Emraan Hashmi talks about his son Ayan’s cancer treatment

In an exclusive interview with Bombay Times, actor Emraan Hashmi talks about his son Ayan’s cancer treatment, surgery and prognosis. 4 year old Ayan was detected with Wilms’ tumor (a rare form of malignant tumor in children) last month. He is currently undergoing treatment in Toronto, Canada.

Emraan with his son Ayan

Talking about his son’s condition, Emraan says

He had a malignant tumour called the WILMS tumour which was detected in its second stage. There is a medical protocol for this as he needs to be there for 15 weeks for taking chemotherapy. When you remove a tumour, the bad cells may still be there somewhere in the body, so chemo is done to kill them. It’s not a common cancer amongst children. Leukemia is more common within paediatric cancer. When you hear the word cancer as a parent, a lot of things play out in your mind. The doctors have told us that if we would have had to pick a certain kind of cancer, it would be WILMS as the prognosis for this cancer is 90-95% making the survival rate pretty high. Children are very resilient. The word cancer for parents is the scariest thing in the world, but what they need to understand is that 95% of cancer is curable, which is what we don’t get to hear as the narrative of the word cancer is so overwhelmingly full of terror. But this sane voice is not built on hope, but on scientific evidence of past prognosis.

On why he chose Toronto for treatment

Due to the environment there so that he can recuperate faster. There is family there. In Mumbai, he would be restricted to the places he can go, plus the environment is better there. If I had to keep him here, he would need to be contained in the house but out there, he can go everywhere, be it to shopping malls or cinema theatres.