From Personal Loss to a Mission of Hope: Pramod Pandey and the Cancer Mukti Foundation

When your life changed upside down, and how? news and I know this is going to be difficult and but the way I broke that news to them you know she had this but you know the medical science is so advanced you know there is we'll find something that will work for for her and deep inside me I knew that it is going to be very difficult I worked very hard to find clinical trial for her we went to New York unfortunately nothing worked for her. So that, what I would say, was my moment really. I would say, you know, that time was a very tough time. I thought maybe this meant to happen, and then that's how I could, you know, give this back to the community. Only one thing comes to my mind, as I said, I think earlier as well, that I want no one should have cancer, and no one should face it if you have it. 40% of cancers are preventable. You can prevent it with a healthy, you know, lifestyle. And the remaining 60%, if you can diagnose it early, they are treatable. Most of them, I'm not going to say that everything is treatable, but that covers everything. So there are two things. You need to be aware, you need to do everything to prevent it, or you do something about to detect it early. And this is where the Cancer Mukti Foundation is focused on. FDA advisory committee had approved or have approved a multi-cancer early detection test where you do one blood test and then it detects a lot of cancers, different types of cancer in just with one blood test. Welcome to Indian English News. Our guest today is Pramod Pandey, founder of Cancer Mukti Foundation. On November 14th, he will be honored with a very special award, especially created for his foundation at New England Choice Awards Gala at Burlington Marriott. We are going to talk to him about Cancer Mukti Foundation, what led him to launch this unique non-profit organization. Pramod, welcome to our studio. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Sure. So, this is for the first time we are doing a special award at NICA, New England Choice Awards. Our team and judging committee was very much inspired by Cancer Mukti Foundation. It's a relatively new organization, and I want you to tell us the story behind Cancer Mukti Foundation. Absolutely. So, in 2020, in early 2020, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. She had cholangiocarcinoma, which is a very aggressive type of cancer, very rare and aggressive cancer. So anytime any family hears that word that you have cancer, you know, your world goes upside down. So we had similar situations when the doctor told us she had cancer and it is cholangiocarcinoma. And I have a background in cholangiocarcinoma, I mean, in cancer biology. So I knew exactly what that was. And I was, I mean, we were all devastated, you know. And then we, even though I had a background in cancer, we were still struggling. We were struggling to figure out what are we going to do. You know, everything was new to us. You know, getting an appointment and, you know, talking to oncologists and getting a second opinion and all that kind of stuff. So now, how long did she survive after the diagnosis? So she, unfortunately, she survived only eight months. Eight months. So it's a very aggressive type of... It was very aggressive, and it was detected at stage four. So how earlier they could have detected if everything went... So that is where I think my story comes in place. So when this happened, a couple of things happened. One is people. You know, our community came together to help us. They were doing everything, actually, what they could have done in terms of bringing us meals, you know, getting us right to the hospitals. We had a dog, somebody was taking care of our dog, and the community came together. But then there were some gaps, which I thought it would have been nice if these were in place. One was actually finding information. There was no such way to find information at one place. where now before we move forward my question so this type of cancer i have never heard of before yeah so can you just tell us what really happened and how it was diagnosed it is actually is a bile duct cancer it's in the bile duct and and the way it was diagnosed is uh that she had pain in her shoulders which has nothing to do with you know down there so that's why i think we lost some time so we went for physiotherapy for for quite a while you know a couple of months or longer and then actually she had other things going on with her but i think that we all kind of didn't put all things together uh including our our you know primary care physician so you have pain here? She had pain here. And she was sent to a therapist? She was a physiotherapist and then she had some, you know, the pigmentation on her forehead. She was sent to a dermatologist and at one time she had like high WBCs so she was given some antibiotics. And how long that process of phase? It's about two to three months, two to three months. So we could have Catch it a little bit earlier stage if you know, we had put all these things together and then test, you know for cancer But but that didn't happen. Unfortunately, so if she was like Caught earlier say one year before. Yeah, do you think she would have survived? Well, she would have lived longer I don't I don't know whether she would have survived you know how long but definitely she would have been lived longer longer that way So what happened was, you know, we lost time, we lost a couple of months to kind of get... So then they finally decided to do an MRI on her, and luckily or unfortunately or unfortunately, they caught this part a little bit as well while they were doing the MRI, and they said, looks like you have a gallbladder stone which is has nothing to do with this but that's a different thing so they decided to do a ultrasound for the gallbladder and they found it was actually all over the place there was all the cancer were growing basically in gallbladder and they did a full body scan and by the time it was all in the ovaries it was in the liver and it was uh it was obviously both ovaries, both the ovaries, liver and a little bit on her bones. So from diagnosis till she passed away, how many months it was? So she was diagnosed in February 2020 and she passed away in November 2020, that same year. Same year. So, it's very sad, like you have the physiotherapy, then you have the skin problem, and then you have this kidney stone issue. None of them have to do that cancer. Well, at least for the outside world. Yeah, for the outside world. But today, that's what I tell people. If you have more than two things going on in your body, you should actually advocate for yourself that get more tests done. they might be related or not related but i think i would tell people if you have two or three things going on at the same time in your body it's good that if they are not related but if they're related that could be a serious problem so i think that's what my my thing that i tell everybody go and get tested if you have more than one thing going on just don't depend on because the dermatologist was doing the other thing they gave hurricane and physiotherapist was doing this thing and the primary care physician was giving her an antibiotic. To me, I think they were all related. So now the question is, she passes away of course, grief, big loss for the whole family. And then when do you come up with Cancer Mukti Foundation? So I was reflecting on my experience, you know, whatever happened in the six to eight months and I told you people came all the way you know helping us for whatever they and that helped us to focus on treating her you know people were taking care of other things and then the other thing was I was telling you we had something like you know I was getting a question why how did we miss this what happened that what what were the sign that happened which I'm telling you now why did we miss it so that was the the question i had and then the other question was how could have we how could we have prevented this happening from and and and then getting the information i have a background in cancer biology i could have got a lot of that information and i have a lot of friends you know doctors and scientists i was talking to them getting all the information as much as but still I was sitting all night on the computer looking for information clinical trials and and then that question came when I was reflecting on it if I with this kind of a background it's struggling to find information struggling to find all the right things and how somebody who doesn't have this background and somebody doesn't have that sort of a network Many of us don't have that type of background. Yeah, yeah. So what can I do to help others with my experience? That was the only thing. And I had not decided, at that time, I was not even thinking about setting up a Cancer Multi Foundation or something. I was thinking individually what I can do to help people. In fact, you will believe me or not, I used to go to Dana-Farber, and I had a board on my car, on my car uh saying that free ride for cancer patients i would just stand there if somebody needs a ride i'll i'll people will look at me and then then they no one yeah i mean people were thinking what is this guy doing here sort of you know but did you give anyone free ride or not no no one no one would come to me so that is when this this idea came i need to make it as a structure i need you know i need a name for why why we are doing it and what we are trying to do and that's the time i decided to put it like a like a foundation or a give it a structure a lot of my friends actually i talked to them um and some of them you know they said they will help whatever their way they can and i tried to talk to individually my friends all the doctors i knew and they said all you know I think they will help me and and that's where we so which year you started the cancer foundation 2023 2023 my wife passed in 2020 in November so the first year I was basically looking for how I can help and and reflecting on you know what so when you found out that she had this type of of a serious cancer with your own background in the cancer research What was your first reaction? Well, my reaction was I could still, we could still do something, although I knew it is pretty serious cancer Being in that field, I thought we will find a clinical trial. We will find something which will work for her. And that is the message I was giving to even my children Do you remember your... Sorry, I'm asking a personal question here Do you remember your last conversation with your wife? Well, I was in the hospital when she took her last breath. And I was there for almost eight, nine hours It was actually COVID days, so they would not let you be there for too long. But they did allow me and both my sons, you know, at the hospital we were asking her certain things about you know whether somebody asked us whether you want to bring a priest there and one thing she said she said no she said I want to spend time with you that was her last words she said I I said of course they knew that and yeah yeah because they were the doctors were telling you know they had her on on actually they were asking me if they want to take that out but she was listening to all the conversations what they were saying so she said no i don't want to i don't want to i don't want anyone else other than you three of you here in the room so that was her last last words she spoke to us when it comes to cancer don't assume things that it is nothing you know if you have anything going on in your body just go and see your doctors don't don't assume things and obviously if you have more than one then then you have to do more more things