FAY­OLA K J FRAS­ER

Ac­cord­ing to a study pub­lished by the Jour­nal of Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine and Pri­ma­ry Care (2021), Breast Car­ci­no­ma is “the lead­ing cause of can­cer among fe­males in Trinidad & To­ba­go”, and T&T has the sec­ond high­est breast can­cer mor­tal­i­ty rate in the Caribbean.

To­day marks the be­gin­ning of Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month, which is a month ded­i­cat­ed to ed­u­ca­tion about and ad­vo­ca­cy for breast can­cer, with a spe­cial fo­cus on the im­por­tance of ear­ly de­tec­tion, and ac­cess to time­ly, high-qual­i­ty care.

Dur­ing this month, it is an op­por­tune time for women to vis­it a health­care provider to do their an­nu­al breast health screen­ing.

Breast ex­am­i­na­tions and mam­mo­grams are crit­i­cal for ear­ly de­tec­tion of breast can­cer, as when it is de­tect­ed ear­ly and is in the lo­calised stage, the five-year rel­a­tive sur­vival rate is 99 per cent.

Lizan Ben­jamin Reid is an in­cred­i­ble woman, who went through the jour­ney of deal­ing with her di­ag­no­sis of breast can­cer, be­gin­ning with ear­ly de­tec­tion, sup­port­ed by her doc­tors, fam­i­ly, and friends, and pow­ered by her faith.

In Ju­ly 2012, re­sid­ing in Bar­ba­dos at the time, Reid be­gan feel­ing a lump in the low­er left side of her left breast. Hav­ing been well in­formed about self-breast ex­am­i­na­tions, as her com­pa­ny had ex­perts teach­ing staff about breast health dur­ing breast can­cer aware­ness month, she was in the habit of reg­u­lar­ly ex­am­in­ing her­self.

The lump was sen­si­tive to touch, and she went to the doc­tor the fol­low­ing month to get her­self checked. Af­ter per­form­ing a biop­sy, the doc­tor called Reid in­to his of­fice one week lat­er to let her know there were can­cer­ous cells found in the breast tis­sue. The can­cer was in stage one and had not mi­grat­ed else­where, and the doc­tor sug­gest­ed that the best course of ac­tion would be al­most im­me­di­ate breast re­moval surgery.

As a 36-year-old at the time, the idea of re­mov­ing one of her breasts seemed daunt­ing and dev­as­tat­ing to Reid, but her doc­tor re­as­sured her that the surgery had sig­nif­i­cant­ly ad­vanced, and there would be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for breast re­con­struc­tion. Re­mem­ber­ing those ten­u­ous days and mo­ments fol­low­ing her di­ag­no­sis, Reid de­scribes the way her fam­i­ly and friends ral­lied around her, with one of her clos­est friends fly­ing to Bar­ba­dos for the week­end to be at her side.

Her doc­tor sug­gest­ed she un­der­go the surgery at home with the sup­port of her fam­i­ly and re­ferred her to Dr Ra­jen Ram­paul, Sur­gi­cal On­col­o­gist, On­coplas­tic and Re­con­struc­tive Breast Sur­geon and Med­ical Di­rec­tor of the Pink Hi­bis­cus in Trinidad, and the first di­ag­nos­tic breast health cen­tre to found­ed in the Caribbean in 2012.

Reid was com­fort­ed by the ex­per­tise of Ram­paul, es­pe­cial­ly as he was able to re­move the breast with­out caus­ing un­due scar­ring and per­form the re­con­struc­tion at the same time. For­tu­nate­ly, the surgery was suc­cess­ful in re­mov­ing the can­cer­ous cells, and Reid re­turned to Bar­ba­dos three weeks lat­er. She un­der­went chemother­a­py for four months and sub­se­quent­ly took chemother­a­py drug treat­ment for five years.

“My god­daugh­ter, she need­ed her aun­ty to stick around,” Reid mus­es when asked how she stayed res­olute dur­ing the bat­tle with can­cer. “That ex­pe­ri­ence taught me that I had so many peo­ple who loved me that I need­ed to fight can­cer for them.” De­scrib­ing her men­tal state, she does not dis­count the many wor­ries and con­cerns she had aside from sur­vival, such as nev­er get­ting mar­ried, hav­ing chil­dren, and hav­ing per­ma­nent scar­ring, but in­stead be­lieves it was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for her to draw clos­er to God and be stronger in her faith.

She saw God’s hand in every­thing and be­came grate­ful for even the seem­ing­ly small­est mo­ments. For ex­am­ple, when she chose to cut off her locks, as chemother­a­py would cause hair loss, she re­ceived so much love and pos­i­tiv­i­ty from her dear god­daugh­ter on her new look, and her co-work­er even knit­ted her a head cap to keep her head warm in the of­fice. It was these small mo­ments of sup­port and re­in­force­ment that kept her go­ing through the tough­est times.

“I trust­ed my doc­tors to do their thing, and I trust­ed God to take care of the rest,” she says, “and I nev­er claimed the can­cer as mine.” Even now, Reid does not con­sid­er her­self a sur­vivor but sees breast can­cer as a di­ag­no­sis she re­ceived and a jour­ney she went through. “That phase is done,” she says. She al­so does not use the term “re­mis­sion” as she has ful­ly come through it to the oth­er side. Reid now faith­ful­ly does her mam­mo­gram year­ly, and en­cour­ages all women, re­gard­less of their age and health con­di­tions to do the same.

She did not have any fam­i­ly his­to­ry or ge­net­ic in­di­ca­tion of breast can­cer, as none of the women in her fam­i­ly had it and was ded­i­cat­ed to an ex­er­cise and rel­a­tive­ly healthy rou­tine when she was di­ag­nosed, mean­ing that it can hap­pen to any­one. “If any­thing feels strange, don’t put it off,” she says, be­cause ul­ti­mate­ly if some­thing is wrong, the ear­ly de­tec­tion can quite lit­er­al­ly save your life.

Draw­ing on the strength of her faith dur­ing her ex­pe­ri­ence, she “nev­er stopped smil­ing, nev­er stopped liv­ing”.

Dur­ing Oc­to­ber, rais­ing aware­ness for breast can­cer and pro­mot­ing its ear­ly de­tec­tion is cru­cial.