Tonella Coutinho, TNN Nov 16, 2011, 03.12AM IST
Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet. Let it not be a death but completeness
– Rabindranath Tagore
LOUTOLIM: Everyone hopes to die a peaceful death, something Shanti Avedna Sadan has been trying to serve those dying of cancer through palliative treatment for 25 years.
In its silver jubilee year, the home at Loutolim is all set to expand. “We have received a 25 lakh donation from the state government and will expand to 30 beds from the current 20,” says Dr L J de Souza.
The founder and managing director of the homes that are based in Delhi and Mumbai as well, recalls how the palliative care centres came into being. “There comes a point in every doctor’s life where nothing more can be done for the disease. We had to send patients home. Patients who had no money. Patients would cry out ‘doctor, please do not send me home’. That’s when I decided that we need to have a home with no cost to accommodate patients,” says the noted oncologist.
The Sadan homes in Mumbai and Goa were started in 1986 after a nine-year struggle with paperwork, funds and property issues. They are the first palliative care centres in the country and among the largest in the world.
“At the Goa Sadan we have catered to 1,500 patients so far,” says de Souza. This anniversary’s celebration includes a Eucharistic service and a screening of a visual presentation titled ‘To serve with love’. “We do not treat cancer at the Sadan. There is no life-support medication, just symptomatic treatment,” says de Souza. He explains, “Pain relief is the only medication we give to make the body comfortable. Once that is taken care of we cater to the body and soul.”
De Souza is helped in his endeavor that is “not bound by caste or creed” by Holy Cross nuns among other staff.
“Patients at the Sadan greet you with a certain smile… it shows a preparedness to die,” says a visitor to the Sadan located in an ancestral home in the interiors of the South Goa village.
De Souza says the main goal at the Sadans is to get the patient to first accept their problem and make peace with life. “Once that is achieved the patient is prepared for a peaceful death. We try to add life to days and not days to life,” says de Souza.
“Patients come in with terrible pain and in advanced stages of cancer. We start with opiates in small dosages and try to relieve them of their pain. We prepare them for a peaceful death and convince them that they are going to a better place,” says sister superior Jose Maria, one of the care givers at the Loutolim Sadan.
Maria, who received training in palliative care in the UK, remembers an episode in her service where a patient she was tending to was on her death bed. Maria had just returned from a retreat to find the patient dying. “She looked deep into my eyes before breathing her last,” recalls Maria.
Reasoning with the cancer patients at the beginning of their stay is probably the toughest part of the treatment, especially when they are children, says de Souza.
“I remember a young boy named Aldrin, after the famous astronaut. He came in very angry and with a big tumor. After a while at the home, this boy, seven at the time, had a total change of attitude. He used to tell his mother to go and help other patients who were worse off than him. That is the power of love and compassion with a little bit of competence,” de Souza smiles.
The nuns do a good job of cheering the inmates, says Marina Fernandes of Moira, who visits an acquaintance at the home.
De Souza says, “We plan to extend our services through education. Educating families of cancer victims on providing palliative care at home will go a long way in meeting the need to cater to so many patients in their last stage. Every major hospital needs to have a palliative care unit.”
On donations he says, “We have outsourced that to God. The donations just come.”
