FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

‘In my for­ties, I thought I was liv­ing my best life. Lit­tle did I know, at age 46, my life would be turned up­side down with Stage IV breast can­cer.” A 16-year sur­vivor of metasta­t­ic Stage IV, breast can­cer, Pearl Bal­ga­r­oo was di­ag­nosed at a point where she had “a good di­et, ac­tive lifestyle and a bal­anced life”. She was, how­ev­er, sud­den­ly jolt­ed by the en­trance of the un­want­ed and un­ex­pect­ed in­tru­sion in­to her life and body by can­cer.

Bol­stered by the love and sup­port of her fam­i­ly and friends and the un­re­lent­ing care from her doc­tors, Bal­ga­r­oo made it through the ar­du­ous jour­ney of bat­tling this in­va­sive and dif­fi­cult dis­ease, al­ready in the late stage, to live and tell her tale and re­flec­tion in her now pub­lished nov­el, Danc­ing With the Red Dev­il.

Born in 1959 to Denn and Jean Ram­per­sad, Bal­ga­r­oo be­lieves her­self to be “very much a prod­uct of the fam­i­ly and vil­lages” in which she grew up. She was raised with four sib­lings in a tight-knit fam­i­ly, with one of her sib­lings as a pae­di­atric sur­geon be­ing in­stru­men­tal in her bat­tle with can­cer. She at­tend­ed the Val­sayn Teach­ers’ Col­lege and sub­se­quent­ly, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

Mar­ried to Arnold Bal­ga­r­oo in 1987, she al­so joined the staff that year of St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School where she taught Eco­nom­ics and stayed for 20 years un­til re­tire­ment.

Com­mit­ted to her year­ly mam­mo­grams, Bal­ga­r­oo’s doc­tors re­port­ed gen­er­al­ly healthy breasts, al­though she had ‘fi­bro­cys­tic breasts’, mean­ing that they had a lumpy, ir­reg­u­lar tex­ture. De­fined as “a harm­less con­di­tion” which may not have any as­so­ci­at­ed symp­toms, fi­bro­cys­tic breasts are com­mon, and af­fect up to 60 per cent of women glob­al­ly. At 46, Bal­ga­r­oo found, how­ev­er, one of the lumps was more ir­reg­u­lar and had start­ed hard­en­ing, with the area around the lump be­com­ing dark­er and dim­pled.

The lump was iden­ti­fi­able by sight and touch, and Bal­ga­r­oo de­cid­ed to do a core biop­sy to iden­ti­fy the cause of the lump. Fol­low­ing the biop­sy, she was ur­gent­ly called in­to the doc­tor’s of­fice and the di­ag­no­sis of breast can­cer was gen­tly de­liv­ered to her–that she had an “in­va­sive duc­tal car­ci­no­ma”.

“You sure that’s me?” she asked, struck with dis­be­lief. Bal­ga­r­oo was rat­tled by the di­ag­no­sis, es­pe­cial­ly as there were lim­it­ed phys­i­cal signs (aside from the lump) of the ex­is­tence of can­cer in her body. “I just went on a six-hour hike a few weeks ago,” she re­mem­bers telling the doc­tor, who en­sured her that no mis­take was made, and even­ly laid out her op­tions, in­clud­ing nip­ple-pre­serv­ing lumpec­to­my. Af­ter the ini­tial di­ag­no­sis, it was found that she had metasta­t­ic breast can­cer. There was a round of dis­cus­sions with fam­i­ly, friends and doc­tors, and Bal­ga­r­oo de­cid­ed to “just get rid of it” by hav­ing a mas­tec­to­my in­stead of a lumpec­to­my to pre­serve her life. She in­sin­u­at­ed that the prospect of re­con­struc­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly helped her come to the de­ci­sion to ful­ly re­move the breast, feel­ing “lucky” that she could still feel com­fort­able in her body.

Con­sid­er­ing that in 2006 the di­ag­no­sis of breast can­cer was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less wide­spread than it is now, Bal­ga­r­oo made her way on a dif­fi­cult and lone­ly jour­ney, with­out many women with whom she could em­pathise about the strug­gles of her jour­ney.

At present, Bal­ga­r­oo con­sid­ers peo­ple far more open with their di­ag­no­sis, and free from the mis­con­strued no­tion that they would get this dis­ease on­ly if they are not liv­ing a healthy lifestyle or are do­ing some­thing more awe-in­spir­ing.

“It’s on­ly af­ter the fact that we con­nect the dots in our life,” Bal­ga­r­oo says. Al­though many may have faced the chal­lenge of di­ag­no­sis won­der­ing why they would have to face this dis­ease af­ter do­ing every­thing “right”, such as eat­ing well, ex­er­cis­ing and prac­tis­ing spir­i­tu­al prayer, Bal­ga­r­oo saw in­stead that these tools were strate­gi­cal­ly placed in her life’s tool­box to pre­pare her and give her the strength to fight the poi­so­nous can­cer. She even felt pos­i­tive about the im­pact that the re­con­struc­tion would have on her breasts which had “suc­cumbed to the ef­fects of grav­i­ty”. Af­ter the surgery, Bal­ga­r­oo learned that the can­cer was Stage IV, and had spread to her lymph nodes and lungs, and at that mo­ment felt the ar­mour that she used to steel her­self dur­ing the mas­tec­to­my was shat­tered.

Quick­ly col­lect­ing her­self and read­ing all the var­i­ous lit­er­a­ture, as any good teacher would, she be­gan ap­ply­ing a va­ri­ety of meth­ods such as yo­ga, juic­ing, rest­ing and prac­tis­ing “the art of self­ish­ness” to be­gin to ac­tive­ly take care of her­self. She de­scribes the bless­ing of the sup­port of her fam­i­ly, friends and pro­fes­sion­al col­leagues, which gave her the space and courage to valiant­ly sur­vive the can­cer.

Af­ter sev­en ses­sions of chemother­a­py at the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre, the can­cer ef­fec­tive­ly dis­ap­peared from her breasts, lymph nodes and lungs, an ex­treme­ly un­com­mon and mirac­u­lous event. Ac­cord­ing to Bal­ga­r­oo, “I had beat­en that red dev­il,” (chemo drug dox­oru­bicin) and did the Sco­tia­bank Breast Can­cer Aware­ness 5K run the very same year.

In the five years to come, she con­tin­ued to take med­ica­tion rec­om­mend­ed by the doc­tors, and did her reg­u­lar scans, which in­di­cat­ed “no ev­i­dence of re­cur­rence”. Rein­te­grat­ing back in­to her reg­u­lar life for a few years in­clud­ing train­ing ex­tra hard at the gym, Bal­ga­r­oo was soon hit with “an­oth­er ket­tle of fish”, find­ing her­self con­stant­ly ex­haust­ed, which she chalked up to her reg­u­lar gym rou­tine. How­ev­er, the gym rou­tine was not the is­sue, and she was des­tined to over­come an­oth­er se­ries of health chal­lenges. This coura­geous woman was de­ter­mined to sur­vive.

The ‘red dev­il’

Chemother­a­py is wide­ly known to cause dif­fi­cult side ef­fects in most can­cer pa­tients, in­clud­ing hair loss, an in­creased risk of in­fec­tion, nau­sea and vom­it­ing. But one par­tic­u­lar drug, dox­oru­bicin, is so pow­er­ful and may pro­duce such in­tense side ef­fects it is named for Sa­tan him­self, and not just be­cause of its bright red colour.

The drug is com­mon­ly called the “red dev­il chemo” both be­cause of its dis­tinc­tive colour and be­cause it can cause se­ri­ous side ef­fects, in­clud­ing po­ten­tial heart dam­age, in some in­di­vid­u­als. Doc­tors care­ful­ly test pa­tients be­fore giv­ing them dox­oru­bicin to see if they are like­ly to be vul­ner­a­ble to the heart ef­fects. (www.can­cer­centre.com)

Pearl Bal­ga­r­oo’s sto­ry con­tin­ues next week.