How opening up about being a cancer survivor reshaped my Ph.D. journey

From ScienceMag:

I was in the fourth year of my Ph.D. in tumor immunology when I gave a talk at a major international conference. I had rehearsed every slide, every transition, determined to present my results as a coherent scientific story. But near the end I paused and said something I had not practiced. “This research is personal; I’m not only a researcher, but also a survivor of childhood leukemia.” The words surprised me as soon as they left my mouth. I felt I had crossed an invisible professional line I had spent years trying not to approach.

I was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when I was 3 years old. My earliest memories are not of classrooms or playgrounds, but of hospital rooms and seemingly constant fatigue caused by the chemotherapy drugs.

With treatment, I eventually went into remission. But as I grew older and learned the biology of leukemia, one idea unsettled me: The immune system designed to protect me had failed. Cells had multiplied without restraint. Signals meant to maintain order had broken down. Biology became personal for me. I became obsessed with the questions of what cancer is and what survival means biologically. Pursuing science didn’t feel like a career choice; it felt like picking up an unfinished story.

Yet when I entered graduate school, I did not tell anyone about my history—not my lab mates, not even my adviser. I thought professionalism meant keeping my personal life separate from my scientific one. But that separation required constant vigilance. When conversations turned to hospital appointments, childhood, illness, or what had brought us to cancer research, I learned to redirect gently or stay quiet. I answered honestly, but never fully. I worried disclosure might affect how I was seen. Would colleagues doubt my stamina? Would mentors hesitate to invest in me? Would I always be “the survivor” instead of simply a scientist? Would people think I was leveraging sympathy to earn a place in science?

I left India to pursue research abroad, first in the United States, then Israel, and eventually the United Kingdom. In the lab, I felt capable. Outside it, I often felt uncertain. There were evenings alone in my apartment when the distance from home felt vast. In those moments, I sometimes thought about the child I once was, lying in a hospital bed, exhausted, dependent on treatments developed by researchers I would never meet, who had chosen to dedicate their life to understanding diseases like mine. Slowly, I began to realize I was becoming that researcher myself. That thought didn’t make the path any easier, but gave it meaning.

I spoke out at that conference because of a realization that had been slowly coalescing for years: I could no longer keep my personal history and my profession in separate compartments. I did not expect my revelation to alter anything beyond that room. But in the weeks that followed, I began to see that many of my fears had been unfounded. Colleagues did not question my professionalism; they understood my urgency, and our conversations deepened. A student confided that she had her own medical history she rarely mentioned. Later, after I’d become more accustomed to sharing my story, a young patient told me hearing my story made a scientific career feel imaginable.

The shift was internal as well. Previously, a negative result in the lab could send me spiraling into self-doubt. Now, the setbacks are still frustrating, but they no longer feel existential. I remind myself I’ve already survived something far less predictable than an assay that did not work. Flawed experiments have become part of the process, not a measure of my worth.

That day at the podium the words arrived before I fully understood why. Only later did I recognize that it wasn’t my past that had weighed on me, but rather the effort of keeping it separate. Being a survivor doesn’t make me a better scientist, but it shapes how I think about my science. It gives context to long hours and the slow pace of discovery. My personal story has become part of my identity as a scientist, not as a credential, but as a reminder of why the questions matter, and why I chose to ask them.

Read More