Actor Irrfan Khan, who in March announced that he had been diagnosed with a rare cancer called neuroendocrine cancer, recently said that the realization of uncertainty made him ‘submit’, ‘surrender’, and ‘trust’, irrespective of the outcome.
In an interview with The Times of India, the actor who has acted in movies such as Piku, Maqbool, and The Amazing Spiderman, said the suddenness of the entire situation made him realise how you are just “a cork floating in the ocean with unpredictable currents”.
“In this chaos, shocked, afraid and in panic, while on one of the terrifying hospital visits, I blabber to my son, ‘The only thing I expect from me is not to face this crisis in this present state. I desperately need my feet. Fear and panic should not overrule me and make me miserable,’” he told the daily.
While Irrfan felt this in the beginning, the pain got intense. “As I was entering the hospital, drained, exhausted, listless, I hardly realised my hospital was on the opposite side of Lord’s, the stadium. Amidst the pain, I saw a poster of a smiling Vivian Richards. Nothing happened, as if that world didn’t ever belong to me... between the game of life and the game of death, there is just a road. On one side, a hospital; on the other, a stadium. As if one isn’t part of anything which might claim certainty – neither the hospital, nor the stadium. That hit me hard.”
This made him realise that the only thing certain was the uncertainty. “This realisation made me submit, surrender and trust, irrespective of the outcome, irrespective of where this takes me, eight months from now, or four months from now, or two years. The concerns took a back seat and started to fade and kind of went out of my mindspace,” he said, adding that for the first time, he truly knew what freedom meant.
Throughout my journey, people have been wishing me well, praying for me, from all over the world. People I know, people I don’t even know. They were praying from different places, different time zones, and I feel all their prayers become one,” he added.
Neuroendocrine cancer is a condition in which hormonal cells and cells from the central nervous system become tumours. Because an endocrine tumor develops from cells that produce hormones, the tumor can also produce hormones. This can cause serious illness. The stage at which the tumour is detected determines the outcome. Stage includes size of the tumour and where the tumour is in the body. Symptoms include high blood pressure, headaches, anxiety attacks, fever, sweating, nausea, vomitting, clammy skin, rapid pulse, heart palpitations
