PROTON BEAM THERAPY IS REVOLUTIONISING CANCER TREATMENT

One morning in 2019, a 26-year-old young man, Navdiya Jemin Mansukhbhai, started to experience numbness and weakness in his right arm and leg.

- DIBYENDU MONDAL

He thought it was due to stress at work. As the day passed, his weakness slowly increased and Jemin started facing difficulties in eating, walking and even speaking.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital in Surat, the city where Jemin resided with his wife. Doctors at the hospital conducted a few tests and an MRI of the brain, which diagnosed him with a rare brain tumour. "The doctors said that the tumour was where the brain meets the spinal cord. This junction houses critical nerves of the body that controls speech, vision, other voluntary and involuntary movements of the body. The doctors said that treatment was very difficult and operation was even more difficult as some nerves could get damaged in the process and I could lose some functions of my body. My family was scared and we did not know what to do," Jemin said.

"After lot of consultation and research, we found that Proton Beam Therapy was one of the most successful treatments for such tumours and cancers. We researched for places that offer this therapy and were surprised to see that only Chennai in the whole of South Asia had such a treatment. We then went down to the Apollo Proton Cancer Centre in Chennai, where I was treated with Proton Beam Therapy for 28 sessions and now I am living a normal life," Jemin added.