DR HAMID GHANY

She has main­tained that she would not be a can­cer sur­vivor to­day were it not for her deep and abid­ing faith in the pow­er of Almighty God. Mona Hadeed's fight against the odds that she could over­come Hodgkin's dis­ease is a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry that led her to write a book on her tra­vails called The Heal­ing Desert: In the Sands of Time.At a very mov­ing book launch out­side Nigel R Khan Book­sellers in West Mall on March 13, the au­thor was sup­port­ed by Sr Paul Clarke, who gave a very spir­it­ed wel­come that set the tone for what could be ex­pect­ed when read­ing the book. Her ex­pres­sions of sup­port linked with the sto­ry of the pow­er of faith were com­pelling.Hadeed's trans­for­ma­tion from her self-de­scrip­tion as a "Sun­day Catholic" to sur­ren­der­ing her life com­plete­ly to the Lord is in­deed a sto­ry of how per­son­al chal­lenges can trans­form lives in a very pow­er­ful way. She is able to tell her sto­ry to­day of her per­son­al de­ter­mi­na­tion to over­come a ter­mi­nal ill­ness.

How­ev­er, it is the re­flec­tion on how one minute we think we are all right and life is go­ing along mer­ri­ly and the next we en­ter in­to a zone of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty that brings its own seren­i­ty in the face of the most vir­u­lent chal­lenge of all–the bat­tle against can­cer–that makes this book in­spi­ra­tional.What hap­pened to Hadeed could have hap­pened to any­one in any walk of life. How she dealt with it may not have been every­one's re­sponse. A swelling un­der her right armpit, to­geth­er with a se­vere skin al­ler­gy, got worse and in May 1983 was di­ag­nosed as Hodgkin's dis­ease. Like many peo­ple who get such a di­ag­no­sis, she want­ed a sec­ond opin­ion. Af­ter trav­el­ling with her hus­band, Az­iz, to the Unit­ed States, Hadeed's sec­ond opin­ion con­firmed the first one.

She was of­fered what she was told at that time was a tri­al ex­per­i­ment of ei­ther ra­di­a­tion or both ra­di­a­tion and chemother­a­py at Jack­son Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal.She de­cid­ed to go with the tri­al ther­a­py af­ter a ma­chine made the de­ci­sion for her that it would be ra­di­a­tion alone. She took the chance bear­ing in mind that she could not al­low the can­cer to de­prive her chil­dren of their moth­er's love.

When faced with such daunt­ing cir­cum­stances some peo­ple may take the chance with an ex­per­i­ment, while oth­ers may not. Hadeed stepped for­ward. It was her first step to over­com­ing the odds that were stacked against her.But un­known to her, when she ar­rived at hos­pi­tal to un­der­go her first treat­ment, there had been a new de­vel­op­ment in her case. Her doc­tor greet­ed her with the news that what was orig­i­nal­ly look­ing like a fist-sized tu­mour in her stom­ach was ac­tu­al­ly "a group of air bub­bles" in her in­testines.Hadeed felt she had ex­pe­ri­enced her first mir­a­cle, as she had al­ready turned her life de­vout­ly to­ward the Lord and her spir­i­tu­al trans­for­ma­tion had al­ready be­gun. She had to have her spleen re­moved as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure and she com­menced six weeks of treat­ment.Per­haps the depths of her pain can best be cap­tured on Page 6 of her book where she says: "Each day, Az­iz drove me to the hos­pi­tal to re­ceive my ra­di­a­tion treat­ment. God knows how grate­ful I was to have him by my side. I re­mem­bered those days as if they were yes­ter­day, ly­ing in the back of the car, sick to my stom­ach from the treat­ment, hold­ing on­to my pil­low for com­fort, and tor­ment­ed by all the thoughts that raced through my mind."

Back in Trinidad, a prayer group was be­ing formed and her friend Peg­gy Bur­m­ing­ham was cen­tral to that ef­fort.When she moved away from Hadeed's neigh­bour­hood, Hadeed had the chal­lenge of car­ry­ing on with the group. It was the prayer group that al­lowed her to ex­pe­ri­ence an emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al side to her life that led her to em­bark on what she be­lieves is a call­ing for her to reach out to oth­ers and touch their lives.Her strug­gles were not on­ly with her can­cer, which she sur­vived, but the re­al test of her faith and courage was to come when her hus­band was di­ag­nosed with can­cer in Feb­ru­ary 1993 in his left kid­ney and al­so with a vari­ant of hairy cell leukaemia. This was to start a jour­ney of tri­als and tribu­la­tions that would ush­er in an al­most 20-year pe­ri­od of surg­eries and treat­ments that would end in 2012 with his pass­ing.She re­calls that on Valen­tine's Day in 2012 Az­iz took a turn for the worse. There was bleed­ing in his brain and he need­ed im­me­di­ate surgery. He nev­er re­gained con­scious­ness and slipped in­to a co­ma. On Feb­ru­ary 26 af­ter a 12- day bat­tle, he passed.

Mona Hadeed had lost her hus­band of 40 years and through it all she nev­er once asked the Lord why. Her trib­ute to her late hus­band tells an­oth­er sto­ry of courage of de­ter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed. She tells his sto­ry in the book this way: "Az­iz Hadeed was a great man, who came to Trinidad from his home­town, Amar al-Hosn, in Syr­ia. I can re­mem­ber the en­thu­si­as­tic young boy he was at age 21. Com­ing to join his broth­ers in busi­ness and to make a bet­ter life for him­self and his fu­ture, he forged for­ward to learn the lan­guage, make him­self a part of the com­mu­ni­ty, and un­der­stand the cul­ture of the coun­try he chose to live in."Her fond mem­o­ries of him and her ad­mi­ra­tion for the odds that he had to over­come to be­come suc­cess­ful in busi­ness in this coun­try are a sto­ry all by them­selves. Hadeed gives us a glimpse in­to that while al­so shar­ing with us her own chal­lenges over 19 years with his ill­ness.Her faith has been strength­ened in ways that she nev­er imag­ined. Her sto­ry has touched the lives of so many, not to men­tion her ed­i­tor, Megan Wil­son. At the book launch, it was re­vealed that Wil­son had sent out some fly­ers ad­ver­tis­ing her ser­vices as an ed­i­tor just at the time that Hadeed was look­ing for some­one to play that role in telling her sto­ry. As fate would have it, they were brought to­geth­er through one of Hadeed's spir­i­tu­al friends, who had got one of Wil­son's fly­ers in his mail­box. Af­ter a chat in a ca­su­al set­ting at West Mall, Hadeed hand­ed over the sto­ry of her life to a to­tal stranger to help her write her book.

Lit­tle did Wil­son know that she too would be per­son­al­ly af­fect­ed by Hadeed's man­u­script. Wil­son con­firmed that her life was trans­formed as well.Many things were said at the book launch that high­light­ed this sto­ry of faith, courage and strength. Hadeed's son Do­minic spoke about his moth­er's courage and how much of the strug­gle she kept to her­self. In many re­spects, she may be re­gard­ed as the tow­er of strength for her fam­i­ly, but she must know now that her sto­ry has in­spired many and will in­spire many more.The book has been a best­seller since its launch and is now sold out. More copies are ex­pect­ed soon. It is a com­pelling sto­ry of how one per­son can face the chal­lenges of can­cer, not on­ly in her own life, but al­so in her hus­band's life, and em­bark on a jour­ney in­to deep and abid­ing faith that grows stronger with each new chal­lenge that is laid out on the road map of des­tiny. Mona Hadeed ends the book by say­ing, "The jour­ney con­tin­ues."