KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

“An in­va­sive in­con­ve­nience.”

That’s how Nicole Dy­er-Grif­fith has termed her stage three breast can­cer di­ag­no­sis.

Con­fi­dent­ly rock­ing her new bald head, the for­mer Miss Uni­verse Trinidad and To­ba­go made Guardian Me­dia stu­dios her run­way as she walked to­wards the in­ter­view set.

Dressed in pink, the colour used to raise breast can­cer aware­ness dur­ing the month of Oc­to­ber, Dy­er-Grif­fith as­sumed her usu­al el­e­gant de­meanour.

“It is in­con­ve­nient and in­va­sive. In­stead of say­ing bat­tling or fight­ing, I am man­ag­ing it,” Dy­er-Grif­fith said.

“Man­ag­ing it needs a process, and I cre­at­ed a process in my head. How am I go­ing to man­age this sce­nario? That is how I had faced most of the fires I have walked through; cre­at­ing a process to man­age it.”

In Sep­tem­ber, Dy­er-Grif­fith an­nounced she had stage three breast can­cer via a video post­ed to her Face­book page. She was di­ag­nosed with the dis­ease the same week she host­ed O2N Style at O2 Park.

Three weeks post-di­ag­no­sis, she start­ed pen­ning her first book, Dis­tress to Dis­cov­ery. A jour­ney to Af­fir­ma­tion.

“That book, the way in which it is writ­ten, takes you through every emo­tion and every process through­out my jour­ney up to the point when I start­ed like round four of chemother­a­py,” she said.

“Some of the things you will see in this book are things that you will not or­di­nar­i­ly get from me. I am read­ing it back and ask­ing, Do I want to put that out there? Do I want to say that? Do I re­al­ly want peo­ple to know how I felt? There are chap­ters in there about Gary, some re­al­ly per­son­al chap­ters; I had to give it to him and say you’re okay with this. It re­al­ly gets deep in­to the un­der­stand­ing of who I am and how I am. I am re­al­ly ex­cit­ed about that, a lit­tle bit trep­i­da­tious.”

The for­mer gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor, whose book will be re­leased in 2025, said dur­ing chal­leng­ing times she usu­al­ly gives her­self sev­en days to feel sad.

“Sev­en days to deal with the dra­ma and emo­tion and get over it and move on to the plan­ning on how you are go­ing to treat with things,” she said.

“For this in­va­sive in­con­ve­nience, I didn’t even give my­self sev­en days.”

Dy­er-Grif­fith re­called that a month be­fore the O2N Style event, the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the O2N Foun­da­tion said she start­ed notic­ing signs.

“I just thought it was nor­mal men­stru­al cy­cle is­sues,” she said.

“Every year I do an an­nu­al check-up. Every year I do all the tests that you’re sup­posed to do. But this time I felt the breast in it­self looked ede­ma­tous. Ede­ma­tous meant it looked swollen and some­thing was just not right.

“My moth­er was on my case, and she and Gary teamed up, and I went and did a sec­ond med­ical.”

‘A long list of things left unchecked’

Her mam­mo­gram re­sults showed den­si­ty in the breast tis­sue.

“I didn’t see any­thing re­al­ly; it was just dense,” she added.

“The doc­tor sug­gest­ed let’s do an ul­tra­sound so that we could see a lit­tle bit more and have a bet­ter look and feel of the mam­mo­gram.”

It was dur­ing the ul­tra­sound that Dy­er-Grif­fith said she shed her first tear.

She re­called, “The ul­tra­sono­g­ra­ph­er, a doc­tor from In­dia who knew who I was, said, ‘Nicole, what are your plans for your fu­ture?’ And I said, What do you mean, what are my plans for the fu­ture? He said, ‘Are you go­ing to be back in pol­i­tics?’ I said, Why is he ask­ing me this? I said there is al­ways a pos­si­bil­i­ty, but I’m not sure.

“He said, ‘I need to know what your fu­ture plans are be­cause what I am see­ing here is very se­ri­ous.’ I said, What are you see­ing? Show me. He kept say­ing, ‘This is very se­ri­ous.’ One tear was shed be­cause I was think­ing I had so many things to do; there is a long list of things left unchecked.”

Im­me­di­ate­ly Dy­er-Grif­fith went in­to busi­ness mode. I said okay, this is the sce­nario; let’s see what’s next.

“I went to an on­col­o­gist, and we start­ed plan­ning,” she added.

“He was look­ing at me, ex­pect­ing a break com­ing. I was al­ready at the point, let’s get to the plan. I get it. This is se­ri­ous. Let’s get to the plan.”

The biop­sy fol­lowed her scans.

“I did the biop­sy at a hos­pi­tal with a great set of young doc­tors, and I think they were more shocked than me,” she said.

“By that time I had al­ready pre­pared my­self psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly for the out­come.”

Us­ing her ex­pe­ri­ence as an ex­am­ple, Dy­er-Grif­fith high­light­ed, “An im­por­tant point I want to make is that mam­mo­grams are very im­por­tant, par­tic­u­lar­ly for women 40 and old­er, but I take it down to 30 be­cause you are see­ing breast can­cer emerg­ing in younger and younger women. 30 and up, make sure you get your mam­mo­grams; how­ev­er, en­sure you get an ul­tra­sound. An ul­tra­sound will be able to de­tect what is the cause of the den­si­ty.”

‘Mum­my and Gary said you have to be hon­est’

Dy­er-Grif­fith’s sec­ond tear was shed when she had to tell “The Kid” Gary Grif­fith III, her son, of her di­ag­no­sis.

“It was the most dif­fi­cult part of all of it,” she said.

“The first time I told him, son, I want to tell you some­thing; I have to treat with some­thing, and I’ll be fine. His first re­sponse was, ‘What? Is not can­cer, right?’ And I was no, no, no, it’s fine. ‘Mum­my and Gary said you have to be hon­est,’ he added.”

Sigh­ing, she con­tin­ued, “That was hard, that look on his face af­ter I spoke to him. I don’t want to see that look in life again. It was the most chal­leng­ing part of this en­tire process.”

It’s a process which Dy­er-Grif­fith has tak­en con­trol of and is ready for what­ev­er the out­come may be with God’s grace.

“There is no oth­er ex­pla­na­tion for the sce­nar­ios I’ve had to deal with,” she said.

“It is on­ly by God’s grace and by cre­at­ing a process to man­age your per­son­al emo­tions. Util­is­ing strength in a way that can em­pow­er oth­ers. That is where the strength comes from, im­pact­ing oth­ers.”

Nicole wants to con­tin­ue break­ing the si­lence on breast can­cer

Hav­ing just com­plet­ed Phase one of her treat­ment, chemother­a­py, Dy­er-Grif­fith is head­ed to Flori­da for fur­ther scans be­fore mov­ing in­to phase two of her treat­ment.

“Chemother­a­py is one of the ther­a­pies you can use to man­age the type of can­cer,” she said.

“For my par­tic­u­lar type I had four rounds. The first of the four was called the red dev­il, and the red dev­il is one of the more tox­ic types of chemother­a­py which takes your hair. But thank the Lord above, I have not had the in­ten­si­ty of the re­ac­tions to chemother­a­py.”

Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter chemother­a­py, a pa­tient’s white blood cells drop.

“It means your im­mune sys­tem gets a bit low­er, and you need to pro­tect your im­mune sys­tem and pro­tect your­self from get­ting any in­fec­tion,” she ex­plained.

“If you were to get the slight­est in­fec­tion that could im­pact you se­vere­ly, un­less you get your blood test done and your white blood count nor­malis­es, it is best to stay away from peo­ple.”

While speak­ing about can­cer can still be quite taboo, Dy­er-Grif­fith in­tends to con­tin­ue break­ing that stereo­type.

“In Trinidad and To­ba­go, one in ten women can be di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer; one in eight women have to man­age this dis­ease,” she said.

“There are so many facets and as­pects of the man­age­ment of can­cer that we are still not very much aware of. That we do not talk enough about. That is still so in­ac­ces­si­ble for women on the street.”

In giv­ing back to T&T, Dy­er-Grif­fith’s O2N Foun­da­tion will be part­ner­ing with Caribbean Ra­di­ol­o­gy to of­fer 100 mam­mo­grams.

“It is part of my give back be­cause, Kristy, I will tell you, I was so shocked at the out­pour­ing of love, sup­port, and con­cern,” she said.

“Just this week some­one came back from Med­ju­gor­je and brought back a Blessed Sacra­ment.”

Her aim is to make mam­mo­grams more ac­ces­si­ble to women.

“For many women in Trinidad and To­ba­go, when you pay for school books, fees, rent, and elec­tric­i­ty, this and that is the last thing on your mind,” she said.

“Many peo­ple take this for grant­ed. I asked one of the ladies work­ing with me, When was the last time you had a mam­mo­gram? And she asked, ‘What is a mam­mo­gram?’”

Dy­er-Grif­fith said there were gaps that need­ed to be filled in the ed­u­ca­tion of women about breast can­cer.