Fay­ola KJ Fras­er

Pearl Bal­ga­r­oo is an anom­aly as a sur­vivor of Stage 4 breast can­cer. Ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Can­cer So­ci­ety, the five-year rel­a­tive sur­vival rate for Stage 4 breast can­cer is 28 per cent. The rel­a­tive sur­vival rate speaks to the like­li­hood of sur­vival of a per­son with the dis­ease as com­pared to a per­son with­out the dis­ease.

Bal­ga­r­oo can now say that she has more than sur­mount­ed ex­pec­ta­tions, hav­ing sur­vived for al­most 20 years past her di­ag­no­sis in 2006.

Com­fort­ed by the clear sig­nals of her im­proved health and the dis­ap­pear­ance of any ev­i­dence of can­cer five years lat­er, Bal­ga­r­oo went back to the gym and hik­ing. Soon, she re­alised that dai­ly rou­tine tasks, such as walk­ing up­stairs or do­ing non-stren­u­ous ac­tiv­i­ties were caus­ing her a great amount of phys­i­cal ex­haus­tion. Af­ter be­ing ex­am­ined by a lung spe­cial­ist, she was told that she was, in fact, hav­ing heart fail­ure and was im­me­di­ate­ly sent to the hos­pi­tal, where a clot in her heart was di­ag­nosed. Fac­ing this new bat­tle in her health jour­ney head first, she was put on med­ica­tion to treat the clot. This, how­ev­er, be­came a pre­cur­sor to what would be a con­tin­u­a­tion of her bat­tle with can­cer.

In 2016, ten years af­ter her ini­tial di­ag­no­sis, Bal­ga­r­oo no longer was re­quired to take can­cer med­ica­tion and felt com­fort­able main­tain­ing on­ly her rou­tine CT scans. That year, when she per­formed her rou­tine CT scan, there was shock­ing ev­i­dence of the re­cur­rence of can­cer in her lungs. She im­me­di­ate­ly fo­cused all her en­er­gy on treat­ing it and af­ter two years of med­icat­ed treat­ment, the can­cer in the lungs went away. In 2020, how­ev­er, this med­ica­tion stopped work­ing. Then, in Ju­ly 2021, she was told that she was op­er­at­ing on 40 per cent lung func­tion­al­i­ty, her lungs were cov­ered in flu­id and the doc­tors were see­ing the re­cur­rence of can­cer.

Up to the present, Bal­ga­r­oo con­tin­ues to do oral chemother­a­py to con­trol this re­cur­rence of can­cer and de­scribed that the “last few months have not been pret­ty”, as she strug­gles to har­ness the strength that is re­quired for her body to con­tin­ue fur­ther treat­ment.

‘Can­cer is a dis­ease that is won in your head’

Through­out these years of what she de­scribes as a roller coast­er for her health, Bal­ga­r­oo still per­ma­nent­ly ra­di­ates bub­bling pos­i­tiv­i­ty. “Can­cer is a dis­ease that is won in your head,” she says, “you have to let go of re­sent­ment and live your life dif­fer­ent­ly”. Her mes­sage to can­cer pa­tients, and to peo­ple more gen­er­al­ly, is that liv­ing a life filled with grat­i­tude for both the big and small things, will al­low the good­ness and bless­ings to flow. Con­sid­er­ing the last 16 years of her life a bless­ing to be grate­ful for, rather than a time marred with a se­ri­ous ill­ness, she en­cour­ages peo­ple to nev­er take a day or a mo­ment for grant­ed.

Not lim­it­ed to un­bri­dled pos­i­tiv­i­ty, she is al­so keen to of­fer nuggets of ad­vice to help women con­tend with the worst-case sce­nario. En­cour­ag­ing women to stick faith­ful­ly to their year­ly screens is her ral­ly­ing cry, as she pro­motes ear­ly de­tec­tion as the best op­tion for over­com­ing breast can­cer. She al­so im­plores that women who are de­tect­ed in the late stage, like she was, “be hard­ened and be stub­born”, and cre­ate a plan to or­gan­ise their lives and treat­ment, ed­u­cate them­selves and stick with it, rather than giv­ing up up­on di­ag­no­sis.

For younger women, her best ad­vice is to en­sure that they pro­tect them­selves with med­ical in­sur­ance plans, as, al­though it may ini­tial­ly feel bur­den­some, it is an in­vest­ment in­to one’s health and cru­cial to en­sur­ing cov­er­age fi­nan­cial­ly should a di­ag­no­sis of ill­ness oc­cur. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty has al­so been cen­tral in her jour­ney, and she nev­er dis­counts her strong con­nec­tion with the di­vine as a core tenet in her abil­i­ty to fight the dis­ease.

Re­ceiv­ing every bless­ing in the face of ad­ver­si­ty

Bal­ga­r­oo has stayed brave in the face of can­cer for many years, and al­though she has had down pe­ri­ods, she re­lies on her fam­i­ly, friends, med­ical sup­port and a good ole lime to con­tin­ue to bright­en her spir­its. “I’m very much a Tri­ni woman,” she laughs, “I love crick­et, Car­ni­val and J’Ou­vert and I love to lime!” As she con­tin­ues to have her glass of wine “once in a while” she is keen on not for­get­ting to live while she is giv­en life. Her fam­i­ly, es­pe­cial­ly her hus­band, is a pil­lar of strength for her and has al­ways made her feel com­fort­able, even in the face of ex­treme phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al changes. Her grand­daugh­ter is her source of soft and sweet com­fort and is the ap­ple of Bal­ga­r­oo’s eye. She of­ten tells her grand­daugh­ter, “God saved me for you,” to which her grand­daugh­ter finds great de­light, know­ing that she is her grand­moth­er’s eye­ball.

“I will over­come this, I’m not done with this,” she says con­fi­dent­ly.

 Even af­ter be­ing faced with mul­ti­ple bouts of can­cer, Bal­ga­r­oo looks pos­i­tive­ly at the strides be­ing made in breast can­cer re­search and dis­cov­ery every year and knows “that if I stick around long enough, some­thing will be de­vel­oped to help me”. She of­ten feels unique­ly blessed, won­der­ing how many oth­er peo­ple have beat­en Stage 4 can­cer for 16 years and count­ing, and wants to spread her in­nate op­ti­mism and pos­i­tiv­i­ty to oth­er women.

 She be­lieves that life has giv­en her ex­pe­ri­ences that al­lowed her to evolve, el­e­vate and dis­cov­er the essence of who she is at the core. A war­rior, an eter­nal op­ti­mist and a bea­con of in­spi­ra­tion for women bat­tling breast can­cer, Pearl Bal­ga­r­oo con­tin­ues to re­ceive every bless­ing in the face of ad­ver­si­ty and spread the hope, that with a strong sup­port sys­tem, even a mus­tard seed of faith, and a lot of courage, life’s great­est chal­lenges can be over­come.