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It’s 4 am. Thirty-one-year-old Govind Rawat wakes up with a glass of warm water followed by a fistful of dry fruits, nuts and an apple. Then he hits the gym, and by the time he’s done with his reps and squats, his students show up at 5 am, some of them a bit groggy and reluctant. But Govind’s fresh-breath energy is infectious enough for them to embrace the day with the sun. By 7.30 am, a young woman wants to pace up on the exercise bike and treadmill to shed her extra weight, but Govind sits her down, measures her waist-to-hip ratio and explains why she needs a new diet and not just a speed run to get rid of her belly fat. By afternoon, he makes it a point to counsel cancer survivors and hand-hold them back to health with a few stretches and light weights. And this is the part he feels committed to the most as a gym instructor. For two years ago, he himself had been diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), an aggressive form of blood cancer that had shrunk his spirit and body, a 40-kg gaunt inmate of his wasted self, bound to a bed. Today, he not only lives but encourages others to live well. “Health is the only religion that matters,” says this young man from Narela in north Delhi, who has shown that a fast-slipping life can indeed be wrested back.
AML is an all-consuming cancer, rarely sparing adults who often do not make it because of the high dose of chemotherapy or the recurrent bleeding and infection involved. But Govind never gave up, taking the four-month chemo cycle with teeth-gnashing grit till he became cancer-free. “A lot of people pulled me out of the abyss, now it’s my turn to do the same,” says the former body builder, looking up at what he created with his second shot at life, the HR Fitness Centre. And lest you think it is named after actor Hrithik Roshan, who has a ripped body to die for, HR actually stands for Honey Rawat. “That’s neither the name of my wife or son though I came back for them but my nickname. I like being called Honey, and it helps break down walls with people,” he says.
Govind has been a fitness enthusiast all his life and has been into bodybuilding ever since he was 16, with a disciplined diet and sleep cycles. In fact, he was a body-building champion in 2021, the year he was diagnosed. “I have never had a health issue in my life except chronic tonsillitis, which would trouble me each season and then settle on its own. But that year everything that could go wrong went wrong. I lost my brother to Covid and before I could barely come to terms with it, I suffered a bad bout of the virus myself. I had a severe tonsillitis attack soon after that and needed hospitalisation as I had high fever and white coating at the back of my neck. I recovered but had a relapse in just 15 days, needing another round of high potency antibiotics. I had unbearable headaches and no appetite. I consulted a neurologist who attributed it to the trauma and stress of losing my brother. He advised a CT scan and a routine CBC (complete blood count). My platelets had gone down to 50,000 and my haemoglobin, which had all my life been 16, had plummeted to 7.5,” he says.
That’s when a friend suggested that he get himself evaluated at Max Hospital, Shalimar Bagh. Dr Amrita Chakrabarti, haemato-oncologist and bone marrow transplant specialist, had already worked with many AML patients before and given the cancer’s devouring nature, takes up every case as a challenge. “While his CBC report was completely deranged, a peripheral smear examination showed that his blood cells were abnormal in shape and size, indicative of malignancy. A bone marrow test confirmed the cancer. Contrary to what people think, blood cancer, unlike other cancers, doesn’t have stages or is hereditary. It could just be a result of cell mutation, and anybody could develop it. It has many types and risk stratification, as in a patient could be in the low, standard or high-risk categories. Govind was in the middle category. Still there is a high risk of mortality during the treatment stage itself because the chemo doses are intense and demanding,” says Dr Chakrabarti. The family didn’t want to lose another son and Govind decided that since he had fathered a son, he would have to be around to bring him up. That was his sole motivation.
The chemotherapy protocol is intended to first get rid of AML, then stop it from coming back and then ensure maintenance therapy. Dr Chakrabarti decided to follow a strong chemo regimen. “He was young and fit and his overall organ function was good. The first month we give the strongest dose and there’s a high risk of mortality during this period. That’s why unlike other chemo patients, AML patients have to stay in the hospital. But though Govind had a strong constitution, we had to keep him in hospital for 30 days as he started developing unforeseen complications like bleeding and recurrent infections. He would have a very high fever of 105 degree celsius and being immuno-compromised, required ICU attention intermittently. He lost the muscles he had lovingly built. He developed a perianal abscess, had a stomach infection and could neither eat nor drink. And though we stopped the chemo during extreme infection, we picked up when he felt better and completed the first cycle to avoid a relapse,” says Dr Chakrabarti.
But after a stormy month, the mandatory bone marrow test showed that he was in remission. “We decide on stem cell therapies when the first cycle fails but since he made it, we continued with chemo,” says Dr Chakrabarty, who could push herself because Govind himself was focussed on getting better through all that pain and degradation of his body. He got through the next three months, requiring a week of hospitalisation each time to sustain the chemo and simultaneously battle complications arising out of it. “AML therapy is a calibrated treatment; you do not just adjust the chemo but also need to see which antibiotics can work with it or against it. It is like balancing an equation,” admits Dr Chakrabarti. After four months, Govind continued to be in remission.
“Everybody looked at my files and counts, but what really ate me up was this sense of losing a grip on myself. That’s when my family stood in. They would lie whenever I felt down and out, saying I would be out in a week and ten days. My wife, a nurse, made sure I did all that the doctor required of me and balanced her work life with being my caregiver. I had medical insurance but that wasn’t enough to take care of my costs, so my family, which ran an ISP (internet service provider) business, pooled money. Everybody was rooting for me and I felt guilty of burdening them,” says Govind. Dr Chakrabarti noticed that the positive-thinking Govind was going into a shell and made him meet another of her female patients, Pooja, who had recovered from AML too and nudged him to keep eating and taking fluids so that he could build back his tolerance reserve for chemo cycles. That worked. “Govind was compliant and that made a difficult job easier,” she adds.
After medication and supplements for a year, Govind was declared cancer-free in March 2022. He is off drugs now but needs to report the slightest cold and cough and take a blood test every two months. And since AML can creep up on you silently and undetected could take a life in days, Dr Chakrabarti feels that everybody with recurrent fever, infections, varying haemoglobin and TLC counts, appetite or weight loss should consult a haematologist first instead of going to a general medical practitioner. Blood disorders can be detected faster this way, she adds.
Back home, Govind decided to do what he owed himself, build back his body. With workouts and diet, he increased his body weight to 81 kg and then stabilised it at 75 kg. He even quit his family business to open his fitness studio. “My body has never been this good, so always live on your terms,” says the cancer survivor, whom neighbours have now christened Mr Narela.
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