Rewind back to Oct 2011.

I enter this building in Apollo Hospital , Hyderabad,India for an injection.
On the building I see ‘Apollo Cancer Hospital’
At the entrance to the lobby there are banners of healthy and beautiful smiling people , a young girl with long hair and an older man saying ‘Hope is Real’.They must be Cancer patients who seem to be leading happy normal lives now . How can Hope be Real ? , what does that mean.. it is the chemo and radiation that helps people to prolong the life, i think to myself and move in.

Half my mind was in denial that I have Cancer. I shut the other half and just went about doing what I am told to do. No one around me uses the word Cancer , not even my Doctor , I mean Haemotologist. No one in the whole building ever used the most dreaded word . Hubby, Dad, Sister, brother, none of the nursing staff, no one utters the word even by mistake.Just like in the movies 😀 . Mom is totally ignorant. She appears normal . Dad must have told her that everything is OK with me. My son was totally ignorant.
Half my mind believes that I am getting treated by a Haemotologist rather than an Oncologist.The word Haemotologist stuck in my head since the day, when of one of the doctors doing rounds , comes to my room and casually mentioned that my reports are being seen by a Haemotologist. I had voluntary got admitted to Apollo to get tests done for my abysmally low Hb count. I was in the hospital for a few days when all the tests were being carried out, including a bone marrow test.

On the third day of getting admitted, the Haemotologist meets me and explains how my plasma cells are misbehaving.That plasma cells become antibodies , but the antibodies in my case are not doing their job and on top of that they dont die after a certain period , where as they are supposed to die. He makes it appear as if it is a mild problem with my plasma cells which is being rectified by giving a few injections .
I assumed that my doctor who is a Haemotologist sits in this building for some other reason and he has nothing to do with Cancer.
After a few such injections spread over two months , my doctor suggests that i shave my hair before we do the Stem Cell Transplant. No questions asked.The Haemotogist explains the whole process of the Transplant and I am excited to go through it all.
We plan a visit to Tirumala and offer my hair . Everyone knows that Chemotherapy causes loss of hair . Since I had very long hair I was advised to get a cut , but I continued to move around in denial.
That this is not Cancer but a similar kind of problem that is treated in a similar way to cancer. I was sure that this is a disease related to the immune system.That my immunity is low because the antibodies are useless.

I never ever looked up the words Multiple Myeloma for almost 2 years after my Stem Cell Transplant .
I , who immediately opens Google to learn more about anything and everything instantly over the smart phone, never had the courage to type these two words. I was reading news, accessing Facebook, Gmail, was watching cookery and gardening videos on YouTube , even looking at house plans and interior decoration, everything on the Internet but never could type those two words.
I was damn scared and shivered at the thought that I may be having Cancer but why is no one uttering that word if I have Cancer.
My Stem Cell Transplant was done during Dec2011/Jan 2012. I took rest for 6 months and joined work .
I then insisted that we should build our house , the house that we were discussing about with an architect and also drew plans just before i was diagnosed. We successfully built our house and moved in. I wanted to complete this project come what may, even if i would live in the house just for a few months. There was some doubt in the corner in my head, that I have Cancer and may not live long. I , my soul , had to leave my body in my house , come what may . That was the strong will power that got me going.
It is one and half year since we moved to our own house in which we now live.
The moment we moved into our new home ,I felt relaxed .Now that the mission was accomplished I had the courage to type those two words on Google.
The search for a cure began . I wanted to live but I didn’t believe what the people in those videos were talking about. That they got cured by following this and that method.
DEC 2014:
Come Dec 2014 and my Oncologist , yes by then I knew for sure that I had Cancer, declares that there is a relapse.
I shudder and then when he says that we can plan for another Stem Cell Transplant after 3 months, I take a breath. It’s been 3 years in Dec 2014 , since I had my first Transplant. So I may get another 3 years after I go for a second one.
I am back home and start getting mentally prepared for a second transplant. Paralelly I start scouring the Internet for more stories on getting healed and the methods of getting cured.
I see a divine blessing in the former of one Mrs Margaret , who had a detailed blog , who had MM too , and how she has been dealing with the problem for more than 10 years using Naturally occurring products like Circumin.
I read most of her posts and started taking similar medicines made by one of the famous manufactures of Ayurvedic products in India.

It’s been a year since I started using Ayurvedic medications and there is no sign of the disease and no Transplant either.
It is 4 years since I was diagnosed with MM.

Under the denial , there was a strong wish and hope to live . The statement ‘Hope is Real’ now makes a lot of sense.
It is the hope of wanting to live , the hope that one can beat cancer , a hope in Alternative medicine , a belief in what was being said by the people in those videos who said that were getting cured, a hope in the Divine, a hope that there is a way out, a hope that continuous research in Allopathy will result in a cure , a hope shown by cancer fighters like Lisa Ray who are leading a glamorous lifestyle.

Yes HOPE IS REAL!!

I hope to tell more and more people like me to have Hope. Hope is THE cure !