When TV talk show host and chef Basia Powell was diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in 2009, two things got her through the subsequent rigors of treatment.One was her faith in a higher power. "I knew that God would heal me," she said in a recent interview.Another was the support and help of her family and friends, particularly her husband Ricardo, a former West Indies cricketer.
"I could not have done it without that man," said Powell. "He's a blessing. He's an absolute blessing as a husband and a father."Powell recalled Ricardo motivating her to take walks. "My husband would pull me up [Lady] Chancellor Hill. He had me active," she said.Her friend Gillian Caesar in a simple but important way helped get her through chemotherapy.
"When I come back from chemo, on the third day is when I would feel for curry, because curry would help me get back that flavour in my mouth," said Powell. "[Gillian] would run away lunch time from work and come and take me for a roti. We used to call it our chemotherapy limes."And Powell's spirits needed picking up.
"I had to travel every 21 days to chemotherapy in Miami," she recalled. "So I'd [leave] nice and dressed up, and I'd come back wiped out. They'd have to put me in a wheelchair when I came out of the airport."Powell said many people didn't seem to realise the impact what they said and did could have on someone being treated for cancer.
"People, once you told them that you were diagnosed with cancer–it was so weird–the first thing they will tell you is somebody they knew who died from it," she said. "It's their first reaction, and that is something I would like people to stop.
"After a while I started telling people, 'Can you tell me someone who survived?" she said. "There's me and there's [singer] Marcia [Miranda] and there's so many other people who survive it."
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Powell is helping promote an annual initiative by Payless ShoeSource. The company is selling a special pink bracelet in commemoration of the fight against the disease, which is the most prevalent cancer among women in T&T."October is a month to celebrate survivors," said Powell. "Encourage more people to think that they will survive. A lot of people die because they feel that they're going die."
The experience made her choose more carefully who she spent time with."I would advise anybody who's going through a diagnosis right now to clear out all the negativity," she said. "I don't engage in that. If you try to engage me in negativity you have a problem."
Self-pity is a distraction, said Powell, who is cancer free after a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction."My message to people out there is don't give up. Don't engage in 'why me'. Don't engage in 'how can I do this'," she said. "Feel the process. If you want to cry, cry. It's human to feel pain. But understand pain comes before growth."
Powell believed in the power of support so much that she started a support group shortly after her diagnosis.She's no longer involved in the group, but part of the reason she agreed to help with the Payless initiative is that proceeds go towards Vitas House, a hospice that cares for cancer patients for whom nothing more can be done. The hospice, which is free, provides not only medical care, but a comfortable and supportive environment.
"All our patients show some measure of improvement in their wellbeing once they come here," said Lilia Mootoo, the general manager of Vitas House.Members of Powell's support group spent their last days at Vitas.
"Places like Vitas House are important because not everyone has the kind of family support that I have," said Powell. "It comforts me to know that they have somewhere like that to go."
Powell said she would extend her message about positivity even to people at the stage of those in the hospice.
"I believe in the power of happiness," she said. "At the time I was diagnosed the mantra I developed is that happiness heals. I don't care if you have five more days on this earth, five years or 50. You do your best that every day out of those five years or 50 years you feel happiness."
After all, the budget statement is an allocation and promise of attention, not the final word on what one hopes will be a year's effort in serious reevaluating the public sector technology agenda in T&T.
What the country needs is not the active attention of the Cabinet on the technical specifications of CCTV surveillance systems for homes, but a systematic evaluation of the sprawling slate of technology activities that have been undertaken over the last ten years, most of which are still in the planning and pre-implementation stages. Even those which have been brought to apparent completion remain full of frustrating gaps.
Once a public sector project is announced as complete, with all the attendant launch hoopla and political strip-mining for public accolades, it tends to be left to its own devices, but that's not how technology projects work.Even a project like ConnectTT, which has moved many documents out of government offices to the Internet remains frozen in its earliest implementation and promised improvements and feature upgrades have been slow in coming. Glacially slow.
If anyone in the current Cabinet thinks that a project like Versadex, the planned technology for police officers can be launched like an acquisition of squad cars and motorcycles and considered done, they are in for a rude and startling surprise.
Versadex will demand a major investment in training, massive technology upgrades across the entire police service and pretty much the whole term of the current government to drive into practice. And that's a project that can be readily understood by the general public.So no, there isn't much low-hanging tech fruit to be found in the current edition of the PSIP.
Coming to grips with the sprawl of partially completed projects, partially abandoned plans and rapidly ageing studies that the agencies of the public sector have been amassing over the last ten years probably is beyond the capacity of anyone in Cabinet.Fortunately, this government seems keen to bring together subject matter experts in a consultative capacity to bolster its own talents.
I submit that technology is one area that desperately needs that type of professionally-led guidance.