From fighting cancer to COVID-19, a doctor’s battle against adversity

‘I was told to drop medicine as career’

In 2003, not even two years that Dr. Rahul Jain had completed his MBBS, his life hit a wall: he was detected with osteosarcoma — a very aggressive malignancy of the bone — of the left knee. The entire leg from the left hip was removed by surgery, which was followed by chemotherapy. “I was told to drop medicine as a career. Some of the options given were to open a shop. Because I was more or less confined to the room for a year, I could reflect over life and death. The fact that I was immobile gave my mind the breathing space it wanted. I was no longer distracted by cinema halls and malls. I could read more. I discovered the Bhagavad Gita,” says Dr. Jain, now 45 and a well-known internal medicine specialist in the city, who has attended to nearly 4,000 COVID-19 patients so far, of them about 1,500 at the Bellevue Clinic, the hospital he’s attached to. “The Bhagavad Gita remains the most inspirational book I’ve have read. One shloka says: If you fight, you will either be slain on the battlefield and go to the celestial abodes, or you will gain victory and enjoy the kingdom on earth; therefore, arise with determination, and be prepared to fight! That motivated me. By then I was married for almost two years; my wife Vineeta stood by me firmly. I got a good prosthesis from a German company called Otto Bock and I could walk. My crutches became my trademark, my identity,” says Dr. Jain.