Archana Mangalagiri. This is the name of the girl lying on the bed. From the picture, it is obvious that she is in a hospital and someone is attending her. Archana looks young and in fact she has delivered a boy only few weeks back. His son (Satvik) is 2 month old and he is not with her. What is her problem?.
She has been diagnosed with breast Cancer (IDC) Grade -3 Her2neo Positive and the doctors (Oncologist) have advised her to take 6 Cycles of Chemotheraphy with Herceptin Injection. OMG! Being a young mother, she must be breast feeding her son but breast cancer at this age?
Archana's husband Varadaraja Gopalacharya is an archaka in a vaishnava temple in Aleri village of Nalgonda district in Andra pradesh. Her father Shesha bhattar Ramacharya is also a bhattar in a srinivasa perumal temple at Sangareddy in Medak district.
She has been advised to undergo 6 cycles of Chemotherapy and each sitting is costing about 85,000 rupees plus hospital stay expenses. She has been admitted on 20th September 2013 for her second cycle and she will be in hospital for about a week. Her medical report of her previous chemo treatment is below.
The report clearly says that she need to get admitted on 20th September. Thankfully due to donations received from my friends and contacts, she could get herself admitted for the second cycle.
I received an email from her father but the email was composed as if it was from Archana. That email did not even have a Subject line and could have been easily dumped in the Spam folder. However, it managed to land in my Inbox. I was very disturbed reading the words like, "My husband is pujari and money will not be arranged" and the finishing line was so powerful. It read
"Please do the needfull and save my life (I did not correct the spelling, purposely)"
Who am I, to save a life!! How desperate they must be!
Since there are lot of fake emails seeking help, as a first step I had asked for their phone number and a letter from their treating doctor.
Ramacharya, Archana's father responded with a phone number (99633 05980) and he had sent the biopsy report. Here it is
The medical report of Woodlands hospital, Bharakatpura, Hydrabad came after that in the third email. On receiving their number, I had called them. One of my colleague told that his parents used live near that hospital and he confirmed that the hospital information is factual.
From my initial interaction, I felt that this is a genuine plea for help. Archakas in temples located in small towns and villages hardly get any remuneration, which won't even cover their day to day expenses. Cancer treatment is an expensive requirement and without donations it is not possible.
I spoke to my friends and put an appeal in my Facebook page and in my Tamil blog. Few responded asking further questions and the time was very short. We need to raise 85K in less than 10 days and thankfully she has got around 70K to enable her to get admitted as per the doctor's advise. This is the second of the Six cycle.
Archana and her family members are very pleased to receive our support and he has sent a long SMS in telugu thanking everyone for the timely assistance. He says that he has approached organisations like Rotary club, Lions Club but so far there is no sign of assistance.
Few of my contacts have advised to approach cancer hospitals run by trusts and governments. They live 60Km from Hydrabad and if anyone of you aware of such facility, please inform me. So far, we are unable to find any useful information on the free treatment. Time is running out and she may need another cycle in less than four weeks.
I would request your financial help. If you can transfer donations directly to her account, here are the details. The account is in her mother's name.
Account name :S.B.Revathi
Bank:Andhra Bank
Branch: Sangareddy Branch Medak District Andhra Pradesh
A/c No. 102910100027475
IFSC code ANDB0001029
Branch code 1029
MICR code 500011133
If you are living outside India and could not transfer funds directly, I can assist. Send an email to rmvenkat@yahoo.com and in the subject line put a note as "Help for archana".
Thanks for your patient reading.
R Venkat
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