Dr Anjana Vinod – The Voice of a Warrior
Meet with the warrior soul who decided to create more warriors as she lives. With every breath she motivates and gives courage to people around her. Her story has echoed through continents and healed hearts. She is a brave breast cancer survivor, a story-teller, a motivational TedX speaker, an award-winning life coach, an author, and a truly inspiring gentle person, who would walk many miles to make more smiles possible. Her wit and compassion know no bounds.
Her philosophy of life – “Life is to live hardships is the God’s way of saying you are stronger than you think”.
Dr. Anjana’s Career & Life Story:
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004 when I was just 29 years old, with a one-year-old baby. It all began on an unfortunate night; while nursing my little one I fell asleep, only to get up in the morning with half my face literally hanging. I could not gargle, drink, or even eat as one side of my lip was hanging. One of the nerves behind my ear had got pressed leading to bell palsy (facial paralysis). I was given steroids to overcome the disease. This led to a change in the taste of milk and my little one just stopped having it. I had to stop nursing her overnight. This went on for a few months and gradually stopped. After a year, one beautiful morning while playing with my little one her head hit my right breast. Tears rolled down my eyes in pain and I completely blacked out. I went to the pediatrician who advised me to consult a surgeon, who advised an ultrasound biopsy to be done. The reports confirmed it was a non-malignant lump. I was relieved and decided to remove the unwanted lump from my body. However, life had different plans for me, the biopsy of the lump shook me completely. It diagnosed the lump to be malignant.
After going through mastectomy on my right side, 7 painful chemotherapy sessions I realized my family had completely broken down. My husband an extremely emotional person would get worried even with a slight cold or a headache, my dad was too close to me to see me suffer, while my mum was more concerned about protecting me from the world, so I am not questioned by the society about my disease again and again. Today I look at life with a completely different zeal. I always told my parents your daughter is lucky she got Cancer at a place one could cut and throw. But imagine if you could not do this? What if we could not afford the surgery? Imagine if we did not have the funds to cope with the treatment? Today I smile back at time and thank every soul who has helped me in coping with my life. I feel God gave me this new life to help many other women or families to fight this with positivity.
Dr. Anjana’s Experience of Rebuilding her Life:
My daughter, who is the pillar of strength for me had been an ardent sports fanatic and that needed either me or my husband to travel with her very often for classes or tournaments. As my husband is a government employee and I am working in the private sector, we agreed on my quitting the job to facilitate the pursuit of passion. My princess would go to school at 7:30 am and return by 4:00 pm, which meant I had a good nine hours time span to do something. I began with freelance training programs as I always had been a trainer and a passionate speaker. Gradually as time went by, I started getting a lot of assignments through recommendations. Initially, it wasn’t easy to get into this space without prior experience, but I believe if you are determined to do something the path automatically gets paved.
Dr. Anjana’s Publications and the Podcast:
Being a theater artist I had a commanding voice and I decided to try my hand on a podcast. Initially I wasn’t sure how to go about it but my TEDx talk was something I recorded first. Got some amazing reviews and then the rest was history. I plan to record my stories (am a story blogger) for which I have had multiple requests.
Dr. Anjana’s Message for the Readers:
Life is to live hardships is the God’s way of saying you are stronger than you think. Never lose belief in yourself and remember he may be answering your prayers, in ways you do not expect it to be. As God has his own ways of blessing us all.
Reach out to Dr. Anjana:
Reach her via email: Anjana.vk01@gmail.com
Connect with her on LinkedIn.
