Ramesh is 27 years old and lives in a slum in Delhi. He had huge dreams and wanted to do big things to raise his family’s financial condition. He wasn’t cognizant that the future had something else in store for him that was going to wreck all his dreams.

Ramesh is the eldest son of the family and has a younger brother and two younger sisters. After his father’s demise, the entire responsibility of the family fell on his shoulders and he became the one and only bread earner.

Ramesh is a remarkably hard-working man. Overcoming many struggles, he managed to earn and save a good amount of money. Once his economic position became steady, he married Rani. Their married life was filled with happiness and two years after their marriage, they were blessed with a beautiful daughter. Everybody in the family was happy to welcome the baby and celebrated the new-born’s arrival with great fervour.

However, a few days thereafter, Ramesh’s health started to decline. Initially, he kept taking medicine from the local family doctor, but got little respite. Eventually, the doctor advised him to go to a reliable hospital and to get himself examined.

Ramesh went to the famous LNJP hospital in Delhi and got himself thoroughly checked; the reports revealed he had Lung cancer. He and his entire family were shocked and didn’t know how to cope with such a serious illness and its treatment, with no income and a family to support.

Refusing to give up, Ramesh decided to undergo treatment. The treatment started with chemotherapy in LNJP hospital, where he also chanced upon the CanSupport team and learnt about palliative care. He happily enrolled himself as a home care patient with CanSupport.

The team from CanSupport started visiting Ramesh in his home. The team doctor managed his symptoms very well with medication. The team nurse advised him about diet and personal hygiene.

Meanwhile the cost of cancer treatment was very high, and Ramesh’s monetary condition was getting worse by the day. It was very challenging for Rani to take care of a sick husband and a small child and make ends meet. At the time when there was no monetary support of any kind from any family or friend, the CanSupport Team helped the family by providing ration for many days for which Rani was very grateful.

Taking Ramesh to the hospital for chemotherapy sessions and simultaneously taking care of herself and her baby girl was a big challenge for Rani. She tried a lot to earn some money by doing odd jobs, but this was not enough to overcome the financial problem. She kept wondering how to overcome the family’s financial constraints. One day during a visit to the hospital, Rani got an offer to become a surrogate mother, for which she was told that she would get paid handsomely. To Rani this sounded like a good opportunity to ease her financial burden and afford medicines and nutritious food for her husband and daughter. She informed Ramesh about the offer, but on hearing it, he was furious and felt ashamed of being in a situation where he had become a burden on his family and wasn’t even able to feed his wife and child. Rani asked Ramesh to consider ground reality rather than react emotionally. Finally, she managed to convince him.

Today Rani is three months pregnant, and the CanSupport Team is helping her cope with her pregnancy. Ramesh’s condition has improved a bit but still he is not out of danger and is fighting cancer, but the CanSupport Team is strongly standing by his side and extending all possible help and support to both him and Rani to overcome this trying time in their lives.