After 25 years of many heart surgeries and cancer, this doctor lives to tell the tale

We generally look up to doctors for hope, courage and survival, surrendering our lives to them. This is the story of a doctor who took learnings from his many patients and fought back valiantly when he became one. Describing himself as “God’s most favoured child,” Pune’s noted radiolog, Dr Arun Kinare, now in his 70s, calls himself a “doctor-patient” and has documented his survival stories so that no patient ever gives up. He knows best, having gone through 12 angiographies, six angioplasties, two open heart surgeries, two pacemaker implants, five major operations and the dreaded cancer. All in the course of 25 years! And won.
What is it about him that makes him inspirational? The fact that he battled almost all these problems after 50.
It all began with a fatal heart attack
On January 4, 1997, Dr Arun Kinare, then 48, had a massive near-fatal heart attack. Much as he did not want to durb his wife Smita and wake her up in the wee hours of the morning, the tightness in his chest and total discomfort eventually made him cry out in pain. A quick call to a cardiolog friend, Dr Anil Katdare, helped. He rushed to hospital where a life-saving injection was quickly adminered. Dr Kinare survived. And though he battled subsequent complications of the heart, he had to suffer side effects. Like the several blackouts he went through because of the Sick Sinus syndrome, a conduction defect in the heart. Or the awkward situations during cancer therapy when his colostomy bag burst open, soaking his trousers with faecal matter.
His “never say die” attitude, the commitment to protect his family and zest for life helped Dr Kinare deal with multiple adversities. “I always wanted to live for my family and perhaps that’s the reason why I have survived despite facing certain death several times,” he says. These ups and downs in his roller coaster health journey motivated him to write the book, “Diary of a Doctor Patient,” where he has given a personal account of the turbulent years battling serious illnesses and strongly advising patients not to quit.
Dr Arun Kinare with his wife Smita (Express Photo)
How not to quit
“As a doctor, I come across patients who are victims of serious health problems leading to long-term depression and permanent disabilities. Some of them may be genuinely very grave but not necessarily hopeless. It is durbing when patients give up easily or surrender to adversity. It is also disheartening for family members and friends to see their loved one quit. But it is even more heart-wrenching for an experienced doctor whose life’s purpose is to alleviate such afflictions,” Dr Kinare wrote in the book.
Recalling the painful moments of the massive heart attack he experienced the first time, Dr Kinare says, “The chest pain was acute but I still remember the look on my wife’s face. She was completely lost. As a doctor, I thought these were my final moments when I heard the cardiolog urgently call for a defibrillator,” he tells us, adding that on the third day after the heart attack, he had to deal with respiratory failure due to drug toxicity. A week later he had an angiography that detected two critical blocks in the blood vessels. “Those days angioplasty was not routinely done in Pune and I still remember sage advice given to me a friend not to undergo a pass at the age of 48 but preserve the mammaries (blood vessels used in pass surgery as grafts) for later,” he says. He underwent an angioplasty in Chennai where two stents were inserted Dr Samuel Mathew.
After such a major health scare, Dr Kinare was cautious while travelling abroad for conferences but an angiography after six months did not reveal anything of concern. With a passion for food and travel, the doctor, however, found it challenging as he suffered sudden bouts of unconsciousness, vomitting and at times urinary incontinence for over five years. He had an attack of atrial fibrillation, which was controlled with medication but there were frequent episodes and it was concluded to be an abnormal rhythm of the heart. “There was a problem with the conduction system of the heart called the Sick Sinus syndrome. This meant I needed a pacemaker.”
then he was diagnosed with another complication, which was a very tight stenosis in a different blood vessel in the heart, and led to another angioplasty. The pacemaker had to be removed and the Syncopy attacks recurred. Those, however, did not stop him from attending major conferences abroad and he was mentally prepared to face consequences like restenosis of stented arteries that entailed another angioplasty. His subsequent hardships, like the one where the artery used for the pass surgery had a 100 per cent block, made him stronger, especially when he suffered a second heart attack in 2010. Three critical blocks in the heart blood vessels meant a pass surgery was required and the cardiac surgeon, Dr Ranjit Jagtap, instilled a great deal of confidence in him towards a better recovery.
How he coped with the Big C
The doctor’s ordeal was far from over when a nagging abdominal pain in 2015 was diagnosed as cancer of the colon. He underwent major surgeries with the hospital’s intensive care unit being his new address. His positive attitude helped him navigate yet another life-threatening complication that included fungal infection (endocarditis) acquired during hospital stay, persent fever and severe chills besides taking intravenous injections of Amphotericin B to treat the condition. All of this meant a daily hospital check-in for four hours.
Cancer became a secondary concern as again the doctor’s heart demanded attention. An open heart surgery was done. Then surgeons had to make a new opening in his abdominal wall before the cancer surgery for the poop to get collected in a colostomy bag. “If I had to travel, I would clean the bag prior to departure. Despite planning, I landed in an embarrassing situation as the bag would rupture and my clothes would get soiled with faecal matter,” he recalls. That was a challenge during long international flights with layovers and change of airlines. So, the only surgery he looked forward to through his bad years forward was the colostomy closure.
now used to unforeseen setbacks, Dr Kinare just about averted a minor paralytic attack. Now that he has weathered the bigger life threats, he doesn’t mind living with hernias and keloids (surgical scar growths). “These are trivial issues and are my silent companions,” he says. But what stands out most in this tumultuous journey is that disciplined lifestyle, physical exercise, positive mindset and family support eventually lead to healthier outcomes. Simple things really, which we do not follow when we are healthy. But they can be our lifeline through life’s many crises.