How Payel Bhattacharya Decided to Flaunt Her Flaws and Be An Awesome Woman Surviving Multiple Health Problems

I truly believe that each one of us is unique having our own plus and minus points. No one can be compared to the other person on grounds that everyone is different and has had his or her own set of experiences in life. All your qualities whether good or bad make you the unique, different and special person you are! Everyone has some flaws for which that person may be even bullied or ridiculed. But should you really feel inferior for having those flaws? Is there anyone on this earth who is without any flaw in him or her? Are not your flaws as much a part of your identity as your strong points are? Then why to feel bad about having flaws in yourself? After all, they give you your uniqueness! So let’s all pledge to flaunt our flaws the way we flaunt our virtues! In this journey of making people feel how Awesome they are with all their Flaws or what is called ‘Flawsome’ here, I have a post written by Payel Bhattacharya on she rocks with all her flaws. Payel is an extremely strong woman who has been surviving tough challenges related to her health since her early childhood and still dealing with them like a warrior! Here’s her post:

I’m Payel A Flawsome Woman!

I venture to trouble you with my narrative which I write on request of Deeksha who want to establish without doubt the fact that “Flawsome is the new awesome.” Sometimes people might not agree, and they might not listen. But here I am recounting a few occasions out of my average elaborate life story which I have written down through which might be able to establish if “Flawsome is really awesome.”

I was born hale and a hearty infant who had a florid complexion and I heard that I was named ‘Lali’ because of my rosy appearance but nobody knew I was born with a flawed gene. I remember an incident that happened when we went on a trip with the relatives. My brother was really gung-ho about it and could run and jump and go ahead with them while I was slow-moving and mostly couldn’t walk. For that I had to depend on my father who used to take me in his arms when walking was becoming painfully impossible for me but instead of encouraging me my cousins ridiculed, mocked and mimicked me. They were just short of calling me “Limping Lali”. I couldn’t let my flaw ruin me because both my parents were counting on me. I endured the pain because it was indeed painful both physical and mental and finished school where neither my friends nor my teachers had any consideration for my pain.

I recall an incident from my school days when I was in the first standard. All the kids were playing in a disorderly way when suddenly they overturned a whole wooden bench on my swelled up left foot. I cried in agony. When Mum came to pick me up the teachers just dismissed the painful event with a mere “Sorry”.

You wonder this is an outpouring of a patient, well, yeah certainly but a patient who never hid behind some story or soaked in anxiety or set herself on fire. Now I will come to another point in my life where I developed an eating problem.

I was so disturbed by the words of various doctors when I was diagnosed by my first brain tumor that I developed an eating disorder and became chubby for a while. There’s nothing to be ashamed of to say that I ate with the thought in mind that I may not be able to eat those delightful foods ever again or perhaps in a matter of days I would forget how they tasted like. I became overweight and looked like a roly-poly girl, but I didn’t care. I could never foresee the future that for a brief time I would be very skinny and would enjoy people telling me that I was getting too thin. It was the time when I contracted multi-drug-resistant TB. I felt wonderfully superior to everyone being able to wear smaller sized clothes and clothes which I never imagined I would fit in. I could feel so special displaying my good slim figure in tight dresses but then again fate turned I got a rare kind of brain tumors and I became tubby. I felt like strangling a certain doctor who said my problems are because I am overweight. It’s just the opposite of what she said, I am overweight because of my problems.

Now brain tumours brought a host problem.  After I was diagnosed with a rare kind of multiple brain tumours in 2013 I developed short-term memory loss, stuttering, stammering and my conditions were so bad that I couldn’t hold conversation with outsiders. A nasty brain tumour claimed the vision of my right eye but I don’t look half-blind. I look firm and determined. One day during my ongoing radiation treatment when I lost clumps of hair and saw them washing down the bathroom floor in the shower, I didn’t cry. I realized that in this world where people are judged so harshly for the way they look, which has always been completely incomprehensible to me, that my eyebrows and hair will grow back but will they notice those missing parts inside me? My missing liver which has been stitched back with a replacement, my left kidney, part of which has gone forever, brain which has been burnt by the radiation beams and the part which is vacant inside, will people have time to think of that? I still have a bald patch on my scalp, but I am not ashamed of it, on windy days when the wind blows my hair, I flaunt my bald patch. When I go to the hairdressers for a haircut. While shampooing they touch the uneven part of my skull (from where the brain tumour was taken out) and shrink with fear and call their colleagues to see the bald patch and the uneven skull, I wonder, I am different altogether can that matter so much to them? Well I don’t matter to me. I am happy being myself.

I had a cyberknife radiosurgery of brain in 2013, radiation therapy of brain in 2015 another radiation therapy of brain in 2017 but suddenly it felt better after the 2017 radiation therapy and my brain started trotting. With the help of my mother whom I call Mum I decided I would make it gallop and I wrote down my book “Mum and Princess- the Escapades” and my elaborate life story “A Warrior Dies Dancing That’s Who I Am…”

I faced many unforeseen circumstances in life but was never drowned myself or have been swallowed down in panic. It is needless to say that we must enjoy life, every moment of it because death will put an end to everything. Essentially, I would say my liver transplant made me wake up and lead a life in defiance of death. Knowing each moment might be the last and never brooding, I am eager to honor the life and grasp whatever I get from every moment before it’s too late.

To know more about the landmark liver transplant and my struggle with a rare disease and my battle against the apathy and stigma under unusual circumstances read my autobiography and do a review on Amazon.

A Warrior Dies Dancing That’s Who I am…: A Survival Story