Chi and his team performed what is called an optimal debulking surgery, meaning that only microscopic tumors that cannot be seen with the naked eye are left remaining. Chi wanted to do surgery before rather than after chemotherapy - she felt more comfortable with that approach, which was the more standard treatment at the time.ĭr. Chi uses the analogy of breaking a glass: You sweep up the big pieces first (surgery) and then use a vacuum (chemo) to get everything else. In this procedure, doctors remove as much tumor tissue as possible before giving chemotherapy to destroy any lingering cancer cells. MSK’s ovarian cancer team is especially skilled in radical debulking surgery.
“We have five surgeons focused on ovarian cancer, and this enables us to achieve very good results.” Getting All the Cancer “MSK is one of the first places to have a team dedicated to doing surgery on people with this specific cancer,” Dr. The doctors in this specialized program have expertise in removing advanced disease that has spread beyond the ovaries. He leads MSK’s Section of Ovarian Cancer Surgery. Chi has more than two decades of experience treating women with gynecologic cancers. I was confident I was at the right place with the right doctor.”ĭr. She’s alive and doing fine.’ At that moment, I could finally breathe. Chi in early December 2012: “I asked him, ‘Have you done surgery on someone with a cancer so advanced like mine?’ And he answered, ‘Yes. Manisha remembers her first meeting with Dr. Manisha agreed, thinking, Why should I risk my life by not going to the best place in the world? Her mother has friends who are doctors in the United States, and one name kept coming up in conversations about the top surgeon for gynecologic cancers: Dennis Chi at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York.ĭuring her treatment in New York, Manisha (second from right) was buoyed by the strong support of her family, including (from left) her mother, niece, brother, father, and sister-in-law. He confirmed the diagnosis and said that because the cancer had spread, she should receive chemotherapy to shrink the tumor first, then have surgery.Īware of the gravity of Manisha’s situation, her family began urging her to go to the United States to seek treatment. They traveled to Mumbai for a second opinion from a top doctor. Over the next day, she felt hopeless and began resigning herself to “saying goodbye to everyone and everything,” she says.īut at the same time, Manisha and her family were not ready to give up.
“That’s when reality hit that I was in a bad state,” Manisha says. “I asked, ‘Can’t you just cut it out and throw it away?’ ” Unfortunately, the disease was stage IV, which meant it had spread to other organs. “I remembered in movies that if someone has cancer, doctors will just cut it out and they are fine,” she recalls. But she found herself in a hospital room in Kathmandu, Nepal, with her lifelong doctor and family gently trying to reassure her that treatments for her disease had gotten better. She had suspected that her persistent sickness and abdominal bloating were most likely a liver problem. When Manisha Koirala, one of India’s leading film actors, was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer in 2012, she was in shock and a state of disbelief.
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