New Delhi: In a deeply personal account of her health, Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi reveals in her memoir, ‘Belonging: A Journey of Love’, that she underwent surgery for breast cancer in 2010, an episode that had remained private.
Sonia Gandhi writes that she was advised surgery after doctors at Delhi’s Sir Ganga Ram Hospital suspected breast cancer. The possibility of a serious illness left her shaken and worried. She also cites an instance where Priyanka Gandhi slept on the floor covered in a shawl without a mattress while staying with her in hospital.
“I had full confidence in my doctors at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. Still, I felt shaken and worried; there was no time to lose, my children and I were told, and my mind began to race to a possible scary outcome,” she writes.
Sonia Gandhi says she was reluctant to undergo surgery in Delhi because of the media attention it would attract.
“I wasn’t keen to be at the centre of a media frenzy that would have inevitably accompanied a surgery in Delhi. I had always sought to keep my personal space private, and the thought of my illness being discussed in the media was painful to me—even infuriating. True, I had become a public figure, but did that mean I wasn’t to be allowed even a modicum of privacy?” she writes.
After discussions with her doctors, Sonia Gandhi decided to travel to the European Institute of Oncology outside Milan, Italy, for the cancer surgery. She was treated by Dr Umberto Veronesi, a renowned breast cancer surgeon who founded and headed the institute.
The location also allowed her sisters Nadia and Anouchka to be close to her and take turns with her children, Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi, in accompanying her during the cancer treatment. Robert, Priyanka’s husband, also joined the family.
Sonia Gandhi also recalled that she and Priyanka spent two days undergoing tests and preliminary procedures at the hospital.
“On the day of the surgery, as I was wheeled into the operation theatre, Rahul and Priyanka held my hand and kissed me on the forehead, assuring me that all would be well,” she writes.
Sonia Gandhi says she was relieved when her doctor informed her that the operation had gone well.
“He (the surgeon) had removed two tumours, including a non-suspicious one to be on the safe side, and conducted an intraoperative radiation to spare me five weeks of radiotherapy,” she writes in her memoir.
The memoir also recounts another health scare a year later, when routine follow-up tests detected a growth in her pancreas. Gandhi says doctors initially suspected it could be a neuroendocrine tumour and advised immediate surgery. She also wrote about leaving a to-do list for her children in case something went wrong.
“Routine follow-up tests detected a growth in my pancreas. This came as a shock to me and the children—we immediately thought it was a flare-up of the earlier problem. Following many consultations, my doctors felt that I needed immediate surgery. The tumour was initially suspected to be a neuroendocrine one: That would mean a long operation, and a prolonged hospital stay,” Sonia Gandhi writes.
“This time I was sent to the Erasmus teaching hospital in Rotterdam, where I was to be treated by a well-known pancreatic surgeon, Dr Casper van Eijck. I was agitated and worried about the operation in spite of everyone’s reassurances, since the actual extent of the disease could only be determined after the surgery,” she adds in her memoir.
“My mind began to dwell on a worst-case scenario. What if it turned out to be a metastatic growth? Would I come through it? Would I need to undergo chemotherapy? How long would I have to be away from home and work? I had felt unhappy leaving without notice to any but the prime minister and a few senior colleagues. Dr Manmohan Singh was understanding, having been through major cardiac surgery himself a few years earlier, but all these concerns were causing me stress and insomnia. Before leaving, I jotted down a note for Rahul and Priyanka, with instructions on what to do in case things went wrong,” Sonia Gandhi reveals.
She also wrote about how Priyanka did not have even a mattress at the hospital. “For more than a week Priyanka slept on the floor covered with a shawl till the doctor noticed and provided her with a mattress; unlike our hospitals in India, provision isn’t generally made for family members to remain with the patient at night,” she writes in her memoir.
Sonia Gandhi returned to Delhi after four weeks but was left weakened by the surgery, and she later cited health reasons for stepping down from the Congress president’s post.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)