'Shaken and worried': Sonia Gandhi speaks up about fighting cancer twice

New Delhi, The second UPA term brought with it personal challenges for Sonia Gandhi. Her medical needs went beyond the occasional bouts of asthma, allergies and stomach troubles as she was diagnosed with cancer -- twice.

Gandhi, who has never spoken earlier about her medical conditions, shared in her just released memoir that a year after surgery for breast cancer in 2010, another growth was detected in her pancreas during a follow-up test.

"Our second UPA term brought me some personal challenges. Apart from occasional bouts of asthma and allergies, I'd had no serious health troubles until then. As my doctors pointed out, stress is one of the main causes of stomach disorders, and, sure enough, these became frequent, and worsened as I grew older and got drawn into


politics myself," she writes in "Belonging: A Journey of Love" that released on Tuesday.

In 2010, she says she was advised an operation for suspected breast cancer and had full confidence in her doctors at Delhi's 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," Gandhi writes.

Soon, the Congress leader, who turns 80 next month, decided to skip the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai for fear of the media invading her private space and go for surgery at the European Institute of Oncology outside Milan.

"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 asks.

Accompanied by one senior officer, Rahul, Priyanka and her husband Robert Vadra, and her sisters Nadia and Anouchka, Gandhi underwent the surgery under the guidance of celebrated surgeon Dr Umberto Veronesi.

"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.

"He (the doctor) had removed two tumours, including a non-suspicious one to be on the safe side, and conducted an intra-operative radiation to spare me five weeks of radiotherapy," Gandhi writes.

The growth in the pancreas a year later came as a shock to her 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," she says.

This time, Gandhi was sent to the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, where she was treated by well-known pancreatic surgeon Dr Casper van Fijck.

"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. 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?"

She left for surgery without notice to anyone but prime minister Manmohan Singh and a few senior colleagues.

After the surgery, Dr van Eijck explained that "I had been fortunate the tumour was found to be in a preliminary precancerous stage, having been detected early".

Another scare came some years later, in August 2016, during an assembly election rally in Uttar Pradesh's Varanasi.

"The road was packed on both sides with excited crowds shouting slogans in favour of the Congress, but the convoy went on for five hours, and mounting fatigue got the better of me. I collapsed and was flown to Delhi," she writes.

Floating in and out of consciousness, she "saw him again - Rajiv, reaching out to me, smiling at me reassuringly as if to say, everything will be fine".

"Sheila Dikshit, who was by my side throughout, told me later that she noticed me suddenly smile in the middle of the tension-racked flight. I'm sure it must have been that moment. But I had broken my shoulder badly in the fall: another operation!" Gandhi recalls.

The 526-page book, published by HarperCollins India, covers the arc of Gandhi's remarkable life -- her childhood in post-war Italy, her marriage into the Nehru-Gandhi family, the assassination of her husband Rajiv Gandhi and her entry into politics.