Six Chemos. One Surgery. Going Home Cured.

Al-Muhamadi begins his story the way many people from his part of the world begin everything important: with a prayer. ‘In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.’ It is not decoration. It is the frame through which he understood every step of what came next — the diagnosis, the chemotherapy, the journey, and eventually, the recovery.

He is a citizen of Baghdad, Iraq. He did not expect, when his stomach cancer was confirmed, that the road to his cure would take him from his hometown in Iraq to Delhi and then to Bangalore — more than 3,000 miles from where he started. He could not have known, in those first frightening weeks after the diagnosis, that he would one day be sitting in a Bangalore hospital room, six days post-surgery, describing the medical staff around him as ‘really good’ and counting the days until he could fly home.

But that is where this story ends. The beginning was much harder.

The diagnosis was made in Baghdad by Dr. Yahya Al-Mohsen. Stomach cancer — gastric carcinoma. Al-Muhamadi does not describe in detail the symptoms that brought him to the doctor, or the tests that preceded the verdict. He describes, instead, what happened after: the treatment began.

 Six chemotherapy sessions. This is the standard neoadjuvant approach in stomach cancer — chemotherapy given before surgery to shrink the tumour, improve the chance of complete removal, and test whether the cancer responds to systemic treatment. Six cycles is not a short course. It is months of treatment — the accumulated fatigue, the nausea, the days when the only thing you are trying to do is get through to the next one.

 Al-Muhamadi completed all six. He did not stop. He finished what was started.

 “I underwent six chemotherapy sessions, then I went to Delhi, but couldn’t find a solution there.”

— Al-Muhamadi, Baghdad, Iraq

After the chemotherapy, the question was surgery. And it was here — at the junction between the medicine he had already received and the operation that needed to follow — that Baghdad’s resources reached their limit. The kind of surgical expertise he needed was not available locally. He had to travel.

India was the logical destination. It is the country most accessible to patients from the Middle East seeking advanced medical care — geographically close, English-speaking, home to some of the best surgical centres on the continent. Delhi is the natural first port of call: the largest city, the most recognisable medical corridor.

 Al-Muhamadi went to Delhi. He looked. He consulted. And he did not find what he needed.

 He does not elaborate on what was missing. Perhaps the specific robotic surgical expertise. Perhaps the approach he had been researching. Perhaps, simply, the confidence in the surgical team that a patient in his situation needs in order to say yes. Whatever the reason, Delhi was a stop on the journey, not the destination.

He kept searching. And he found a name: Dr. Sandeep Nayak. MACS Clinic. Bangalore.

 “After that, I went to Bengaluru, where Dr. Sanjeev was located, at one of the best and most organised hospitals with top-level medical staff.”

— Al-Muhamadi, describing his arrival at MACS Clinic, Bangalore

The note about the organisation matters. When you have been through six chemotherapy sessions in Baghdad and a failed consultation attempt in Delhi, and you are now standing in a hospital in a city you have never been to before, in a country where you don’t speak the primary language — the feeling of a well-run institution, of calm and competent staff, of a place that knows what it is doing — is not a small comfort. It is the foundation on which you decide to trust someone with your life.

 Al-Muhamadi trusted MACS Clinic. He trusted Dr. Sandeep Nayak.

Stomach cancer surgery — gastrectomy — is one of the most technically demanding operations in abdominal oncology. The stomach sits in the centre of a crowded upper abdomen, surrounded by the liver, the spleen, the pancreas, major blood vessels, and the structures that connect the digestive tract above and below. Removing a tumour-bearing stomach or a portion of it, clearing the lymph nodes around it, and reconstructing a functional digestive pathway — all of this requires precision that rewards experience.

 Al-Muhamadi had come to the right place. Dr. Sandeep Nayak performs robotic gastrectomy using the da Vinci Xi surgical system — the same platform he uses for all his complex cancer operations, and one for which he has developed specific expertise across hundreds of procedures.

Al-Muhamadi describes the surgery as ‘the procedure I had hoped for.’ That phrasing — not simply ‘the surgery’ but ‘the procedure I had hoped for’ — suggests he had researched. He knew what he was looking for. He had not found it in Delhi. He found it in Bangalore.

 Robotic gastrectomy through the da Vinci Xi system offers several specific advantages over open surgery in stomach cancer:

Al-Muhamadi’s six cycles of chemotherapy before surgery were not a delay to the real treatment. They were part of it. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy in gastric cancer has a specific purpose: to shrink the primary tumour, potentially downstage the disease, and improve the likelihood that the surgeon can achieve clear margins at the time of resection. Al-Muhamadi had completed the full course. By the time he reached Bangalore for surgery, the chemotherapy had done its preparatory work. Dr. Nayak operated in the most favourable possible post-chemotherapy window.

Al-Muhamadi does not describe the surgical details — he was, understandably, asleep for them. What he describes is the experience on the other side: waking up, being cared for by a staff he describes as ‘really good,’ recovering in a hospital he had already identified as among the best he had seen. The operation itself — the tumour removal, the reconstruction of his digestive pathway, the lymph node clearance — was completed by Dr. Nayak and his team.

 “The surgery was performed by Dr. Sandeep using the procedure I had hoped for. After that, the care continued. The hospital staff were really good.”

— Al-Muhamadi, on his surgery and recovery at MACS Clinic

After major abdominal surgery, the recovery period in hospital is a specific kind of time. There is pain, managed and gradually receding. There is the first sip of water, then the first small meal, then the first walk along the hospital corridor. There is the monitoring — the blood tests, the wound checks, the moment the drains come out. And there is the steady accumulation of small milestones that tell a patient: you are going to be all right.

 Al-Muhamadi moved through those milestones in six to seven days.

 “I stayed about six to seven days in the hospital, then I got discharged during the recovery period. Now, I’m in perfect health and well-being.”

— Al-Muhamadi

Six to seven days is a good post-operative timeline for robotic gastrectomy. The minimally invasive approach — five small ports instead of a large abdominal incision — means less pain, earlier mobilisation, and faster progression through the recovery milestones. Al-Muhamadi was not lingering. He was healing.

 He notes the nursing and medical staff specifically. This is not throwaway gratitude. For an international patient — a man from Baghdad, navigating a hospital in a foreign city, surrounded by people speaking languages he may not understand, far from his family — the quality of the human interaction around him is not secondary to the clinical care. It is part of the care. The fact that he found it at MACS Clinic, and that he uses the words ‘really good’ to describe it, tells you something about what he experienced there.

When Al-Muhamadi says he is in ‘perfect health and well-being,’ he is speaking from a very recent post-surgical vantage point. The full picture of recovery from gastrectomy is longer than six days — it continues for weeks and months after discharge. But the direction is clear, and the foundation has been set.

•  Dietary adjustment — after stomach removal or reduction, patients eat smaller meals more frequently. The body adapts. Most patients find that within weeks to months, eating becomes comfortable and satisfying again.
• Follow-up care — regular CT scans and blood tests will monitor for recurrence. This surveillance is critical and continues for years.
• Vitamin supplementation — the stomach plays a role in absorbing B12 and certain other nutrients. Supplements replace this function after gastrectomy.
• Gradual return to normal life — most patients return to their pre-surgery life within two to three months of the operation. Baghdad is waiting.

 “Looking forward to my recovery and returning to Baghdad.”

— Al-Muhamadi — his final words from Bangalore

Al-Muhamadi is not an unusual case in the context of Dr. Nayak’s practice. Patients travel to MACS Clinic from across the Middle East, from Africa, from Southeast Asia — from anywhere that the combination of advanced robotic cancer surgery and accessible international healthcare infrastructure does not exist locally. What brings them specifically to Dr. Nayak is a pattern worth understanding.

At the end of her story, Aparna is direct. She is not speaking as a medical authority. She is speaking as a 35-year-old woman who heard the word cancer and came out the other side dancing.

“My cancer journey has taught me the importance of early detection and advanced medical care. I hope my story will inspire other patients who’s going through a tough phase in their life. Early detection is early prevention.”

— Aparna, Thyroid Cancer Survivor, Bangalore