People often ask me a question.
“It’s been seven years since you lost your wife to cancer.
Why are you still so deeply involved in helping cancer patients?
Why not move on… live a normal life?”
It’s a fair question.
Losing someone you love to cancer changes you in ways that are hard to explain. The world moves on, but a part of you remains in that hospital corridor, that chemotherapy room, that moment when life feels fragile and uncertain.
Many people assume that after such loss, the healthiest thing to do is to step away from it all. To distance yourself from hospitals, from patients, from the pain that comes with the word cancer.
But the truth is – for me, it works the opposite way.
Every time I think about stepping back, something happens that reminds me why I cannot.
Today, I received a message from a caregiver whose mother was undergoing treatment.
She wrote:
“She was a fighter and the backbone of our family. I would like to thank Vivek Sir from my heart for extending the span of my mother’s life.”
Her mother eventually passed away.
But those words stayed with me.
Not because they thank me – because I know very well that no doctor, researcher, or advocate can extend life on their own. Medicine fights, science tries, and sometimes the disease still wins.
But what matters is time.
Sometimes what we give families is not a cure.
Sometimes what we give them is time.
Time for a daughter to sit with her mother.
Time to celebrate one more birthday.
Time to share one more meal together.
Time to say the things that matter.
And when that time creates even a few more memories for a family – it means everything.
That is why I continue.
Because behind every case file is a family.
Behind every diagnosis is someone’s mother, father, partner, or child.
Behind every extra month or year is a lifetime of memories being created.
Cancer took my wife.
But it also gave me a purpose I cannot ignore. And not only this one message, I have recived hundreds of such messages during this journey.
If by being involved – through advocacy, support, awareness, or research – I can help even one family get a little more time together, then that effort is worth it.
That is why I still do this.
And that is why I probably always will.
Rise To Survive Cancer 