Mongias story: Fighting cancer,sailing to hope
When sailor Nitin Mongia takes his yacht out to the sea,its not always with an Olympic or Asian Games medal in mind. There are days when his goal is simply to bring a smile to the faces of those accompanying him....
When sailor Nitin Mongia takes his yacht out to the sea,its not always with an Olympic or Asian Games medal in mind. There are days when his goal is simply to bring a smile to the faces of those accompanying him.
Mongia,a silver medallist at the Doha Asian Games in 2006,was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia a year before that. After going through,and overcoming,the trauma experienced by cancer patients,he now tries to help others deal with the distress caused by constant hospital visits and long chemotherapy sessions,by taking them on his boat for a breath of fresh air. Cancer may not always kill you,but it can leave you without any life. What I do is help patients forget their daily hassles of medical tests and heavy medication for a while, the 38-year-old tells The Sunday Express.
The patients and their relatives are taken aback when I tell them that I suffer from CML and have managed to keep it under control with a positive approach, says Mongia,who runs the Sail For Cancer,Sport For Life Foundation with the aim to promote wellness through sports among people suffering from cancer.
The reason behind Mongias zeal is his own experience with the disease,and the initial pain and suffering he went through after being diagnosed. In July 2005,I was competing in a weekend event when I felt too fatigued and failed to complete the event. I went for tests and the doctor told me that Im in the second stage of leukemia, says Mongia. I went completely blank. The first thing that struck me was if Ill live to see my three-year-old daughters wedding.
A flurry of medical tests followed to determine the medication he would need. The shock that a person goes though once he is diagnosed with cancer is far greater than the disease itself. By the time the person actually comes to terms with it,the tension takes a heavier toll than the disease itself.
Mongia slowly lost interest in everything around him. He would sit and blankly watch TV but nothing would register. My mind had shut down because I couldnt really think anything. You just go through the motions,and slowly depression sets in, says Mongia.
What gave him strength was the news that he had the disease since 2001. I realised that ultimately everything was in the mind. When I didnt know about it,I had gone on to win medals all over the world. I decided that merely knowing that I had a disease was no reason to up on my ambitions, says Mongia,a the winner of 30 national championships in different classes.
It took him almost six months to get back into water,but the experience changed him. During the medication period which was a targeted chemotherapy I put on a lot of weight,almost 20 kilos. Sailing helped me back to fitness,of the body and of the mind. Mongia then decided to go for an Asiad medal in Doha. The urge to succeed became more intense because now I understood the value of life, he says.
Mongia and three colleagues Sanjeev Chauhan,Girdhari Yadav and Mahesh Ramchandran just missed gold by a whisker. We had won the Asian Championship in Qatar sometime earlier,and we were competing virtually against the same opponents. But the wind became a bit lighter,and that went against us, he says.
Teammate Ramchandran says Mongia would suffer the side effects of medication but reveal nothing of it the next day during practice. I was his room partner and would see him very sick every night due to medication and irregular food timings. Next day,when he was on boat,nobody could say that he was not. He had awesome determination, says Mahesh. Mongia did not tell anyone about the disease at the Asian Games,except people at the dope testing centre. I had to inform them about my medication,but I didnt go around telling people that I had cancer. Its a part of my life now. I dont need any sympathy, says Mongia.
He then decided to try for the 2008 Beijing Olympics,but found the single-hander Olympic Class boat physically more demanding. He missed qualification by a slender margin. Mongia still aims for a shot at London 2012,but the lack of sponsorship may finally defeat a resolve that cancer couldnt. You cant win an Olympic in just one year its a four-year struggle. In other countries,people start practising for the next Olympics the moment one Olympics end,but for that you need resources, he says. Ive found a way out of other problems,hopefully Ill find a way out of this one too.
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