Patna hospital allows cancer patient to hold daughter’s wedding in ICU

AIIMS, Patna officials facilitate couple’s reunion as girl’s mother suffering from cervical cancer is bedridden and may not survive.

This is a scene straight out of a Bollywood tearjerker. A young woman decked up in bridal wear, the groom waiting patiently, a cancer-stricken mother on the hospital bed.

Seeing her mother’s condition deteriorating rapidly, the girl had requested to advance the wedding. (HT/Photo for representation)

Except, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Patna, facilitated the wedding of a young couple to fulfil the last wishes of the woman’s mother suffering from cervical cancer.

The wedding was held right outside the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) in the presence of a priest, who chanted mantras while the groom applied vermilion on the woman’s forehead.

The woman, whose identity the Hindustan Times has withheld on request, was scheduled to marry on April 18. However, seeing her mother’s condition deteriorating rapidly, and to fulfil her last wish, she requested her fiancé to advance the wedding.

Once he agreed, AIIMS authorities on Monday evening facilitated the wedding in the duty room of doctors, outside the hospital’s ICU. Later, the young couple drove to a nearby temple while the patient was carted back to the ICU.

The ailing woman was admitted some 15 days back after she was referred from Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai.

“In order to ensure a painless death, we are administering her morphine by epidural route (through the spinal cord). She is also on non-invasive ventilation,” he added.

“We shifted the patient out of the ICU and to a private room where we ensured that the woman’s last wish — to see her daughter get married in front of her — was fulfilled. That’s the best we could have done,” said AIIMS, Patna director Dr PK Singh.