AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

For some, the mere thought of can­cer is enough to send them run­ning. They may ig­nore the warn­ing signs, brush aside their sus­pi­cions and hope it all dis­ap­pears. But for Claudette Stew­art, con­fronting the pos­si­bil­i­ty head-on, lis­ten­ing to her body and hold­ing fast to un­wa­ver­ing faith are the very ac­tions that car­ried her through her jour­ney.

Trust­ing her in­stincts

It all start­ed when the then 43-year-old hair­dress­er dis­cov­ered a lump in her breast. Claudette wast­ed no time in see­ing a doc­tor. She was cer­tain some­thing was wrong. Yet, de­spite trust­ing her own body, her doc­tor dis­missed her con­cerns.

“He would nor­mal­ly ex­am­ine the breast, and he will tell me that it’s noth­ing to wor­ry about. ‘Leave it alone’,” Claudette told Guardian Me­dia.

“You know when you have that in­ner feel­ing, that gut feel­ing. By in­ves­ti­gat­ing it, he told me he would in­ject it and try to get some flu­id to do some tests. And you know, I just felt like he re­al­ly wasn’t do­ing any­thing…he would make me feel like I wast­ing his time. Be­cause to him it was just a cyst.”

Af­ter three frus­trat­ing vis­its to the same physi­cian over the course of a year, Claudette took con­trol of her fate and switched doc­tors. She booked an ap­point­ment for a Pap smear, a test she wasn’t even due for, know­ing full well that the pro­ce­dure would rou­tine­ly in­clude a thor­ough breast ex­am­i­na­tion.

“It was a fe­male doc­tor. Just by ex­am­in­ing my breasts she asked ‘Claudette, how long you have this?’ So I say, ‘quite a while.’ She said, ‘any­body ever feel this?’ I say, ‘Yeah. And he said that noth­ing is wrong with it,’” Claudette re­count­ed.

Recog­nis­ing im­me­di­ate­ly that the lump was far from nor­mal, the fe­male doc­tor in­struct­ed Claudette to get up right then and there to un­der­go ur­gent test­ing.

Af­ter a mam­mo­gram raised fur­ther con­cerns, a biop­sy con­firmed the ter­ri­fy­ing di­ag­no­sis most peo­ple dread.

“She said: ‘okay, Claudette, I don’t want you to pan­ic. But I don’t re­al­ly have good news. But we will make the best out of this sit­u­a­tion.’”

Claudette had stage two breast can­cer. Shift­ing in an in­stant from be­ing told “it’s just a small cyst” to hear­ing the word “can­cer”, she strug­gled to make sense of the over­whelm­ing mo­ment, es­pe­cial­ly since she had al­ways felt vi­brant­ly healthy.

Her doc­tor called Claudette’s hus­band, who did his best to sup­port his wife in that life-al­ter­ing mo­ment.

Choos­ing faith over fear

Coun­selling ses­sions were of­fered. Pri­or to her di­ag­no­sis, Claudette be­lieved can­cer was an ab­solute death sen­tence. But af­ter at­tend­ing just one ses­sion, she knew in her heart that she wouldn’t re­turn. She de­cid­ed right then and there that she would pos­sess an un­shake­able faith and de­ter­mi­na­tion to move for­ward and claim her life.

“I al­ways used to say that any­body who get di­ag­nosed with can­cer, that’s it. They will die. I al­ways had that mind­set and that thought,” she shared.

“And then com­ing and be­ing di­ag­nosed with can­cer, from the very be­gin­ning, af­ter I left my doc­tor’s of­fice, I sat down in my ve­hi­cle, I said, ‘Fa­ther, Lord Je­sus, I’m not deal­ing with this. Be­cause I can’t deal with this. You have to deal with this for me.’”

Fac­ing treat­ment head-on

Af­ter con­sult­ing with her med­ical team, Claudette made the bold de­ci­sion to have a bi­lat­er­al mas­tec­to­my rather than re­mov­ing tis­sue from just one breast. To­geth­er with her doc­tors, she de­cid­ed on a dou­ble mas­tec­to­my paired with a TRAM flap pro­ce­dure, a re­con­struc­tive surgery that us­es tis­sue from the low­er ab­domen to re­build the breast.

Sur­round­ed by the lov­ing sup­port of her hus­band and two daugh­ters, she stepped coura­geous­ly in­to surgery. Next came six rounds of chemother­a­py, a pow­er­ful treat­ment aimed at de­stroy­ing fast-grow­ing can­cer cells. A chemother­a­py port was im­plant­ed in her body to make ad­min­is­ter­ing the in­fu­sions eas­i­er.

“Dur­ing that one coun­selling ses­sion be­fore, they en­cour­aged me to cut off my hair. But I tell them no, I don’t want to cut it off. If it has to fall off, I want to see it falling off. I don’t want to cut it off and then won­der if the hair would have fall­en off.”

To the as­ton­ish­ment of those around her, Claudette did not lose a sin­gle strand of hair through­out all six rounds of chemother­a­py. Nor was she crip­pled by side ef­fects.

“I had no side ef­fects from it. Didn’t vom­it. Didn’t even feel sick or any­thing. I was nor­mal,” she said.

“My same doc­tor will tell me, ‘Claudette, I’m com­ing down­stairs when you do­ing your next round of chemo. I feel like them giv­ing you wa­ter. Be­cause you can­not be tak­ing a chemo and just walk­ing out from here nor­mal’,” Claudette jok­ing­ly re­called.

Em­brac­ing a sec­ond

lease on life

Now 57, Claudette ra­di­ates vi­tal­i­ty, ful­ly im­mersed in the ac­tive lifestyle she loves. In a sin­gle year, she has pow­ered through near­ly 50 5K races across the coun­try, av­er­ag­ing about three races every week.

Her life is vi­brant, filled with pas­sion and pur­pose. She is a thriv­ing busi­ness­woman, a de­vot­ed fam­i­ly woman and a beam­ing grand­moth­er. As busy as her days are, she savours every sec­ond, pro­found­ly grate­ful for her sec­ond lease on life.

Above all, Claudette makes time to be a bea­con of light and hope, in­spir­ing con­fi­dence in oth­ers and show­ing them that over­com­ing ad­ver­si­ty is pos­si­ble.

A mes­sage about ear­ly de­tec­tion

More im­por­tant­ly, Claudette urges peo­ple to lis­ten to their bod­ies and bold­ly ad­vo­cate for their health. She en­cour­ages peo­ple to de­mand an­swers when med­ical pro­fes­sion­als seem to brush their con­cerns aside, be­cause every minute that pass­es could be crit­i­cal.

“I think a lot of doc­tors, on the whole, don’t go the dis­tance with pa­tients. You know, you go in front of doc­tors and you see some­times you’re talk­ing and they’re just writ­ing. Some­times they’re not even look­ing at you. Some­times they won’t even re­al­ly give you a prop­er check. And I think that’s one of the prob­lems we have here in the coun­try,” Claudette said.

To any­one fac­ing a daunt­ing di­ag­no­sis, Claudette of­fers a mes­sage of tri­umphant hope: there is a beau­ti­ful, thriv­ing life wait­ing on the oth­er side. But she em­pha­sis­es that vig­i­lance is es­sen­tial be­cause ear­ly de­tec­tion saves lives.

“Go and get your year­ly check­up. If you have to do your scan, your pap smear me your ul­tra­sound, your blood work, go and get your year­ly check­up. That is very im­por­tant. A lit­tle cyst could stem in­to can­cer, and that is where I start­ed.”