Youth and Cancer

When I first read the statistics on cancer in Mizoram, I was a little skeptical. I thought they must be a little skewed. To have the highest number of oral cancer in the world is a dubious honor.

But after working in Aizawl for barely a year, I can see first-hand that we do indeed have tremendous number of cancer cases. Cancer is usually a disease of the old, and not to seem crude, it is less shocking to hear that an elderly person has cancer than a healthy-seeming youth. But the young are not spared this deadly disease.

Cancer of the cervix is usually seen in women above 45 years. But you can hear of 24 year olds dying of this disease. Younger women seem to be more prone to this cancer than the old women here. Promiscuity(with HPV infection), poor personal hygiene and pure bad luck are probably the cause.

Breast cancer is another scary disease. We have seen many cases of unmarried women in their early thirties who had to have their breasts removed due to cancer. I cannot even guess how traumatic it is for a girl to have cancer, and have to remove one breast.

I have a rather gruesome picture of a 27 year old girl with cancer of the rectum. The surgeons had to remove her uterus, cervix and ovaries too, because the tumour was invading into her vagina.

Likewise, we have cases of 20 year old male with Nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a 30 year old male with stomach cancer, a 28 year old with bladder cancer. And so on. The cancers I mentioned are all commoner in the old, unlike Blood cancer (Acute Leukemias), some lymphomas, and some Germ cell tumours of the ovaries/testes, which are more common in the young.

So what can we do? Tobacco seems to be the favourite scapegoat. But there are many who totally abstain, and yet get diagnosed with cancer. So even when you are symptom-free, it's a good idea to have routine check-ups. Do self-breast examination, get your papsmear done, if your female. And for everyone, do an endoscopy if you have chronic gastritis, especially if you're above 40 years.

Sweet child of ours

My blog is turning out to be a diary of sorts of Ruatfeli. I am otherwise totally uninspired.

She's 5 months now, and she can turn over by herself. She wants to grasp everything, within or out of her reach. And whatever she can grab is instantly subjected to vigorous chewing. She recently learnt how to blow bubbles, and now it's her new passion.


She's changing all the time, this little baby of ours.

Sign of the Times

Of Babies and bottles

Being a mother has totally changed me, I can only ever blog about babies now. Ruatfeli turned 4 months today. But as a zealous relative told me, I should minus her premature entry and say she's only 3 months :)

I am supposed to return to work early next month, and I am dreading it! What makes matters scarier is that Ruatfeli doesn't seem to know how to bottle feed. She tries sucking it a few times, then she just bites the teat, and if I am persistent with the bottle, she cries :( She looks at me with wide eyes as though she's asking why the hell are we doing this, and I end up feeling so sorry for her. She obviously has to learn otherwise we are all in a big soup. So, as usual, I turned to the internet for help, and there are lots of mothers with the same problem. I hear terms like nipple confusion and bottle carries and learn much more horrible things that can happen to a wee baby. And it looked so easy when my nieces and nephews were sucking on their bottles! I've tried most of their tips and sadly, not a lot of progress so far. I have got the bottle-blues.

Anyway here are some pictures to brighten up the gloomy post.

She has the mohawk-hair style, and ends up being mistaken for a boy all the time. When the weather is colder, we quickly get out a hat for her. She looks more feminine and it's instant weight gain!

Crabs, anyone?

Crabs are one of my favourite food. I love their succulence, their taste, their aroma when they are cooked.

But everyone has heard horror stories of how they are caught by unscrupulous means, with poison or chemicals. But if you ask the seller how they were caught, she'd tell you they were caught with bait. So you are never sure unless you buy from someone you know. That's why we eat crabs so rarely, even though we prefer it to other meat.

Last week, the vendor gave me a brilliant sales pitch, telling me how fat her crabs were, how honest the catchers are, and how she eats them herself. After making her almost swear on the Bible, I bought some, overriding my better judgement.

Well, the crabs were not very fat as claimed, and the worst thing was- they had worms! So we threw the lot. And the worms were really hard to discern among the crabs innards.

Why do tiny things like crabs have to have worms? They are a known hazard with pork and other meat, but crabs? Anyway, for the uninitiated, crab worms can cause a disease with the really fancy name of paragonimiasis. It usually affects the lungs, causing fever,cough, blood in sputum, and other tuberculosis and pneumonia-like symptoms, though it may also affect the brain.

But if you cook your crabs well, you probably won't get the disease. That's why paragonimiasis not that common among Mizos, and is seen more in the Chakmas and other tribes who eat crabs raw, or undercooked.

So, love your crabs, but for me, they've rather lost their appeal.