Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Re­porter

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

When nurse Rachael Ab­so­lam-Browne joined the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal’s On­col­o­gy and Haema­tol­ogy De­part­ment around eight years ago, she did not know that, two years lat­er, she would be­come a pa­tient in that same ward.

The now 46-year-old D’Abadie res­i­dent re­called that her breast can­cer jour­ney be­gan in 2019, just be­fore the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, when she no­ticed a small bump on her right breast.

“I re­mem­ber go­ing to work one day and I asked one of my med­ical col­leagues and he said it looks like it’s an ab­scess; we could prob­a­bly as­pi­rate it and it may go away. I thought, OK no prob­lem, but at the back of my mind, I felt like it could be some­thing more,” she said.

Ab­so­lam-Brown said she left it alone for about a month.

Then, one day at work, a child who was afraid of hav­ing blood drawn need­ed re­as­sur­ance. Ab­so­lam-Browne de­cid­ed to draw her own blood to demon­strate the process and help the child feel more com­fort­able.

“I heard in my heart, take your blood and let him see how it is done. I was like, oh my, they will think I am crazy,” the nurse of 20 years re­called.

Af­ter demon­strat­ing the pro­ce­dure, she thought there was no rea­son to waste a per­fect­ly good vial of blood, so she sent it for a can­cer tu­mour mark­er test.

The re­sults came back with­in hours, but she wait­ed an­oth­er three months be­fore test­ing again. When the re­sults showed that the lev­els had in­creased, she con­tact­ed a con­sult­ing doc­tor, who im­me­di­ate­ly re­ferred her to St James for fur­ther test­ing of the lump.

Ab­so­lam-Browne said she felt in her heart that the biop­sy would come back pos­i­tive, which it did.

“I sat down at the ta­ble, and I mes­saged my head nurse, and she came and sat in the lunch room with me. She just touched me, and a world of emo­tions over­came me. She tried to con­sole me say­ing, we deal with this every day, we know what can be done and what to ex­pect.

I told her I need to go home. I re­mem­ber sit­ting in the car, and I rest­ed my head on the steer­ing wheel, I was like, God, what is this? Just like we are speak­ing here, I heard a voice say do not wor­ry. God will take care of you,” she said.

Find­ing peace through faith

Af­ter that, Ab­so­lam-Browne said she felt at peace, trust­ing that God would look af­ter her re­gard­less of what hap­pened.

“It was like every­thing that hap­pened af­ter­wards, I don’t want to say that I was de­tached from it emo­tion­al­ly, but I put my trust in God that He was go­ing to take care of me in spite of what­ev­er was go­ing to hap­pen,” she said.

How­ev­er, the jour­ney ahead was far from easy. Ab­so­lam-Browne de­scribed it as one com­pli­ca­tion af­ter an­oth­er, a true test of faith.

In June 2020, she un­der­went a lumpec­to­my. Two weeks lat­er, she be­gan chemother­a­py, but she ex­pe­ri­enced an ex­treme re­ac­tion un­like any­thing she had ever seen in the pa­tients she cared for.

“I’ve been work­ing in the haema­tol­ogy/on­col­o­gy de­part­ment for years. I know the process, I know what I ex­pect for the pa­tients, but now I am the pa­tient. But still the re­ac­tions to it were un­ex­pect­ed. When I got up the next morn­ing, I was cov­ered in hives. I could bare­ly open my eyes. All my mouth was bleed­ing and I had rash­es and sores all over my body. I thought, my God, what is this? Be­cause in my years of ex­pe­ri­ence at work, I have nev­er seen this hap­pen with any­one. There­after, we re­alised that I’m ac­tu­al­ly al­ler­gic to chemother­a­py,” she ex­plained.

As a re­sult, Ab­so­lam-Browne’s chemother­a­py treat­ment be­came a more com­pli­cat­ed and lengthy process than usu­al.

Com­pli­ca­tions and
un­bear­able pain

One of the drugs she need­ed to take dur­ing treat­ment al­so caused bleed­ing, which even­tu­al­ly wors­ened and be­came un­bear­able.

“I felt so sick in my stom­ach and some­thing just didn’t feel right. The pain just kept in­creas­ing no mat­ter what med­ica­tion I took. My ab­domen had got­ten so big that my dress­es could not fit and I looked nine months preg­nant,” she re­called.

The phys­i­cal chal­lenges of her treat­ment were com­pound­ed by dif­fi­cul­ties in her per­son­al life. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, her hus­band lost his job, and she was al­so deal­ing with the loss of her fa­ther, adding to the chal­lenges she and her fam­i­ly were al­ready fac­ing.

As her pain wors­ened and the nec­es­sary pro­ce­dures con­tin­ued to be de­layed, Ab­so­lam-Browne said she even­tu­al­ly reached a break­ing point.

“I called my pas­tor and I said, ‘Pas­tor, I can’t take this pain.’ I think that is when I broke down. And it was al­so the first time I heard my pas­tor cry and break down. Be­cause every day they were mea­sur­ing my tum­my un­til the mea­sur­ing tape couldn’t mea­sure any­more. I cried out to God and I said, you said you would take care of me, you said you would not leave me,” Ab­so­lam-Browne said.

Even­tu­al­ly, the hos­pi­tal could no longer post­pone the pro­ce­dure.

“The doc­tors came and they said, we can’t put off the surgery any­more. We will do the surgery. They told me that it looks as though you have an ab­scess on the ovaries; this is why the tum­my is swollen so big and why you’re ex­pe­ri­enc­ing so much pain… When I came out of surgery, the doc­tor said, when you go to church, tell them your God saved you, be­cause when they opened me up, every­thing just ex­plod­ed and there was pus every­where. All my in­testines, re­pro­duc­tive sys­tem, and bow­els were just fused to­geth­er as one. He said they have nev­er seen that in all their years,” she ex­plained.

A new ap­pre­ci­a­tion for life

In 2021, Ab­so­lam-Browne be­came can­cer-free. Hav­ing en­dured nu­mer­ous chal­lenges through­out her jour­ney, she re­flect­ed on the ex­pe­ri­ence and ex­pressed grat­i­tude for her faith and the sup­port of her fam­i­ly.

“The jour­ney was one of pa­tience. It re­al­ly test­ed my faith and my per­cep­tion on life changed. Life is so pre­cious, be­cause with­in a blink of an eye, it could have been tak­en. I got an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the fact that God chose me to live on, and that al­so took my en­tire fam­i­ly com­ing to­geth­er to as­sist me. My hus­band was a great sup­port, my two daugh­ters,” she said.

She al­so ex­pressed grat­i­tude for the un­wa­ver­ing sup­port of her sib­lings and moth­er, who stood by her through­out her jour­ney.

Ab­so­lam-Browne con­tin­ues to serve as a nurse, car­ing for pa­tients who may be fac­ing ex­pe­ri­ences sim­i­lar to her own. She has al­so shared her sto­ry on var­i­ous plat­forms, hop­ing to in­spire oth­ers through her tes­ti­mo­ny.