Losing a part of oneself

Life has an interesting way of colouring our perspectives. We could be experiencing it and looking at it from a certain angle and then a series of closely related happenings around us simply turn our experience very much like our gaze turns while observing countries on a globe. It is as if the world around us is urging us to look at things we had been repeatedly putting under the carpet in the hope they would never turn up again.

The issue of life and death has been very figure for me lately. Could be because I am sharing the experience of two close friends while they are fiercely battling cancer. Maybe I was affected by the senseless deaths of so many people in the span of a month at the explosive hands of fireworks or by the vibes of a recent workshop I did about family constellations and the way our dead family members affect the lives of those left behind. All I know is that I am finding myself very often trying to understand the meaning we give to life, how much we appreciate its worth when all is well oiled and running smoothly, how much we really cherish the potential that was given to us when we put ourselves in the bull’s eye of unnecessary danger in our work practices, when we drive our cars or practise certain hobbies or when we simply shut our senses to all the health warnings and imbibe our systems with all the toxicities within our reach.

Unfortunately, most of us appreciate what we have when a threat slams at squint distance in front of our eyes or when we actually lose something we might have ignored or even loathed in us in the near past. Women, most especially, are always finding faults with the way they look, the state of their hair, the size of their bosoms and pelvic areas, the smoothness of their skins; until disease strikes and all the faults which had been so foreground suddenly pale into the background of sheer devastation and pain.

Breast cancer is deemed the worst enemy of any woman in this respect especially since it tends to strike them at the prime of their life, when they are usually at the peaks of their motherhood, careers or family life, bringing them down to unfathomable depths of pain and despair. However, if there is one thing that always strikes me with every individual suffering from cancer that I meet is that the aura around them is also one of resilience, hope and a great will to survive.

These were the emotions that washed over me as I came face to face with Jackie, merely 10 days after she lost her right breast and most of her right axilla to cancer. Although her face was pale, her hair closely cropped to her head and most of her eyebrows and eyelashes had fallen off, a beautiful smile still shone out of her elfin face as she shook hands warmly and ushered me to her small sitting room.

“It has been a year of major upheaval for me,” she says with a sad look in her eyes as her mother hovers close to make sure she is not missing out on any of her daughter’s needs. “I felt the lump in my right breast sometime last December but I only went to see to it two months later cause my mother kept insisting,” she adds with a hint of a smile; “at the time I wasn’t concerned in the least but when I saw the look on the doctor’s face as he examined me, I realised immediately something was wrong even if he did not hint at anything,” she concludes, the look in her eyes speaking volumes of the emotions she must have gone through at the time.

That visit turned out to be the prologue of many other visits, interventions and treatments. The first chapter unfolded at the breast clinic in Mater Dei where she underwent a mammogram, an ultrasound of the breast and no less than three attempts at biopsying the lump to assess its histology. “I felt so scared at the time,” Jackie recalls her eyes and voice choking with tears, “I had just turned 41 and had already been through so much in my life." The tears spill over as she adds “ I kept thinking about my children, my youngest is only five, my mother, and I felt so lost and helpless”.

Jackie confesses that one of the things that disbalanced her the most was the lack of information and psychological support she received. “Although the staff, both at Mater Dei and Boffa hospitals were always very kind, no one ever sat down with me to give me relevant information about my condition, the different treatments available and the possible outcomes and no professional psychological support was ever offered at Mater Dei,” she expresses with a hint of exasperation in her voice. “During my initial visits, the nurses at the Breast Clinic warned me that this was going to be a tough period for me and that it would be a good idea if I garnered as much support as possible from friends and family but that was it; I kept guessing at what was happening to me and this lack of information and professional support made my fear worse; I kept being taken over by the sheer terror of the possibility of the cancer spreading,” she concludes with a shaky voice.

Unlike most cases of breast cancer, where surgery is the first treatment option, Jackie was started with a course of chemotherapy which included six cycles of intravenous injections. “This was the worst phase of it all on many levels,” Jackie explains, "for starters I hated going into Boffa Hospital; it gave me such "an eerie feeling every time with its dull overly clinical interiors, I kept getting the feeling I was never going to get out of there alive.” The dullness spreads in her voice as she continues, “I also used to get very effected with the condition of the other patients at the out-patients clinic, especially the very young ones; they like put more into undeniable perspective what I myself was going through".

The side effects of the chemotherapy were no ride in the park either. Jackie’s gaze turns towards the window as she reminisces, “I vomited a lot with the first cycle of chemotherapy so much so that I needed hospitalisation because of dehydration,” she explains, “and felt continuously weak and listless, especially on the right side of my body; eating and drinking was near impossible and I lost a lot of weight; ironically I found it more difficult to deal with the side effects of the treatment than with the ravages of the cancer itself".

Jackie admits that what devastated her the most, however, was the alarmingly progressive loss of her hair, which started with the second cycle of chemotherapy. “My hair started falling off in tufts, as if all of a sudden it had developed a mind of its own and did not belong to me any more,” she explains her voice thick with emotion, “I just could not bear to look at who I was becoming, I could not even recognise myself anymore, I felt as if there was another person inside me, much stronger than me, who controlled my every emotion, my every move, my every decision”.

Jackie’s right breast was removed some weeks after her last cycle of chemotherapy. “I cannot describe the feeling I had as soon as I opened my eyes after the operation,” she recalls with a hazy look in her eyes, “I had no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes and an empty space on the right side of my chest where once I had my breast; I kept wondering in despair how much more this disease was going to take away from me, if it was ever going to allow me to live a normal life again with my family and dearest friends, if I could ever go to work again or go out, even if for a mere walk without having to spend hours to try to mask the sheer vandalism my body suffered at its hands".

Although the near future doesn’t give out any bright sparks, with the uncertainty of radiotherapy looming in the days ahead, Jackie is still determined to make the most of her life especially for the sake of her youngest daughter. “Despite her age I can safely say she is my greatest pillar of strength,” Jackie admits with a shower of tenderness enveloping her voice "she pampers me all the time and keeps telling me how pretty I still look despite having lost all my hair and now one of my breasts; I wish I could look at myself with her eyes," she concludes with a wry smile.

In my opinion, the drama in all this lies at the way we look at cancer. Most of the time, we are so taken up by the clingy association it has with death and the sheer terror that comes with it that we actually forget the person it has afflicted and the emotional and social drama this person has to go through every single second of his or her existence. Ironically this unconscious fear and thus our avoidance of looking at disease, suffering and death is resulting in the lack of support and understanding and indeed presence which most women with breast cancer, and any person suffering with cancer for that matter, is having to deal with. The awareness we raise during this month should be about this too, this unconscious barrier which if lifted could change the cold chain of loneliness and shame into a pink ribbon of hope and genuine care.