“I want to breathe”: the story of a fourteen-year-old boy from the mountains

From being an energetic child to needing 24X7 oxygen support in a remote village, Pradeep’s journey has been a painful one and helps us understand better why palliative care needs to be available to everybody, everywhere.

Pradeep is a child of the mountains, born in a scenic village nestled in the high hills of Uttarkashi district of the Himalayan Uttarakhand. Like all children, he loved to play and would spend hours playing cricket with his friends at school. Some pain in the leg was not something out-of-place then, for a boy who would run a lot, thought his parents when he started to complain of discomfort in his left leg. However, as the pain became unbearable, Pradeep’s parents sought medical help, which revealed osteosarcoma. The close-knit family of three children, parents and grandparents was shattered. The boy who loved to play but was also good at Math and English, and relished chips and kheer, would now not have a normal childhood but would spend it doing rounds of hospitals.

The treatment which included amputation of the left leg sadly could not stop the cancer from progressing. The child’s oncologists referred the patient for hospice care, wanting to spare him and his family more distress by making the child go through any more invasive procedures.

At the hospice, Pradeep had good days and bad days. When he would feel relieved of his symptoms, he would play carrom and ludo with his cousin and other caregivers and GPH nurses. On other days, he would struggle to breathe as the cancer had metastasized to his lungs.

When the child was asked what three wishes he would ask for if had a chance, he replied, “mujhe saans chahiye” (I just want to breathe). Everybody who witnessed that moment could not help but shed a tear silently.

It was a difficult decision—whether to keep the child at the hospice and ensure that he had the maximum comfort and symptom control, or to let him be in his home with all his family around him.

His father decided that as the child’s mother could not come down to Rishikesh and he was missing his mother, he should be taken back home. A difficult few hours of journey for which the Ganga Prem Hospice team helped prepare the child and parent and bid him goodbye and godspeed.