'Doctors warned I'll bleed to death': Ex-ISRO chief S Somanath opens up on discovering cancer

Former ISRO chairman Dr S Somanath opened up about his personal battle with cancer and how he managed to continue working while undergoing treatment. Speaking in an interview with Sansad TV, Somanath shared how he discovered his cancer on the morning of the Aditya-L1 launch and continued with the mission before traveling to Chennai for further diagnosis.

"On that day of the Aditya L1 launch, I realised...morning, I went for a scan. On my own insistence, an ultrasound scan was done. Generally, ultrasound scans don’t indicate all of this, but I had the fortune that even such a simple scan detected that there is an issue. Though I realised it in the morning, I went through the launch that afternoon, and after that launch was over, I went to Chennai to do further investigation to confirm it in that evening," the top scientist said.

Despite his diagnosis, he remained composed, attributing his calmness to early detection. "I was not perturbed by it because I was lucky that in cancer cases, it's very important to detect early. So it's very important for people to understand about symptoms and then make them aware that they should not ignore it," he said. Somanath also spoke on the importance of regular checkups, especially for common cancers that are often diagnosed late, such as breast cancer.

Were there any tough moments any difficult situations, Somanath described how treatment, especially chemotherapy, posed severe challenges. "When you go through chemotherapy, you can understand — you go through very severe physiological problems because your taste vanishes, your blood counts, your white corpus cells count, go to alarmingly low levels. And you will end up with internal bleeding. I had internal bleeding many times," he said.

Somanath shared how doctors advised him against traveling due to the risk of fatal bleeding. "I was allowed not to fly or travel to Delhi to come from Bangalore. But I had no option because I was a secretary, I needed to travel. So I told my doctors, 'I'm not going to listen to you.' Whether my blood count was reaching almost 20,000 — it has to be 2 lakh plus — they warned me that I should never travel. They said if you get bleeding in your ears, you will bleed to death. I said nothing doing, I am going to travel."

Doctors stationed monitoring teams in both Bangalore and Delhi to ensure his safety. "But I said, ‘I am going to do it. My work is more important. Things will become all right,’" he said, adding that staying focused on work helped him overcome the physical and mental struggles.

Somanath also highlighted the power of mental strength and concentration. "Your mind also goes through some cyclic things where concentration becomes very important, but the focus on the work will always change everything. The human mind is such a powerful thing that when you really focus, all these are secondary," he said. "That's the bigger message I want to tell people — even under stressful work conditions, you can still handle it very well."

Somanath said it gave him "firsthand knowledge" about overcoming cancer and supporting others who face similar challenges. "It was a good experience because I have firsthand knowledge about how to overcome this and then help people who encounter it to overcome the psychological pressures and the physical trauma. I was happy that I was deeply engrossed in the work of what is needed, so I forgot about everything else. And this happened as a parallel track," he said.

Aditya-L1, India’s first solar observatory mission, was launched on September 2, 2023, to study the Sun from the Lagrangian point 1 (L1). The mission successfully entered its targeted halo orbit on January 6, 2024.