(SYDNEY, Australia) — Govind Sandhu said he felt he was at “peak fitness” when he came down with flu-like symptoms, including a fever, night sweats and body aches, in mid-May.
At the time he started feeling sick, Sandhu, 38, said he had recently finished a half-marathon in his hometown of Sydney, Australia, was training for an upcoming marathon and had just taken a vacation in Bali that was focused solely on health and fitness.
“I’m a CrossFit’er who runs marathons and ultramarathons. Everything from the moment I wake to the moment I go to bed is optimized for peak performance,” Sandhu, the head of global music partnerships at TikTok, told Good Morning America. “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke.”
Sandhu said he first believed his symptoms were a result of his intense training or the change of seasons in Australia, which was transitioning from summer to autumn.
Instead, five weeks after first experiencing a symptom, Sandhu said he was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that forms in the lymphatic system, part of the immune system that helps protect the body from disease, according to the National Cancer Institute.
“I think back on it now, and I ran a half-marathon with cancer running wild through my system — and stage 4 at that,” Sandhu said, adding, “I literally thought I did everything under the sun to make myself not susceptible to something like this … you realize that this could happen to anyone.”
In stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the cancer has spread beyond the lymphatic system to one or more tissues or organs, according to the NCI.
Symptoms of the disease include much of what Sandhu said he experienced including fever, night sweats, weight loss and fatigue, as well as swollen lymph nodes.
As a 38-year-old male who was otherwise healthy, Sandhu had only one of the three most common risk factors for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, which include older age, being male, and having a weakened immune system, according to the NCI.
“I wasn’t educated enough at that point of [thinking] if it could be cancer, or what are the symptoms,” Sandhu said. “I’m grappling with the fact that I’m 38 years old and I have cancer, which is still a bizarre thing to say out loud.”
Following his diagnosis, Sandhu said he began treatment, which for now includes six rounds of chemotherapy.
As he goes through chemotherapy, Sandhu is sharing his journey on social media to help raise awareness of cancer, especially among young people.
“It’s the last thing I ever would have thought would happen to someone like me, and if it can happen to someone like me, it can happen to anyone,” he said. “The reality is that anything to do with the big ‘C,’ cancer, the general population is clueless, and I was clueless, because anything that has to do with one’s mortality or disease is kind of not spoken about and shared widely … and I just think there’s a lot of power in talking about this.”
Sandhu said he also hopes his story helps empower patients to speak up if they do not feel right and for doctors to listen to patients and explore all possible causes of their symptoms.
He said he also hopes that by sharing himself going through chemotherapy and grappling with a serious cancer diagnosis he can help reduce the stigma of cancer and encourage other people going through a similar battle to not feel so alone.
“I don’t want people to feel alone on this journey, because, again, if it has happened to someone like me, it can happen to anyone,” Sandhu said. “I want people to know that what they’re going through, I’m also going through.”
He continued, “If this can help anyone that’s either about to go through it, has gone through it or is supporting someone that’s going through it, that’s an absolute win for me. I want to shout about this because I think it’s a really important topic.”
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