It’s that time of the year again when various NGOs bombard our TV and radio stations with campaigns on breast cancer awareness. When our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram timelines are flooded with pictures of women in pink t-shirts going from door to door in communities, schools and various organisations all trying to preach one thing: early detection and prompt treatment.
October, which is the breast cancer awareness month, is marked in countries across the world every year. The primary aim is to increase attention and support for the awareness, early detection and treatment as well as palliative care of this disease.
An elderly family friend reached out to me early in July with a request. ‘I want to share my story with you in October’. Prior to our conversation, I did not know of her battle with breast cancer. I had heard talk about her being sick, but in the typical Nigerian context, her illness was hidden and only very close family knew what she was going through.
She was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago, at age 34. Mairo* was newly married and just starting to get anxious that she had not gotten pregnant after almost 10 months of marriage. Her relatives had started to drop subtle hints and despite her calm resolve, decided to go to the hospital to be checked. She usually had infrequent menstrual periods and was convinced, after browsing many internet pages, that she had hormonal imbalance. The first doctor she consulted, reassured her and gave her some drugs to enhance ovulation. When she failed to get pregnant after four months, she returned to the hospital and this time was referred to another doctor. Management of infertility usually requires a thorough physical examination of a woman’s body parts and it was during screening that the doctor felt a small lump in her left breast. He sent her for a barrage of tests and asked her to stay positive. Mairo, who was still more concerned about her inability to conceive at the time, was not worried. After all, a lot of her friends she knew had breast lumps, which had been removed in their twenties. She, therefore, went ahead with her tests, blissfully ignorant.
Two weeks later, she was diagnosed with Stage IIA Invasive Lobular Breast Cancer and her world came crashing. She told me that she immediately called her husband and burst into tears. For days, she refused to leave her bedroom, sinking into a pit of depression until her mother decided enough was enough. A family conference comprising her husband, parents and sisters was called. They had raised funds between them and promised to give all the financial, emotional and physical support she needed. Her siblings divided the tasks between them and everyone was given a day of the week where they would accompany her to the hospital. An Islamic cleric was asked to counsel her, to strengthen her faith and resolve for the battle ahead.
Her battle with breast cancer started three months later with surgical removal of her left breast. Since then, she has had 16 rounds of chemo, three surgeries, 11 blood transfusions and 15 radiation treatments. Having decided to fully embrace treatment, Mairo read all she could regarding the subject. She told me about the side effects of chemotherapy. Logically, she knew she would lose all her hair, because of the drugs coursing through her body, however, she was not prepared for the other side effects. Most people think chemotherapy will make you lose a significant amount of weight. Mairo was under that assumption as well. Little did she know that the steroids given before all 16 rounds of chemo would blow her weight up and completely wreck her sleep. The palms of her hands and feet literally turned black, like she had been burned. Her fingernail beds lifted off and a few fell off. She was in so much pain, she recalls passing out in the bathroom one night after vomiting. Her husband only discovered her, drenched in her vomit, at dawn, when he woke up to pray. Aside from losing the hair on her head, she lost her eyelashes, eyebrows, nose hair, body hair and hair on her private parts.
So many times, she admitted, she wanted to give up. She heard stories about miracle cures performed by ‘mallams’ in faraway villages and was tempted to throw caution to the wind and go in search of a cure. Anything was better than that dreadful chemotherapy. Online, she read about marvellous stories of various Indian alternative medicine organisations, all claiming to cure breast cancer ‘naturally’. Nevertheless, her family insisted that an alternative means would only be sought, if all else failed.
However, all the pain she endured was nothing compared to when she was told that her treatment would decrease her likelihood of ever having a baby. She recalled feeling numb throughout the day and later woke her husband in the night to tell him ‘Please, divorce me’. Guilt, like a stack of stones, crushed her. She felt utterly useless as a woman, like a burden and pleaded with him to let her go, so that he could marry another. Their relationship became strained when she returned home when the guilt became too much for her.
Mairo’s treatment lasted for 18 months and in that period, she lost her job at a private pension company. She had risen to an assistant director after working with them for eight years, yet the company had written her a curt, yet polite letter stating chronic ill-health as a reason to let her go. She moved back in with her parents and her mother took over her care. Slowly, she was weaned off her medication and the real test of waiting began.
A person is only said to be completely cancer-free when he or she has no signs and symptoms and no microscopic evidence of cancer for five years and above. Even with this definition, some cancer cells are able to exist and manifest up to eight years later. During her years of waiting, Mairo told me of the confusion she felt- what next? Should she return to her husband? Should she look for another job? Was it worth the trouble? What if the cancer returned? Could she endure another round of treatment? Was she not better off dead? Her family, she recalled, were her greatest source of strength.
Six years after she was first diagnosed, her doctor dared to pronounce her cancer-free. Mairo told me she made sujud shukr right there in the consulting room. She went home, locked herself in the bathroom and cried tears of relief and sadness. Relief, that the wait was over and a pand of overwhelming sadness at the idea that she had survived. She had joined an online support group over the years and many of her friends had succumbed to metastatic breast cancer. Survivor’s guilt, I realised, truly does exist.
Today, Mairo is cancer-free, and has returned to living her life, as best as she can. But what about those who can’t? What about those who are still battling with this disease? What about people who have lost loved ones? What about those who can’t afford treatment? What do we do?
It’s therefore important to arm ourselves with knowledge and be our own advocates. After all, we have only one life to live.
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