Youth who fought cancer and lived to tell the tale

Nashik: Salim is lucky to be celebrating his 21st birthday in the coming months. An unskilled labourer, he was detected of oral cancer two years ago and had to fight hard to defeat the disease.
Salim is now motivating others in Malegaon to refrain from consuming tobacco and lead a healthy, cancer-free life. Being just 21 years of age, youths in his age group instantly connect with him and take lessons from his story.
Salim, who had never been to school, worked for a mason in his town and began chewing guthka when he was 13-years-old.On turning 19, his parents decided t get him married. But fate took an ugly turn and Salim was detected with oral cancer.
He was then referred to the Referral Hospital in Shalimar for check up.
Oncologist Sanjay Ahire said, "It took us nearly a week to counsel him on staying away from gutkha. We put him on nicotine tablet therapy so that the dependency on gutkha could be brought down. The treatment continued for nearly a month-and-a-half, which included radiation and surgery as well.
Now Salim is 21 years old and completely cured of the deadly disease. There is little chance that he would turn to guthkha again as the pain of the radiation Salim had suffered during the treatment would never not allow him to go back," Ahire said, adding that the plastic surgery had also left a small mark on his cheek.
Dr Sanjay Bondarde, a cancer specialist at Shatabdi Hospital, said that 50% of cancer related cases in men and 25 to 30% in women were due to tobacco, adding that oral cancer, including head and neck cancer, were mainly caused due to tobacco, especially gutkha.