It was the summer of 1999 when Ashvin Lad began to suspect something was wrong. An intense pain that had lingered for months was getting worse, prompting him to finally see the doctor.
In October, he got his diagnosis: stage 2 testicular cancer.
Lad's disease happened to coincide with Lance Armstrong's 1999 Tour de France victory and Livestrong campaign, which raised awareness for the cyclist's own bout with testicular cancer.
"I really owe a lot to Lance Armstrong. Had he not won that tour, instead of being diagnosed at stage 2, I would have been diagnosed at stage 4." Lad said. "I would have waited longer and longer to get checked out."
Not only did Lad draw inspiration from Armstrong, he also borrowed his doctor. Lad, working at the time in Bloomington, IN, commuted weekly to Indianapolis to see Dr. Lawrence Einhorn, who famously led the medical team that treated Armstrong's cancer. Lad was connected to Einhorn through contacts at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, where Lad went to college.
Lad had surgery to remove the cancerous testicle, underwent four months of chemo therapy, and had a second surgery to remove lymph nodes in his abdomen where the cancer had spread. One day, while Lad was sitting in the hospital, he was watching an ESPN feature on Lance Armstrong that interviewed Dr. Einhorn.
"Here's my doctor on ESPN being interviewed while he’s sitting right next to me," he recalled. "That moment, I really knew I could beat this thing."
After five grueling months, Lad indeed beat the disease, and he received a clean bill of health on February 8, 2000. It was a moment and experience that changed his life, Lad said, and gave him an entirely new perspective.
if it wasn’t for cancer, I would not be doing Breakwater right now,"
"A lot of cancer survivors will tell you this, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me," he said. "It really changed not just my perspective, but the way I approached life. Before I was all about living a certain way, doing certain things, and living a structured environment. And now I’ve gone from that to always wanting to try new things."
Lad's latest endeavor is his most ambitious yet. He is the co-founder of Breakwater Chicago, a company that's building a floating island on Lake Michigan that aims to be part yacht, part island resort with bars, restaurants, pools and shops. The idea, which could cost as much as $23 million to build, is to turn Lake Michigan into a tourist destination and a way for Chicago boaters and non-boaters to use the Lake year round (it plans to incorporate an enclosed element so people can use it during the winter).
"There's really no doubt that if it wasn’t for cancer, I would not be doing Breakwater right now," Lad said. "I was very risk adverse [before cancer], and now I roll with the punches. I was very structured and rigid. I never thought I would be an entrepreneur."
"[Cancer] gave me the whole mentality I needed to build a startup," he added.
Breakwater has been an idea now for more than three years, but Lad says the project is moving along, and the plan is to begin construction sometime this year. Lad said the company has received the approvals is needs to move forward from the Coast Guard, Department of Public Health, and Department of Natural Resources, and he and his co-founder Beau D'Arcy are tweaking the final designs now. However, the project will still need final approvals after the vessel is constructed and inspected.
Lad sees Breakwater as a point of civic pride for Chicago, a city that persevered through adversity and overcame, a trait Lad knows very well.
"Not often can you make something that's iconic for the city you live in and give back to the people and to the city," he said. "Knowing what it would take to make this happen, the hours, bootstrapping, knocking on 10,000 doors for fundraising, I wouldn’t have done it had I not gone through that experience."
Correction: Lad met Einhorn through connections at his undergrad, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology--not Indiana. Also, While Breakwater has received approvals to move forward, the story has been updated to clarify that final approvals won't be given until after the vessel is constructed and inspected.
