point, after this many years and countless millions of dollars, a cure should have been found and that I am just helping to fill bureaucratic pockets. There are conspiracy theories about pharmaceutical companies not wanting a cure to be found because there is too much to lose. I have even been told that a cure has been found but they won’t release it because of the financial impact it will have. I ride and I fight because that’s my karma. I am doing what I can in order to help others in the best way I know how. If pharmaceutical hotshots are withholding a cure and allowing countless thousands of people to die each year, they are committing murder as far as I am concerned. That is their karma.
I will continue to fight to keep my brother’s spirit alive, with the hopes that one day, another family will be saved from our fate– that another Rocky, will be able to live to be an old, old man after having battled and beaten this terrible disease.
Please help me make that dream a reality, and visit my website, www.conquercancer.ca/goto/RGK2012, and click on the “Donate Now” button.
Please, give courageously.
