Sam and Anita sat in front of me in my clinic. They were a couple in their early forties. He was a gym instructor and she was a teacher. Their physical appearance said they had little in common on the outside. They looked like the king and queen on opposite sides of a chess board, but were on the same team in life. True love doesn’t see caste, creed, religion, or race. After I heard their story, I figured, cancer doesn’t either.

“Sam was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in the right frontal lobe a year ago,” his girlfriend started, holding his hand as she spoke, while I noticed his eyes well up. Glioblastoma is a type of grade 4 brain cancer. It is a ghastly diagnosis to live with. The median survival of this tumour is between one and two years. “He was operated on by another surgeon and followed it up with 34 fractions of radiation and six cycles of chemotherapy,” she said, giving me the lowdown. The previous surgeon had done a perfect job and interim scans showed an immaculate resection and a wonderous initial response to therapy, but as expected in these ghoulish tumours, it had recurred.