The latest edition of Apollo Hospitals’ Health of Nation Report, released on April 7, has dubbed India the “cancer capital of the world" due to the rise in cancer cases which surpass global rates. Despite the cancer crisis, there is little public awareness of early detection and prevention. The health infrastructure is also lagging when it comes to affordable cancer treatment.
Recently, Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath‘s wife, Seema Patil, opened up about how she survived stage 2 breast cancer after she was diagnosed in November 2021. Patel not only spoke about her recovery but also urged people to undergo cancer screenings as early diagnosis can save one’s life and highlighted the importance of having solid health insurance coverage.
Patil appeared on the podcast The Other Side, hosted by Dilip Kumar. This episode was posted on World Health Day. In the podcast, Patil spoke about how cancer treatment is extremely expensive and can be simply unaffordable for those who do not have good insurance coverage. She said that a normal PET scan costs almost Rs 30,000 and these scans are needed even before the treatment starts.
She also talked about how she coped with the side effects of chemotherapy. The former endurance athlete said, “The first time I got the chemotherapy done, it hit me, and I did not know what was happening, better to die than go through this. But the second time around, I decided that instead of just lying on the sofa, let me walk a little; that might change something — and it did. The second chemotherapy, when things started to go south, I went for a walk, and I recovered faster."
Patil said that she has led a very healthy life with ample exercise and a healthy diet, which made her wonder what was the point of being health conscious if one can still get cancer. However, she soon realised that her healthy lifestyle helped her recover faster. In less than a year, she was cancer-free, if she had other lifestyle diseases then her recovery would have been slower.
The 43-year-old has written a detailed blog titled, “I am the healthiest person I know, and I got cancer!" In the blog, Patil mentioned that her cancer was first shown in a mammogram as a small lump in her right breast. She later underwent a biopsy which confirmed that the lump was cancerous. Patil did not have any symptoms when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Women over the age of 40 are recommended to undergo mammogram screenings annually.
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