BENGALURU: Cancer snatched from 46-year-old Hansa Ranghwani six organs but could neither dim her will to live nor damage her fortitude to fight back.
The bridal make-up artist from Mumbai, for whom few things bring more joy than making a woman look her best on her big day, is back to doing what she loves months after surgery to remove her uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes, colon, gall bladder, appendix, a portion of the liver, and the omentum along with the entire peritoneal surface.
Hansa, a mother of two, had been diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer on March 22 last year. An advanced scan showed the disease spreading fast from her large intestine to the ovary, peritoneum and liver.
Six cycles of chemotherapy later, surgical oncologist Dr Sanket Mehta of Wockhardt Hospital in Mumbai reviewed Hansa’s condition and found out that while the cancer was responding to treatment, her ovarian disease was still progressing. “The spread of the disease was fast and the patient was symptomatic. She was unable to eat and walking with difficulty because of the sheer size of the tumour,” he said.
Mehta and his team advised Hansa a complicated surgery to remove all the diseased organs. “We operated on her for six hours. As of now, her entire abdominal region is disease-free for the first time since her cancer was diagnosed,” he said.