Hrithik Roshan and his father Rakesh Roshan always share a special rapport and that is known by all. So a few months ago when Hrithik had tweeted about his father being in the early stage of squamous cell carcinoma (throat cancer), it shocked all of us. Mr Roshan had already begun writing the fourth franchise of Krrish when the news came and it did manage to astound us. Later he also underwent surgery for the same and now he is back in great health working on the film. While the past months have been tough for the Roshan family, the filmmaker in a recent interview with Midday opened up about his journey.
Roshan revealed that the first time it started was in September last year when he noticed a harmless blister below his tongue and his immediate thought was, “I hope it isn’t cancer.”
He further added,
I immediately called my family doctor home. He said it was nothing to worry about and gave me some medicines to treat the blister.
Three months later, when he visited a hospital in Bandra to visit a friend, he met an ENT specialist who told him to get a biopsy done and while the reports were scheduled to come in four days, the filmmaker was sure that he had cancer.
Talking about his fear about the traumatic procedures, he said,
They described traumatic procedures [that involved] cutting my tongue and taking part of the skin on my wrist to replace the surface on my tongue. Thankfully, Hrithik got in touch with Dr Jatin P Shah (who holds The Elliott W Strong chair at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre) who told us that nothing of the sort was required. He would make an incision on the neck to remove the node where cancer had spread.
He also told the tabloid that the only reason he could face all of it is because of his strong family.
I got my strength from her. I used to remember how positive she was even though she was [undergoing] chemotherapy and losing her hair. As a family, we have gone through a lot of trauma. Sunaina battled cancer, Hrithik went through brain surgery, I was shot at, and had to get a bypass, my wife Pinky had a heart problem. But we are standing tall and strong, supporting each other.