On April 7, 2024, graphic designer and illustrator Nirikshya Patra found herself in a hospital bed, reeling from the kind of news no one sees coming. Two brain tumours, she was told. She was 31 at the time. Further scans revealed they were secondary—the primary tumour was in her kidney. The official diagnosis came swiftly: renal cell carcinoma (RCC). “It all happened in a week,” she recalls. “I remember just sitting there thinking I was being pranked. I was in shock, numb, a little angry because doctors hadn’t taken me seriously earlier. Everyone was suddenly doing everything for me, and I felt guilty for that too. But mostly, I was trying to keep up with what was happening.”
A few weeks before the diagnosis, in late March, she had started experiencing persistent headaches and ear pain. She was popping Dolo and melatonin like candy, trying to push through. By April, her motor skills began to falter—she felt wobbly, stopped going to the gym, lost sensation on the left side of her face, and couldn’t even type when she tried. Worried by this disruption to her work life, she visited an ENT physician, assuming that the fluid in her ear might be the culprit. “The senior doctor barely looked up from his phone. He sent me for a hearing test, which I passed. My other symptoms? Ignored. The meds he gave didn’t work.”
A second opinion was met with more dismissal. “This ENT doctor looked at my ear piercings and said, ‘Obviously, they’re to blame.’ He cracked jokes till I cried. Then he gave me a muscle relaxant and said I was dizzy because I was dehydrated.” He did, however, notice a minor cut near her ear and suggested she show it to a general physician. “That doctor called me paranoid too—but at least he told me to get an MRI.” That scan changed everything.
It wasn’t until a month later, when her treatment plan was in place and the initial chaos quietened, that the emotional weight landed. “I cried—so much,” she says. “I didn’t know who to turn to. Every oncologist’s waiting room was filled with older people. I just needed someone who got it.”
She chuckles softly about how she befriended a sweet 70-year-old woman in the hospital but admits the loneliness hit hard. “Your loved ones can support you in every way, except really understanding what you’re going through. Even they’re struggling, and caregiver fatigue is so real.”
That’s when Patra decided to open up about her journey publicly. In an Instagram post in May last year, she spoke about her symptoms, the long string of apathy and dismissal from doctors, and her eventual diagnosis. “‘How are you doing?’ is a trigger for me. So, I would really be grateful if I am not asked the same,” she wrote.
Elaborating on her reasons for talking about it on a public platform, she says, “I needed to let people know they aren’t alone. I wanted to be that someone I didn’t have when it all started. And mostly, I wanted to tell people to be difficult—ask questions, complain, push back if you’re not being heard by doctors. Your body is all you’ve got.”
Among other life-altering decisions, the one to get married to partner Abhay Gupta seemed to come the easiest. “We planned it in December 2024 and tied the knot in March. It was a quiet court wedding with family, followed by a small party. Just what we wanted.” She was worried about how she’d look—breakouts, hair loss, fatigue. “But honestly, that was the least of it. My doctors even surprised me with cake before the big day.” Love, she says, doesn’t wait for perfect timing. “Life keeps happening—good, bad, everything in between. So why wait?”
Her husband, Abhay Gupta, has been her rock. They met in July 2023, started dating in November the same year and finally married in March this year. “He’s been with me since day one—from emergency room visits to every treatment. He celebrates every little win, lets me feel every loss.” She pauses. “I don’t know how we found each other, but I can’t imagine a life without him now.”
