Manisha Koirala, one of India’s most celebrated actors, was stunned when she was diagnosed with stage IV ovarian cancer in 2012. She opted to travel halfway around the world for treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
Manisha Koirala was treated for advanced ovarian cancer at Memorial Sloan Kettering in 2012 and 2013. In the years since, she has continued to do well and lead a life filled with activity, including hiking with friends at the base of Mount Everest.
When Manisha Koirala, one of India’s leading film actors, was diagnosed with advanced ovarian cancer in 2012, she was in shock and a state of disbelief. She had suspected that her persistent sickness and abdominal bloating were most likely a liver problem. But she found herself in a hospital room in Kathmandu, Nepal, with her lifelong doctor and family gently trying to reassure her that treatments for her disease had gotten better.
“I remembered in movies that if someone has cancer, doctors will just cut it out and they are fine,” she recalls. “I asked, ‘Can’t you just cut it out and throw it away?’ ” Unfortunately, the disease was stage IV, which meant it had spread to other organs.
“That’s when reality hit that I was in a bad state,” Manisha says. Over the next day, she felt hopeless and began resigning herself to “saying goodbye to everyone and everything,” she says.
But at the same time, Manisha and her family were not ready to give up. They traveled to Mumbai for a second opinion from a top doctor. He confirmed the diagnosis and said that because the cancer had spread, she should receive chemotherapy to shrink the tumor first, then have surgery.
Aware of the gravity of Manisha’s situation, her family began urging her to go to the United States to seek treatment. Manisha agreed, thinking, Why should I risk my life by not going to the best place in the world? Her mother has friends who are doctors in the United States, and one name kept coming up in conversations about the top surgeon for gynecologic cancers: Dennis Chi at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York.
Manisha Koirala posing with five family members.
During her treatment in New York, Manisha (second from right) was buoyed by the strong support of her family, including (from left) her mother, niece, brother, father, and sister-in-law.
Manisha remembers her first meeting with Dr. Chi in early December 2012: “I asked him, ‘Have you done surgery on someone with a cancer so advanced like mine?’ And he answered, ‘Yes. She’s alive and doing fine.’ At that moment, I could finally breathe. I was confident I was at the right place with the right doctor.”
Dr. Chi has more than two decades of experience treating women with gynecologic cancers. He leads MSK’s Section of Ovarian Cancer Surgery. The doctors in this specialized program have expertise in removing advanced disease that has spread beyond the ovaries.
“MSK is one of the first places to have a team dedicated to doing surgery on people with this specific cancer,” Dr. Chi says. “We have five surgeons focused on ovarian cancer, and this enables us to achieve very good results.”
