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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Omonike Robinson-Pickering Enjoying her precious life

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20140528

In 2008, when the T&T Guardian in­ter­viewed Omonike Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, she was still un­der­go­ing treat­ment for stage two breast can­cer. Her sto­ry was mer­i­tous be­cause at 26, her di­ag­no­sis could have been con­sid­ered dev­as­tat­ing, but Robin­son-Pick­er­ing was full of faith and op­ti­mism. She was able to en­cour­age oth­ers and be­came an am­bas­sador for can­cer sur­vival, al­though the out­come of two surg­eries, six rounds of chemother­a­py and 30 ra­di­a­tion ses­sions was un­known.Now at 32, Robin­son-Pick­er­ing is of­fi­cial­ly in re­mis­sion, and her mes­sage for oth­ers is more clear­ly de­fined. The at­ti­tude she main­tained through­out her wres­tle with can­cer - one of trust­ing im­plic­it­ly in God, find­ing some­thing pos­i­tive in every cir­cum­stance, be­ing true to her own in­ner voice, and stay­ing aware of the lessons each stage of her jour­ney was try­ing to teach her - was the re­fin­ing tool. "I feel so blessed by the whole ex­pe­ri­ence," says Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, "it is the best thing that has ever hap­pened to me be­cause it changed my per­spec­tive so dra­mat­i­cal­ly."

One of the most ob­vi­ous lessons for her, she says, is that "God still per­forms mir­a­cles. Maybe not wa­ter in­to wine but small mir­a­cles show­ing how in­te­grat­ed God is."Robin­son-Pick­er­ing ex­plains that she en­sured that prayer was an in­te­gral part of her re­cov­ery."Every­thing was tak­en to God in prayer," she said. She al­so asked for prayer sup­port from fam­i­ly and friends. Di­ag­nosed in her fi­nal year of law school, she prayed for good ex­am­i­na­tion re­sults. Con­front­ed by the in­sis­tence by doc­tors that she have a mas­tec­to­my, she prayed that it wouldn't be nec­es­sary.Aware of the pos­si­ble side ef­fects of chemother­a­py, she prayed that the treat­ment would not make her ill. "I wasn't sick one day," she says em­phat­i­cal­ly, "well ac­tu­al­ly I vom­it­ed once, af­ter the first chemo be­cause I felt like hav­ing a burg­er with fries and I did, which I think made me throw up, but af­ter that, I nev­er threw up again."She avoid­ed fried foods af­ter treat­ment and be­gan juic­ing every­day. Stand­ing her ground with doc­tors about the mas­tec­to­my and grad­u­at­ing from law school with five As and a prize for top marks in one of the ex­ams, how­ev­er, are not on­ly about the pow­er of prayer for Robin­son-Pick­er­ing but al­so con­vey some of the rich per­spec­tives she gained.

Know Your­self

"Every­one said have a mas­tec­to­my," says Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, "but I wasn't ready for that." Tis­sue re­moved dur­ing the surgery for the growth she had found while show­er­ing, had all come back can­cer­ous, and doc­tors were en­cour­ag­ing re­moval of the breast rather than fur­ther test­ing on sur­round­ing tis­sue be­cause they be­lieved that it had very like­ly al­ready spread.She would al­so have been un­able to have im­me­di­ate breast re­con­struc­tion as her slim fig­ure, the re­sult of eat­ing well and ex­er­cis­ing, meant that she did not have enough stom­ach fat for one. "I had to sat­is­fy my­self be­fore go­ing down the road of mas­tec­to­my," she says. Ex­plain­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty of ad­just­ing emo­tion­al­ly to los­ing a breast, es­pe­cial­ly in her twen­ties, she says "and I had nice breasts, perky."Ex­pe­ri­enc­ing her breasts as an ex­ten­sion of her fem­i­nin­i­ty, Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, who is al­so not a moth­er, did not want to lat­er miss out on breast­feed­ing. Af­ter a lot of "to-ing and fro-ing" doc­tors agreed to a surgery that would test sur­round­ing breast tis­sue for can­cer, be­fore re­mov­ing her breast. "If they hadn't agreed, I would have found some­one who would have done what I want­ed," she says. Tests came back neg­a­tive and Robin­son-Pick­er­ing kept her left breast. "You know your body bet­ter than any­one else," says Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, "and you know what you can han­dle emo­tion­al­ly." Robin­son-Pick­er­ing ap­pre­ci­at­ed that her pri­ma­ry doc­tor's first con­cern was her health, rather than cos­met­ics, but she says "I need­ed him to con­sid­er the emo­tion­al im­pact."When she speaks to women con­front­ed by a sim­i­lar di­ag­no­sis, she ad­vis­es them to trust them­selves and what they feel, and to find a doc­tor with whom they "feel com­fort­able, with a good bed­side man­ner, who will not fol­low the let­ter but con­sid­er the pa­tient's emo­tions."

God helps those­who help them­selves

With the un­cer­tain­ty that comes with each stage of be­ing treat­ed for can­cer and the ac­tu­al treat­ments them­selves, Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, who con­tin­ued to at­tend class­es at the Hugh Wood­ing Law School, was very tired and says that "it was very dif­fi­cult to pre­pare" for up­com­ing fi­nal ex­ams. She con­sid­ered dif­fer­ing but didn't want to lose the sup­port and ca­ma­raderie of her class­mates or be faced with need­ing to re­turn to study­ing af­ter what she knew would be a long jour­ney to re­cov­ery. She "want­ed to pass" and stud­ied, but ad­mits "I didn't study that hard." She al­ready had A's in the as­sign­ment sec­tions of 4 out 5 ex­am­i­na­tions and this would help off­set any un­der-per­for­mance in their as­so­ci­at­ed writ­ten ex­am­i­na­tions.But the fifth ex­am­i­na­tion did not have an as­sign­ment at­tached and the grade would be award­ed on a writ­ten test pa­per on­ly. Robin­son-Pick­er­ing did what she could and left the rest with God. Get­ting top marks that put her in first place out of over 130 stu­dents, in the fifth ex­am­i­na­tion, blew Robin­son-Pick­er­ing's mind. "I have read that pa­per again," she says, "and there is no way I could an­swer those ques­tions." "It was not my do­ing, it was all God's do­ing and it showed me that He will take care of the big things and the small things."

But she learnt about help­ing her­self too and says Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, "the most in­ter­est­ing thing for me was learn­ing that be­cause you have a ma­jor life event hap­pen it doesn't mean life stops." She is still con­front­ed by chal­lenges faced by many–"pres­sure at work, find­ing a mate, clothes that don't fit" but she brings a per­spec­tive from liv­ing through can­cer. There are al­so some things that oth­ers don't face–she still has to take a range of med­ica­tions to pre­vent re­oc­cur­rence and is deal­ing with the ef­fects of in­duced menopause.This had to be done to save her ovaries from be­ing neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by the treat­ment. But she says, "I don't wor­ry about the small things." Shar­ing the les­son that "to­mor­row isn't guar­an­teed," es­pe­cial­ly for her with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the can­cer could re­turn, Robin­son-Pick­er­ing says she al­so "stopped putting off things."Feed­ing her de­sire to trav­el the world, she took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with her law firm's of­fice in Asia, spend­ing nine months in Sin­ga­pore and eleven months in Hong Kong. "While out there," she says, "I took va­ca­tions when­ev­er I could." She trav­elled to 11 oth­er coun­tries, and says "I ex­pe­ri­enced as much as I could ... ate every­thing I could ... at­tend­ed a Ba­li­nese wed­ding ... I have ab­solute­ly no re­grets."

Shar­ing her sto­ry

Liv­ing her life to the fullest in­cludes her ap­proach to self-ex­pres­sion. Say­ing that it would be self­ish not to share her sto­ry, Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, who first shared her ex­pe­ri­ence with breast can­cer on Face­book, by blog­ging us­ing one of the site's fea­tures called Notes, has al­so writ­ten a book.The book, which was writ­ten out of the jour­nal en­tries she wrote, from di­ag­no­sis through treat­ment, has not yet been named but is cur­rent­ly be­ing edit­ed by a friend. "I wrote about every­thing," says Robin­son-Pick­er­ing, "it kept me sane." She al­so shares her sto­ry by pre­sent­ing at events where she can en­cour­age es­pe­cial­ly younger peo­ple di­ag­nosed with can­cer (when she was di­ag­nosed there were few sup­port groups for women her age), their fam­i­ly and friends. This al­so helps her to keep on trav­el­ling. Her vis­it to Trinidad last week for the Can­cer So­ci­ety's event, Cheers, comes af­ter trips to the Tor­to­la and St Kitts where she has done Out­reach work for as long as a week at a time. "I like shar­ing my sto­ry," she says, "the way peo­ple re­spond and the feed­back show me that peo­ple find it in­spi­ra­tional." She ad­mits though that shar­ing can some­times be "drain­ing," es­pe­cial­ly when she is "ex­posed to the not so hap­py end­ings." Meet­ing a woman re­cent­ly, for whom the can­cer had spread all over her body, be­cause fear had pre­vent­ed her from go­ing to the doc­tor, Robin­son-Pick­er­ing says, "made me re­alise that though I could make light dur­ing my own ex­pe­ri­ence, and find the pos­i­tive, it's not al­ways the same for oth­ers. Re­minds me to be grate­ful."The most im­por­tant thing that Robin­son-Pick­er­ing wants to share though is one of the sim­plest, but of­ten the hard­est one to re­mem­ber. "En­joy your life," she says, "it's pre­cious. Do those things you re­al­ly want to do. Don't wor­ry about the mi­nor or keep harper­ing on the crap. Live."


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