Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Four weeks be­fore Jamie Sabeeney was due to grad­u­ate in 2023, she re­ceived the most dev­as­tat­ing news of her life. The usu­al emo­tions that come with com­plet­ing uni­ver­si­ty, those of joy and ac­com­plish­ment, were over­shad­owed by a stage 2B Hodgkin’s lym­phoma di­ag­no­sis. It up­end­ed her en­tire world.

Three days be­fore grad­u­a­tion, she start­ed chemother­a­py.

Her roller­coast­er ex­pe­ri­ence with can­cer over the last two years would in­spire her to write a book that will be launched in the com­ing weeks, ti­tled Lumps. It’s most­ly a com­pi­la­tion of her jour­nals dur­ing can­cer treat­ment.

She told WE mag­a­zine last week, “I guess halfway through I re­alised I’d been writ­ing so many jour­nals that I should turn this in­to a book. So said, so done. I fin­ished my treat­ment and de­cid­ed to turn it in­to more of a sto­ry. It goes through from day one of me ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the pain to the lumps.”

In 2021, Sabeeney re­ceived the COVID-19 vac­cine be­cause she had to re­turn to uni­ver­si­ty. She said she in­stant­ly got a pain in her neck, and a lump ap­peared in the same spot. The doc­tors were con­vinced it was not can­cer. They were wrong.

“It’s a very slow-grow­ing can­cer, so it starts in your neck, then it moves down to your chest and your armpits, and then your thumb up, and so on,” Sabeeney ex­plained.

Through­out that emo­tion­al­ly gru­elling jour­ney, writ­ing would help her. It wasn’t al­ways easy to take the pain she felt to her fam­i­ly, so she poured it out on pa­per. She said, “I did not want to let my par­ents know how I was feel­ing most of the time be­cause I didn’t want them to get scared, and I would cry on my own, hide in a room where my par­ents could not see me. It’s not easy hav­ing a child go­ing through this; they would want to take the pain away from you. So, writ­ing def­i­nite­ly helped. You can get out of any­thing. You can say any­thing to your phone or a piece of pa­per. It was the best way for me.”

Now, her words in that book could be­come the hope that an­oth­er can­cer pa­tient needs.

She ex­plained, “When I start­ed to do my treat­ments, I was look­ing at oth­er peo­ple who were go­ing through some­thing sim­i­lar to try and get an idea of what this is. What am I go­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence? Am I go­ing to have the same feel­ings as them? So, I said I’m go­ing to write, and I want can­cer pa­tients to see what I went through, and this might help them pre­pare for their treat­ment. But I al­so said that this book could help oth­er peo­ple, not nec­es­sar­i­ly some­one who’s go­ing through can­cer. It could be some­one who knows some­one who is go­ing through can­cer.”

The en­tire jour­ney has changed Sabeeney. She ex­plained, “I tell peo­ple all the time I think that I’m a dif­fer­ent per­son. My whole out­look on life has changed. I nev­er thought that I took my friends, fam­i­ly, or life for grant­ed, and it turns out that I did. I didn’t even know that I was tak­ing these things for grant­ed. Get­ting put in a sit­u­a­tion like this, life is way too short, and you do not know. We’re not promised to­mor­row, we do not know what’s com­ing, and this has taught me so much.”

In­spir­ing oth­ers has be­come so im­por­tant to Sabeeney that she is al­so as­sist­ing oth­ers in their own fight against can­cer.

The sto­ry of Chloe Ram­nar­ine moved her so much that Sabeeney vis­it­ed the 21-year-old from Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro. Ram­nar­ine is a Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) stu­dent whose life has been turned up­side down by a di­ag­no­sis of can­cer.

Since 2023, she has been bat­tling stage 2B Hodgkin’s lym­phoma, a type of can­cer that af­fects the lym­phat­ic sys­tem. Ram­nar­ine was forced to stop her stud­ies and start chemother­a­py, en­dur­ing gru­elling rounds of treat­ment that would clear the can­cer, on­ly to have it re­turn. In March 2024, just two weeks be­fore her uni­ver­si­ty ex­ams, Ram­nar­ine’s doc­tors de­liv­ered the dev­as­tat­ing news: the can­cer had re­lapsed.

Both Sabeeney and Ram­nar­ine have be­come friends since the for­mer found out about the di­ag­no­sis.

Sabeeney said, “It’s just crazy to find all these young peo­ple hav­ing can­cer or hav­ing the same is­sues. It’s just so crazy, and it’s hard as a young kid be­cause you have a big life ahead of you. I just want­ed to boost her and make her know that it’s okay.” Sabeeney said Ram­nar­ine was now can­cer-free, as is she.

How­ev­er, Sabeeney’s work in bat­tling can­cer is not over. Through her book, she will con­tin­ue to help can­cer pa­tients through the hard­est bat­tle of their lives. She hopes her own jour­ney will not on­ly give them a glimpse in­to what their di­ag­no­sis will be like but al­so give them hope that they can emerge from this death sen­tence too.

What is Hodgkin lym­phoma?

Hodgkin lym­phoma is a type of can­cer that af­fects the lym­phat­ic sys­tem. The lym­phat­ic sys­tem is part of the body’s germ-fight­ing and dis­ease-fight­ing im­mune sys­tem. Hodgkin lym­phoma be­gins when healthy cells in the lym­phat­ic sys­tem change and grow out of con­trol.

The lym­phat­ic sys­tem in­cludes lymph nodes. They are found through­out the body. Most lymph nodes are in the ab­domen, groin, pelvis, chest, un­der­arms and neck. The lym­phat­ic sys­tem al­so in­cludes the spleen, thy­mus, ton­sils and bone mar­row. Hodgkin lym­phoma can af­fect all these ar­eas and oth­er or­gans in the body.

(https://www.may­oclin­ic.org)