After beating cancer twice, Iqbal Singh Sandhu thought his ordeal had ended and he could resume his life exactly where he had left off before he was diagnosed with stage four of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in his hips and heart in 2014 and in his chest in 2018.
But the 33-year-old Melbourne-based truck driver was left “devastated” when he was told last month that his cancer had returned yet again with “full force”, this time attacking the lymph nodes on the right side of his chest.
Hodgkin's Lymphoma (formerly called Hodgkin's disease) is a cancerous tumour that develops in a lymph node, usually in the neck or chest. And as it progresses, it can affect the body's ability to fight infection.
Waiting for his treatment, a frail-sounding Mr Sandhu told SBS Punjabi over the phone that he now requires an urgent advanced bone marrow transplant to rebuild his immune system for which he needs a whopping sum of at least $300,000.
“I have already exhausted my insurance cover and therefore have no alternative but to seek help from the Punjabi community,” said Mr Sandhu.
Mr Sandhu has set up a fundraiser on Facebook with the help of a friend, hoping that the community would lend him some financial lease to facilitate his transplant.
At the time of writing, the crowdfunding total was sitting at $101,281.
“I can’t go to India because I wouldn’t be able to get the same standard of treatment,” said Mr Sandhu.
But Mr Sandhu is not alone within the family who has had to fight cancer.
Iqbal Singh Sandhu with his wife Parminder Kaur Source: Supplied
His wife Parminder Kaur who has a pattern of breast cancer running in her maternal family was diagnosed two years after Mr Sandhu had his first bout of cancer.
“She has now fully recovered,” told Mr Sandhu.
His late mother was also diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017 during a visit to Australia and she succumbed to it, almost one year later.
Mr Sandhu is now hoping that a transplant would put his cancer cells to rest, this time "hopefully for good".
