“I spent Rs 300,000 for my husband by selling land, taking loan and collecting donations but could not save him. He couldn´t be saved and all the money was spent,” rues Maya Nepali of Jhadewa-7, Chitrechhap in Palpa with misty eyes. “I think I still have to repay around Rs 200,000,” the 56-year-old adds. [break]
Mission Hospital, Tansen referred her mother, Lursira Nepali, to Bharatpur Cancer Hospital after swelling in urinary tract, discharge of white fluid and blood from vagina and pain in waist. Maya reveals she does not have money to spend on her and mother´s treatment. “Mission Hospital referred mother to Bharatpur but I don´t have money to take her there,” Maya says. She has now taken her 70-year-old mother back to home in the village.
“I also have problems like my mother and doctors fear it to be cancer. But I have not been able to examine in lack of money,” Maya states. Her husband Hum Bahadur had died in Bharatpur last year and she fears that her mother may also not recover.
The family living on daily wages is in a real crisis. Maya has five daughters and a son, who has left for India with his wife after marriage and says would return only after her death. Two of her daughters are married while two are working in Saudi Arabia and the youngest is studying in the seventh grade. She says the daughters, who went abroad after Hum Bahadur fell ill, are in difficulty there.
“We poor would have coped with a small disease. But I feel even God pushes the poor around,” Maya complains. She says her husband worked through the pain and was plowing field even when he urinated blood. “I feel he may have died so soon due to the extreme workload,” she estimates.
Having gone through a death and seeing another in the making, she has also known the probable reasons of the disease. Hum Bahadur, her mother and she were addicted to tobacco and alcohol. “My husband was addicted to tobacco and alcohol. Mother has stopped after confirmation of cancer. But I am finding difficulty to stop drinking though I have quit tobacco,” she admits.
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