Six-pack abs helped him breathe for life

AHMEDABAD: Six-pack abs are guaranteed to win admiring glances from women. For Dharmendra Limbani (22), the washboard stomach, however, helped him breathe for his life, say doctors.
Dharmendra’s cancerous tumor was tagged inoperable as it relapsed and affected a major part of his diaphragm — the muscle below the lungs that contracts and relaxes, allowing the lung to help us exhale and inhale.
Dharmendra was put on palliative chemotherapy but his young age — he was only 20 then — forced doctors to look for ways to help him. “People are known to live on one lung. But no textbook references were available worldwide on whether Dharmendra would survive if we removed the right side of his diaphragm as well as 20-25% of the left side. His right lung would not function but with part of the left diaphragm also gone, would he survive the surgery — this was the dilemma for us,” says onco-surgeon at HCG, Dr Mahesh Patel.

Dr Patel says that the confidence to operate on Dharmendra came from the six-pack abs he sported from hours of laboring at his father’s farm in Dahisara, Kutch. “While the diaphragm is a major muscle for breathing, accessory muscles — neck, inter-coastal and abdominal — kick into action to facilitate breathing when the diaphragm is compromised. We were hopeful his strong abdominal muscles would compensate for the partial loss of his diaphragm,” says Dr Patel.
Hope was realized when 15 days after the surgery, Dharmendra was weaned off the ventilator. Initially, breathing was painful and laborious. Nine months later, Dharmendra now plays cricket and runs a flight of stairs without breaking his breath — his lung function is 100%. “I never worked out in a gym. I am naturally muscular. Probably, it is God’s gift to help me fight the onslaught of disease,” says Dharmendra, who has been fighting the rare Askin tumor since he was 17. He dropped out of class 11 as he was unwell and now designs wedding cards.