Patient Relations
Gitu Mirchandani was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in 2019. This is her story about overcoming adversity as she underwent treatment at Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare — and what inspired her to seek a new career in nursing.
Gitu Mirchandani was certain she had breast cancer even before she was diagnosed. The American expatriate, who had left Baltimore, Maryland, for Saudi Arabia in 2014, found the lump late in 2018 — and her sixth sense told her it was a tumor.
She visited her primary care physician at Johns Hopkins Aramco Healthcare (JHAH) Dhahran, who immediately ordered an ultrasound scan and a biopsy. While she was waiting for the results, her dog Jethro, a poodle mix who had traveled with her from Baltimore, passed away unexpectedly.
The diagnosis came in April 2019 and confirmed what Gitu suspected. “I wasn’t surprised in any way,” she recalls, “but I thought: ‘This is just a blip on the road of my life. Whatever God gives you is good, and God has decided I need to go through this.”
Dr. Samer Abushullaih, internal medicine and oncology consultant at JHAH, remembers delivering the diagnosis. “Gitu was very brave. She was always smiling. But our tests showed us she had an aggressive form of breast cancer — triple negative, which doesn’t respond to hormonal or biological therapies. If you don’t take care of triple negative breast cancer quickly, it can spread fast. So, we had to act quickly.”
Breast cancer is the most common cancer treated at JHAH, and the hospital’s oncology department is uniquely positioned to support patients through their treatment journey and help them overcome the disease.
Every oncology doctor at JHAH has trained at a leading hospital in North America, and the department follows the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) best practice guidelines for advanced care. This year, JHAH will open an Oncology Center of Excellence, bringing cancer patients precision diagnosis, pioneering treatments, and full-spectrum survivorship support to set a new regional benchmark in cancer care.
Cancer patients at JHAH are supported from day one by a dedicated nurse who coordinates their care. Gitu’s nurse coordinator was Judith Guevarra, who had been with Gitu from the moment she presented at the hospital with a lump in her breast.
A cancer diagnosis can be incredibly overwhelming, so we try to remove unnecessary stress from the patient’s life,
We arrange appointments, scans, treatments, surgeries, and anything else the patient needs
Gitu says Judith “radiated calm and compassion. She even gave me her phone number and told me to call her or text her any time, for any reason.”
“With triple negative breast cancer patients, we start chemotherapy immediately,” Dr. Abushullaih says, alluding to the NCCN guidelines. “This helps to ensure that any cancer cells that have spread outside the breast, but haven’t been detected by the initial scans, are eliminated.”
Gitu’s chemotherapy was scheduled to start within two weeks of her diagnosis.
“I really had no time to think about what was happening to me,” she says. “I managed to squeeze in a quick holiday before treatment began. I flew to Dubai to go wig shopping with a friend and spent a small fortune on a wig that I never actually wore!”
But as she readied herself to start treatment, she suffered yet another shock: a scan indicated that the cancer may have spread to her hip. “In the space of a few weeks, I’d been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer, my dog had died, and now I was being told that my cancer could be even worse than first thought. It was another blow and a lot to take in.”
Doctors conducted a biopsy on Gitu’s hip to check if cancer cells were in fact present — and much to everybody’s relief, they were not. “It was the first good news I’d had for some time.”
In mid-April, Gitu started AC-T chemotherapy, a targeted therapy for breast cancer that involves passing three drugs through the body to kill cancer cells: Adriamycin (Doxorubicin), Cytoxan (Cyclophosphamide), and Taxol (Paclitaxel). Patients typically start with four rounds of “AC” before moving onto 12 rounds of “T.”
“I was really worried, particularly about my hair falling out,” Gitu says. “But the nurses and doctors at JHAH were so good at reassuring me, and I had Judith by my side at every appointment.
The radiology technician who performed my scans told me early on: ‘You seem really happy. Stay like that. Don’t go down the rabbit hole of sadness because it won’t help you mentally or physically.’ That stuck with me, and I tried to live by those words.
Shortly after her first chemotherapy session, Gitu felt “very sick and not right at all.” Doctors found that her white blood cell count had dropped sharply — a common side-effect of chemotherapy — and she was admitted to hospital via the emergency room, staying for three days.
“The first four chemo sessions were the hardest,” she recalls. “I remember waking up in the morning, after the first session, and my pillow was covered in hair. That first weekend, I cut my hair very short, but ended up shaving it all off a day or two later.
“I decided to wear silk scarves rather than the wig, which didn’t look right on me. But we found a use for the wig. My friend Ali would come to all my chemo sessions wearing it. He always kept me laughing and distracted, which helped to keep my mind off the treatment.”
Gitu continued to work while receiving chemotherapy. “The work kept me going. It was a welcome distraction, and it meant I had less time to feel sorry for myself.”
After completing “T” chemotherapy, she says she had “not a lick of hair left on my body. And it was at that point that I really felt like a cancer patient.”
She says chemotherapy was “really tough, but at the same time, it wasn’t. I had amazing people around me and a fantastic support network. It helped me maintain a positive attitude, and I really think that helped me physically, too. Keep busy, keep laughing.”
Three weeks after completing chemotherapy, Gitu’s hair started growing back — curly this time, not straight. “I’d always wanted curls, so I wasn’t complaining!” she says.
She had a mastectomy in November 2019, conducted by Dr. Mohammad Zahrani, a consultant in general surgery and surgical oncology at JHAH.
Not long after the procedure, she received the all-clear.
“The cancer had completely vanished,” Dr. Abushullaih says, smiling. “When this happens, I feel only joy. It means the chemotherapy was worth the trouble the patient went through, and it means they’re likely to do well in the future.
“Breast cancers are aggressive but most of the time, if there’s no recurrence within five years of treatment, it’s highly likely the patient is cured. I’m confident that Gitu is cured.”
Gitu says she felt a “unique sensation” after getting the all-clear: “You feel you have your life back; that the rest of your life is in front of you once again.” She says the experience “made me a better person. You learn so much about yourself. You think, ‘If I can do that, I can do anything.’”
In mid-2020, after completing all the treatments, she adopted a dog, Nick, and takes a long stroll with him every evening.
Now she wants to help other people fight cancer.
Last month, Gitu took her first step towards retraining as a nurse. She started the first of six online prerequisite courses with Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, with a view to formally applying to the school’s Master of Science Entry to Nursing Program, a full-time two-and-a-half-year course for students with a bachelor’s degree in a non-nursing field.
“People who go into oncology who have been touched by cancer, be it themselves or their family or their friends, have a special way with patients,” Dr. Abushullaih says. “They know exactly how it feels; they bring that deep level of empathy.”
Gitu laughs. “I’ll be 52 years old when I graduate. Can you imagine! But I know for sure that I want to do this. I want to give back. I want to be there when a patient is going through their first chemotherapy session. I want to hold their hand and tell them they’re doing great.”
Learn more about cancer care at JHAH