Neli­ni Mo­hammed

When every­thing spi­rals at 26 years old

“Thir­teen years ago, at 26 years of age, I was di­ag­nosed with stage three breast can­cer.

It start­ed off when I felt a lump in my breast and the ini­tial ad­vice ‘it was nor­mal to have lumps there at my age’. Af­ter some time, I went to my gy­nae­col­o­gist for my rou­tine check­ups and he said that my lumps were ab­nor­mal and rec­om­mend­ed that I go for a mam­mo­gram. When I went for the mam­mo­gram, they (med­ical of­fi­cials) were hes­i­tant be­cause of my age. They said that the re­sults show that I have dense breast tis­sue which was nor­mal for some­one my age.

Every­thing spi­ralled from there; I had a biop­sy done which was all I need­ed to con­firm breast can­cer. My can­cer had ad­vanced to the point where it was vis­i­ble that some­thing was wrong. I did a mas­tec­to­my, chemother­a­py and ra­di­a­tion – the full works. I was very glad that I got a lot of sup­port from my doc­tors. They were up­front with me from the be­gin­ning, let­ting me know that it was an ag­gres­sive can­cer and not nor­mal for some­one my age. There­fore, we had to treat it ag­gres­sive­ly with the max­i­mum dosage to re­duce chances of re­oc­cur­rence and im­prove my chances.

This is why pa­tient nav­i­ga­tion is some­thing that I’m pas­sion­ate about. When you are em­pow­ered and able to make de­ci­sions, it helps you get through the can­cer process. The di­ag­no­sis helped me re­alise that I don’t have to fit in a mould of what peo­ple want me to be. It helped me to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of be­ing au­then­tic and be­ing true to my­self.

I have a friend go­ing through can­cer right now and I’m ex­pe­ri­enc­ing it from a dif­fer­ent an­gle. I learnt how to be as­sertive, re­silient and the pow­er of pos­i­tiv­i­ty. Noth­ing you’re go­ing through lasts for­ev­er.”