Hello, I am Pooja Bhagchandani, and this is my story I want to share with you. I was born on February 12, 1982 in Madrid. I am an extremely restless Aquarius. My father is from India and my mother is also Hindu but was born in Tenerife. My father, Kumar Bhagchandani, arrived in Madrid during the partition of Pakistan with India. At 14 years old without having a penny, he started his first business and married my mother, Romina Melwani. He did very well, and they had my older sister who is 43 years old. I am currently 42 years old.
We lived in the best neighborhood on Calle Princesa in front of El Corte Inglés, and then we moved to La Moraleja. My dad, with his dream of greatness, was very strict, and my mom was very innocent – 13 years apart. We lived there until I turned 11 and then went to Santiago de Chile. It was hard to go from so much wealth to poverty. We stayed in the apartment of a friend of my father for two months. I hated the whole environment – the slang words like hueon that were heard frequently. So, we grew up with a lot of emotional turmoil. My mother started working when she was used to a life of luxury. I was very rebellious, and my sister was a bit quieter, but we were always very close.
I graduated from high school at 17 years old and started working a month later. I went with my group of friends to the beach, and there I had a giant episode of psychosis. My sister had to come pick me up and take me to several psychiatrists. No one could save me, until one treated me and put me in a psychiatric hospital in Larraya up in the mountains.
There, they gave me four sessions of electroshock, then they treated me with strong medications, and I recovered.
I then studied graphic production for two years before I became an individual entrepreneur. I started bringing neoprene cases from China for computers. At that time, I was the first person with the brand Urbano. I sold alone through a website that I made myself. I did very well. Then, I worked in a real estate agency, and then in a call center for a short time. I did many commercials and sang on TV on channel 13. I was given a role as an actress in a series of XFEA2 on Mega Visión channel. I never studied singing, but people loved my voice despite smoking a lot of cigarettes!
I was the first woman to import HDMI cables. I made very good friends with my clients and easily convinced them how good my product was. The cable was very new back then – for MAC and DVI as well. I delivered cases to my clients until the iPhone was released, and I was the first to travel to the USA to bring the first gray iPhone. I sold it very easily, so I learned to unlock them because they always came locked. They were always launched in the USA and Europe first, so I brought more and sold those too.
My father didn’t like my lifestyle because I wasn’t a disciplined person with schedules, so he forced me to work at a company called Flores where they sold women’s underwear, pajamas, and swimsuits. They offered me 150 euros a month, all of which went to gasoline, but I accepted and started the shift from 8 am to 6 pm. I started there, but I quickly climbed the ranks until the fourth month when I was assigned as the manager of the pajamas and swimsuits section. I had two people under my charge so logically I asked for a raise. I easily found suppliers and then they sent me to China.
One day, while driving to buy samples from the competition, my eye started to hurt a lot. I called my mother, and she told me to come home. I arrived and my vision worsened until I lost total vision in one eye. They said it was called optic neuritis. I had a lumbar puncture and an MRI. Nothing showed up so they kept me in the ICU with intravenous cortisone. The next year, I had my third attack, except this time, it was also happening in my other eye. They did all the tests, but nothing showed up, so I was treated again with cortisone for five days at 1000 grams. I gained quite a bit of weight, and when I recovered, I filled myself with courage and traveled again to Miami for the swim show, then to Las Vegas.
I was not afraid of anything. I was a warrior.
In 2010, I met a man named Cristian Araos who worked at Zara selling men’s clothing. He proposed to me, and I accepted, and we had a very private ceremony. I must say he was very good at drinking. I realized over time that he couldn’t control himself. But that night I got married, I fainted and was immediately taken to the clinic. They did an MRI of my brain and saw that there was a giant tumor that required a biopsy. All my contacts on Facebook and my mother’s friends, who are very religious, and the demigods made a prayer chain for me. Finally, they removed the piece. It was white matter, similar to multiple sclerosis but it wasn’t.
In the meantime, I opened a phone repair shop. I sold cases and more items. My husband was in charge but didn’t do a good job. I told him in the clinic when they did the biopsy to end our rental contract. They wanted to intervene but it turns out I was already expecting my first child, so he had to take care of me. I could not take any medication, and I quit smoking. I had my son on May 11, 2012.
To save my marriage, I decided to take my husband away from his friends. We traveled to India and he became a kind of ultra-spiritual monk and I had to work looking for suppliers. I traveled to a new place every month looking for new fashion designs. That year I ended up in the ICU seven times because my lesion was getting worse and after 5 days it would go down again. That’s when I started with self-help books – Louis Hay, Wayne Dyer, Joe Dispenza. I was taking more than ten medications and wasn’t sleeping well.
I desperately needed help, so I found Johns Hopkins and got an appointment with a very well-known doctor.
Surprisingly, my dad and I managed to travel. We got first class, and we didn’t pay anything extra. It was a luxury to travel from India directly to New York, where my dad’s sister and her husband live. They lost their only son in the twin towers. We stayed with them. Dad drove to Baltimore, and I sent all my MRIs to Johns Hopkins. They did a very good job. I was given a medication, Imuran (azathioprine), that had never been suggested to me in Chile or in India. They told me I had NMOSD (neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder).
My father got seriously ill in New York. They detected a bacteria that required him to be admitted to the hospital for more than a month. We were both in critical condition. My dad traveled to help me, and he also relapsed.
I arrived in Chile, my ex left me two days after leaving the USA. I had a broken heart, my apartment was rented, my parents were not there at that moment, and we had no house, so I stayed at my friend Daniela Peñafiel’s house who took care of us. I then went to China alone to look for suppliers. I did very well. I earned a big commission of 20,000 euros from an order, but I did it all by myself – translating, reviewing samples, etc.
I think the main factor in my illness is that I never stopped - I never asked anyone for help. I think that was my mistake.
I was super well with the medication they gave me until 2019, when my optic nerve inflamed and my lesion increased in size. They gave me so much cortisone that I couldn’t sleep for six days and that led me to a second psychosis. I was admitted to The Catholic Hospital for four days. They wanted to give me electroshock but I begged my mother not to. I left and began treatment with rituximab, which also worked for my condition.
I was tired. I couldn’t continue, but my son’s father never paid anything, just the minimum. I continued my trading business, traveled to China, and did business alone with other companies that sold pajamas. They asked me for many. I relapsed in the clinic four times, was given so much cortisone that I got Cushing’s syndrome. I developed steroid diabetes, where I had to inject insulin every day. I gained a lot of weight. The pandemic arrived, and I was very depressed wanting to escape from Chile and its environment. Then my father passed away in 2021. I learned a lot from him. My mother was left with a large amount of Indian rice. We sold everything, even my furniture, and finally my wish came true. My son, my mother and I went to Tenerife – finally to turn my life around in 2022.
Eight days in Tenerife, I lost my speech. I was hospitalized for almost one month, unable to speak. It was Broca’s aphasia. Slowly I recovered my speech, but it’s not 100%. When I get nervous it becomes worse, and people are not able to understand. Meanwhile, I was sending emails from Chile to China, all alone again, and I was diagnosed with MOGAD, a chronic degenerative disease. I have been living with this disease for 18 years. I am on intravenous treatment that I receive every six months called rituximab. I continue with a lot of faith and a vision board, signing checks from the universe. No one can believe that my legs, arms, and eyes work. I thank the self-help books that helped me a lot. No problem walking, no problem in my mobility, only a lot of headaches that became migraines and treatments with intravenous eptinezumab. Finally got 80% disability but still waiting for my monthly money. I pray to God that they accept all the papers.
I couldn’t stop working, but I still couldn’t talk properly with clients.
So I thought I would create an online business. I created my own designs for pets to send to Europe, but with companies like Temu and Shein, it’s not going well. So I want to show my shop to my US friends! You can see it here
By Pooja
Thank you for sharing your story.
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