Perceptions change with time. At  the age of 22 I thought romance was about meeting Mr Right in a beautiful cafe in some exotic location. At least Mills & Boons seemed to suggest that was romance. I had not seriously thought about the matter much since I was convinced that I was too young for looking for Mr Right.

My ideas on romance changed drastically, when I was able to witness for over 3 years, my father-in-law taking care of his wife. 
They had come to our home for my daughter's birth. When my daughter was 20 days old, my mother-in-law suffered from a severe stroke. She would not talk for the next three and a half years. For many months she could not eat. She needed nasal feeding tubes. She could not pee without a catheter and ultimately could not poop without a pipe too. 

My father in law was a government medical doctor. He had  worked in whichever remote village the government had sent him. Never had paid bribes to get postings in larger towns/cities. Hence my husband and his sibling had needed to live in boarding school. Many of the villages where my father-in-law worked had no schools, no electricity, no roads and no running water. Often he would be the sole doctor in the district!

He was 80 years old when his wife had her stroke. She would be his last patient. For 3 years he bathed her, massaged her, put cream on her twice a day, cleaned her poop, fed her, checked her blood sugar 5 times a day, cleared her catheter tubes, etc.    Of course we also had nurses on duty for 24 hours a day for those 3 1/2 years. But he wanted to do everything himself if possible. She spent almost 2 months in hospitals. But the rest of the time she was at home. And I was privileged to see the romance between them every day.

Whenever he went out and saw new things, he would come home and tell her all about them. For a few months we thought she might be able to regain her speech, so we took her to a speech therapist twice a week. My father-in-law would then sit with her with her studies twice a day. Sometimes my mother-in-law herself would get up, get her flashcards out and poke her husband till he got up and helped her study.

He was alert to every toss and turn of hers all night- just like a mother of a newborn baby. But if my mother-in-law wanted him to sleep again then she would start B-B-B-B-R-R-R-ING at him. She was equally concerned about his heath. It was very cute to see.

He died a few months before she did. He had lost his will to live when the head of Neurology of the best hospital of Pune had gently let him know that there was no chance that my mother-i-law's life would improve. From that day on wards, his health started to deteoriate. 

A few hours before he died, he had seemed confused. We took him to a hospital. They wanted to keep him under observation for a night.   I brought his dinner to the hospital. The nurse at home called with my mother-in-law's latest blood sugar result. My father-in-law gave his last medical advice about the dosage of insulin to be administered to her. He was dead an hour later.

For now, that is what romance looks like to me. I wonder if my opinions will change later.

​So you want to fight cancer. Maybe you suffered the loss of a loved one through cancer or perhaps you feel it is a noble cause and want to do so. As a child you used to think that you will become a doctor to save peoples’ lives.
But as you became older, you realised that you did not have the required aptitude to become a doctor. You did not like biology. You can’t stand the sight of blood. Or you found that your aptitude is somewhere else. Or perhaps you are already working in a different profession. Can you still help others fight cancer? Of course! Here are some careers through which you can help others fight cancer:

1. Like writing and making videos? Cancer often kills because people are not aware of symptoms or methods of treatment or methods of prevention. Help spread the news.
2. Become a research scientist who helps make better, cheaper, drugs, or discovers new methods of treating cancer.
3. Become an engineer who designs machines for detecting and treating cancer. Or help with the maintenance of these machines.
4. Become a statistician who figures out new methods of health insurance. Crores of ill people can not afford the medical treatment that they need. We urgently need better health insurance plans.
5. Like being an entrepreneur? Setting up a medical hospital or colleges may be a big project to start with. But it may be easier to set up a nursing home, pathology labs or restaurants and lodging provisions for families of patients.
6. Love animals? Animals are used to give comfort to patients and their families. Families who are dealing with cancer also need a place to keep their pets while they are busy travelling to and from hospitals.
7. Become a Nurse, or perhaps set up a center for providing nurses.
8. Become an accountant- all medical hospitals, medical colleges, pathology labs and research institutions need accountants. Just work with a medical related institution.
9. Join the Hospital administration. Have you ever stepped into a hospital and realised that you don’t know where to pay, how to pay, how to find the right doctor or where to get the reports from? The hospital administration helps to make these processes easier.
10. Is music, dance and performing arts your favourite thing to do? Perhaps you can help raise funds for medical institutions or bring awareness to different diseases.
11. Numbers, numbers, numbers. If mathematics is what you love to think about then go ahead with studying mathematics. Some of the most well-known cancer researchers have a mathematics background. But they also know their biology.

This is a small sample of how you can help cancer patients. A doctor usually treats one patient at a time. Many of the above careers can help thousands of cancer patients in one go. You don’t need to be a medical doctor to help cancer patients.