Lisa Ray had kept her blood cancer a secret for almost a year, undergoing therapies on the sly and continuing with her acting. But there was a day when she was faced with a strange dilemma — cancel her appearance at the premiere of her movie at the Toronto Film Festival or say to the whole world that she has cancer, reports DNA.
“I had put on a lot of weight. My face was swollen and I had a feeling that everybody will ask me why I had put on a lot of weight. That was because I was going through my therapies. I sat down and took a deep breath and then wrote a few lines on my blog,” says Lisa explaining the day when she decided to “come out of the closet” about her disease — with a rare form of blood cancer called multiple myeloma.
“I was surprised to see the kind of response I got. I was flooded with messages and all of them were so concerned about me. All the trepiditions about having cancer were gone. My fight had just begun,” she adds.
Lisa admits that there were few people without whose support she “couldn't have made it so far”.
“Of course it was my dad. Fathers are like that. They are always with you no matter what. We take them for granted. But I also had a couple of friends who stood by me through thick and thin, even when I was going through the most painful phases of my treatment. I don't want to take their names, but I do want to tell them that without them, I would not have made it so far,” says Lisa, adding that now after the treatment that she received in Canada,she is doing just fine.
The actor explains that she knows that there are a lot of things that she wouldn't be able to do even if her job requires her to do it, but she doesn't have any qualms about that.
“I know that I wouldn't be able to get on a treadmill ever again in my life. I would never be able to workout or take up any strenuous exercises. But I am happy. I have shared my story with everybody, it's your turn now (so share stories about cancer survival),” she ends.
