LISA RAY THINKS she is almost a cat with the number of lives she has lived. The actor was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare form of blood cancer, in 2009, and has since beaten the disease, written about it and is one of the most visible survivors on the speakers’ circuit.
At the second edition of THE WEEK Health Summit in Delhi, Ray spoke to oncologist Dr Jame Abraham, of the Cleveland Clinic, about how she found her inner strength, the need for doctors to also have emotional support, and her journey into motherhood. Excerpts from the conversation:
JA: Is this Lisa Ray 2.0 or 3.0?
LR: I’ve lost track of the many different manifestations; perhaps I’m closer to a cat with many lives, definitely more than two going on three or four right now. Though broadly speaking, one can divide life into pre-cancer and post-cancer…. When I was diagnosed in 2009, I was given a fairly scary, dire diagnosis. I was told in no uncertain terms by the haematologist that I had about five years to live. And he showed me well laid-out data points and things like that. And that’s when the rebel in me perhaps reared its head. Of course I have a deep respect for science and the medical sciences. My father is a scientist; he has his PhD in chemistry. However, we have to account for this X factor, which is the human spirit.
JA: So you never believed this disease was going to kill you. What gave you that inner strength?
LR: I feel that it was built on the foundation that I had of my mind-body practices, yoga, meditation, and a particular belief system, where I like to reframe every experience that came at me as neither good nor bad, but something to live through, something that I would derive lessons from. I listened to that quiet inner voice that we don’t hear in everyday life and is often drowned out by the noise of life. I received that message that this is not your time. You are not going to die from this. I chose to put my faith in that voice and simultaneously listen carefully to my doctor and follow that protocol. And I think that there is a particular alchemy that happens when we combine traditional allopathic therapies with mind-body activities and we harness the power of the human mind and faith. It’s a tricky word because faith can be abused as well. And blind faith, I do feel, can blind you to the beneficial choices in front of you. But informed faith [can help]. Let’s also not discount stubbornness.
JA: When I communicate with a patient, where do I draw the line between honesty and facts, and providing hope at the same time?
LR: I really do empathise with the role of the oncologist. It’s really hard. Every patient is different, which is why I find it also personally hard as a patient to offer advice…. But I think, universally speaking, we will never go wrong if we are kind. And how you choose to share that kindness perhaps does lie a little bit in these aspects that lie beyond rational kind of metrics.
JA: When a student or resident works with me, I always tell them to learn how to treat a patient like a human being.
LR: I [think] that doctors should have access to emotional support. Because you also carry that burden. And that is something that should be woven into medical care today, particularly within oncology. That oncologists, the deliverers of the messages, the healers, should be able to reach out to a community and say, this was a bad day. This was a tough day. And not just your family, but there should be professional support for that.
JA: You were 37 when you were diagnosed and you had concerns about fertility and other side effects. Now you are a mother of two beautiful girls.
LR: That journey was also unexpected and, again, there’s nothing like cancer to create this urgency in your life of really focusing on what’s important. At some point when I was being prepped for my first stem cell transplant, it was mentioned to me, slightly offhand, that your fertility is going to be impacted and if you want to make other arrangements you better do it now. So, I took it upon myself to freeze my eggs and that was quite a difficult journey. I didn’t even think about it for some time because obviously the healing journey took precedence. And, you know, the irony [is] that the narrative out there, and particularly in India, is that cancer is an end. For me cancer represented beginnings because it was post-cancer that I ended up meeting my husband, that we got married, that we started a very different life, that we ended up relocating and moving across Asia and so many wonderful things actually happened. And I found certain aspects of myself, my voice, my writing, my keynote career.
We were based in Hong Kong in those days and because I’m on maintenance therapy (to prevent a relapse), I can’t carry children. So, then I had to think about surrogacy. Surrogacy was officially banned in Hong Kong in those days. Initially we wanted to do it in India and everything was aligned. I brought my eggs in, my husband went and donated, I think in Barcelona, and his sperm was brought into India. I often joke that our kids were actually frequent flyers before they were born. However, two weeks before we were supposed to begin, the laws changed in India. What now? We ended up engaging an agency out of Canada and we looked at Canada, we looked at Mexico, but nothing seemed to be lining up. There were so many obstacles. And finally, I did my research and… at that time, Georgia and Ukraine were two places where international surrogacy had been happening for a number of years. It was legal. And so we ended up doing our surrogacy at a place called the Chachava Clinic [in Georgia], which is 150 years old, established and run by women, and it was a smooth process. We welcomed our twins, Sufi and Soleil, in 2018. And you know, therein started another version of life, of motherhood. But again, I owe it to medical science for pushing those boundaries and making that accessible.
LR: Dr Abraham, when you wake up in the morning, what makes you most excited to be doing what you’re doing? Why are you still doing it?
JA: Cancer care is fascinating. I know people ask me why you’re doing oncology. I know some people think, what’s wrong with me, right? But it’s a privilege. I’m walking into someone’s room at the most vulnerable moment in their life. And I’m there to offer them hope. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. And I’ve been watching how this field has moved. And it’s really exciting to do research. Of course, see that change happening in our patients. And then, of course, train the next generation of people to keep doing this for the future. So, I’m a really lucky, blessed person.