Sometimes what gives you courage to fight off the worst in life is nothing but positive attitude. You fall flat, yet you keep thinking of getting back on your feet and do all those things you always wanted to do in life. It works!
Ask Sameer Ahmed and he would tell you how. Sameer, a 31-year-old Canadian expatriate of Indian origin, survived Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, twice. He was first diagnosed at the age of 24. He fought it off. It returned in six months. He defeated it, again.
Strong enough, he is now out conquering some of the most dauntingly challenging mountain peaks in the world. In a recent attempt, he scaled 5600 feet on Mt. Aconcagua in Argentina, bad weather stopping him from reaching the summit.  
And he is doing all this for a cause. His ‘Climb Over Cancer’ campaign is for cancer awareness in Qatar and to raise funds for cancer charity. In an interview, Sameer shares with Community the story of his fight with the deadly disease and his inspiration to scale mountains.
He grabbed the opportunity when one of his cousins from the United States, with experience in mountaineering, offered Sameer to join him on the trek to Mt. Aconcagua.
“It had not really crossed my mind. But then I thought why not. I thought let’s try something different and get out of the comfort zone. We started talking about it and I said why not do something for cancer awareness. And that is how ‘Climb Over Cancer’ came up,” Sameer recalls.
A calm, lucid speaker, this young athlete is also a basketball player. He intends to team up with Qatar Charity for his next climbing expedition to raise funds for awareness campaign.
In the first attempt, he says, he was focusing on raising awareness. In his preparations for the climb, he did altitude training and general hiking in Nepal where he also visited the earthquake-hit areas.
“That was pretty tough but Mt. Aconcagua was way harder. I was going strong until the end. I probably had a few days left in me to be able to get to the summit but the weather was really bad. The winds were 100 km/hr at the summit so it was not safe,” says Sameer.
He would however, love to give it another shot. It is expensive and takes time. He hopes to attempt some other mountains before he makes his second attempt in Argentina. And this time, he plans to take a team with him.
“I have already spoken to a lot of people who are very interested. It can be cancer survivors or others,” he hopes.  
Now running a contracting company, Sameer was studying to go to law school in Canada when he was diagnosed with cancer. And the symptoms started appearing close to his examinations. He thought it was just burn out.  
“You just feel lethargic, body pain and loss of appetite and the latter is probably the biggest symptom that you should pay attention to. Then more rare symptoms appeared like bronchitis but I thought it was my asthma. I was giving myself excuses,” he recalls.
“This went on for two months. Then I went to doctors, told them a few things because I thought it was all related. They gave me medicine asking me to return if it got worse, but the fever would go by itself in a couple of days and I would think it was all well. I would never go back so they never tested,” he goes on.
In summer that year, he came to see his parents in Doha. His drastic weight loss, sunken cheeks and fragile physical stature worried his parents. Something was wrong. And then a lump appeared in his neck.
After going through private clinics here, he contacted a doctor in Hyderabad, India. His biopsy was done and within a week he was diagnosed with blood cancer. But Sameer did not panic.
“I read my report again and again and I realised it was serious. Then my first thought was that there should be some solution to this problem. I said, ‘okay we have to find the treatment and we have to do whatever it takes right now,’” says Sameer.
His treatment began immediately because it was already stage IV-B, the most advanced stage. It was in his chest, neck and lungs. In India, he went through chemotherapy for six months with complete bed rest. Sameer, however, had a support system in place.
His grandmother was there. His mother got leave from work and spent time with him. He believes support system plays a big role when someone is going through something like this.
“There were definitely times when I felt this is the worst thing that can happen to me. Why is this happening and stuff like that, but because I had a support system around me and people encouraged me, I felt hope,” he narrates.
“And I also thought I was still so young and that there was so much that I wanted to do. I always felt like my life had not started yet. There was so much I wanted to do and I needed to get better to be able to do it. That was partly the motivation that had me going,” he adds.
Sameer loved playing basketball. He was always visualising himself back on the basketball court, being able to play again. It was about the little things like being able to go to his favourite restaurant and eat his favourite food that had him going.
Bearing the chemotherapy ordeal, he was on his way to recovery when he was re-diagnosed. This time he was in Canada and he was prepared. “I was like, okay what do I do now and this is why I think God is great because Canada is one of the few places where stem cell transplant is legal and they have been doing it since 1970s and they have perfected it,” he recalls.
He got his stem cell transplant done but the chemotherapy this time, Sameer recalls, was ten times harder than the first one. His studies got disrupted but he says his school was good in a way that it allowed him to submit essays to finish the semester and then he went back to complete the course.
He decided to come to Qatar, find work here and live with his parents. And it was here that he realised there was not a lot being done in terms of cancer awareness.
People were not talking about cancer. Sameer approached the Supreme Council of Health and volunteered to be a spokesperson for cancer awareness. “My whole interest was to talk about it as much as possible. Even if people don’t want to hear it, they are forced to hear and then it might just click somewhere, sometime and might just help,” says Sameer.
He says if you figure out your symptoms early enough, you can still be cured and it might not recur. And that is where the awareness comes in.
Today, he is leading a healthy life and plays basketball in leagues in Qatar with players who are semi-professionals. Sameer thanks his sponsors Aspetar, Go Sport, The Look Company and TechnoBlue for supporting him in his hiking campaign.