For the latest episode of the All About Her podcast, Soha Ali Khan invited her sister Saba Ali Khan and Dr Mazda Turel to talk about brain tumours and what constitutes a healthy brain. The jewellery designer opened up about being diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was 27 and going under the knife in 2006.
Saba Ali Khan On Feeling ‘Shattered’ After Brain Tumour Diagnosis
Recalling the diagnosis, Saba Ali Khan told Soha that one day she went out with a friend and suddenly fainted. She wasn’t feeling well and thought that it might be due to her stomach issues, as her stomach had always been sensitive.
“And I just fainted… I had never really blanked out before. This time, I was very uncomfortable,” Saba said, recounting the incident as if it happened yesterday. For her, fainting was associated with fluctuations in blood pressure.
She knew that something was wrong with her health. Before she could get up and regain consciousness, she again blacked out. “I went back into a complete blank. And that got me anxious,” she said.
Saba shared that it took her 20 to 25 minutes to regain consciousness. “I was still hazy,” she said, adding that she went for an MRI, and the doctors found a shadow in the third ventricle of her brain. She was diagnosed with a colloid cyst, a rare but non-cancerous growth filled with gelatinous fluid, because of the location where it was found.
Six months after the diagnosis, she underwent surgery, after which doctors diagnosed her with pilocytic astrocytoma, a slow-growing and benign WHO Grade 1 brain or spinal cord tumour. “It can only be diagnosed when you are under the knife,” Saba said on the podcast.
The jewellery designer added, “It was something very new, and something I had never expected.”
Saba Ali Khan Felt Emotional After The Brain Tumour Diagnosis
Speaking about the 2006 health scare, Saba Ali Khan shared that she felt numb. “Nothing felt normal after that. One day you are fine, and the next minute, you are told that you are going to have brain surgery. It’s not like an appendix. It suddenly shatters you in a way, but it empowers you as well because you know that you have to deal with it,” she told her sister Soha.
She also revealed that during this time, she was on an emotional roller coaster ride. “I would suddenly find myself crying and not realise why. It is also because you are coping with news you weren’t expecting to receive,” Saba said, concluding.