Brave Hearts

Author(s): Kumarpal Desai
Publisher: Eye Care Foundation

Page 50

Daredevil Terry Fox
The story starts in the year 1977. A patient named Terry Fox was lying in bed with unbearable pain in his leg in a hospital in Canada. He was constantly screaming in agony and was intermittently making awkward movements of his leg.
The x-ray of his leg revealed that he was suffering from cancer. The doctors were very keen to halt the spread of the dreaded disease to other parts of his body. As a result his leg was amputated, and was replaced by an artificial wooden foot so that Terry Fox could eventually walk by himself.
The twenty two year old lad started wondering that if other diseases do have some cure or the other, why is only cancer considered incurable ? 'A cure must also be found for cancer, so that man can successfully fight against this dreaded disease', said Terry to himself.
Terry Fox posed this dilemma to his doctor who said that many diseases, once thought to be incurable, have now become curable because of medical research. However the cost of funding medical research for cancer is very high. If adequate funds could be earmarked for it, it would be possible to find a cure for cancer too, thereby sparing the lives of many patients who are afflicted by the disease.
Initially Terry Fox was dumb-struck by what the doctor had told him, but he also started thinking about the way he