“I de­cid­ed to share my sto­ry be­cause peo­ple need to know that you could be liv­ing your life per­fect­ly fine and in two days every­thing can change.

I found a lump un­der my arm in mid-Sep­tem­ber 2020 and with­in two weeks I was di­ag­nosed with ag­gres­sive stage three HER2 pos­i­tive/hor­mone neg­a­tive breast can­cer that spread to my lymph nodes. Be­fore my di­ag­no­sis, I felt per­fect­ly healthy.

I gen­er­al­ly tend to ig­nore things un­til they go away but when I found the lump, I knew it was not nor­mal, so I asked my friend to make an ap­point­ment for me to see her gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er.

The doc­tor in­formed me that what I was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing might be an al­ler­gic re­ac­tion, how­ev­er, to be sure, they rec­om­mend­ed that I do an ul­tra­sound and mam­mo­gram. I had a gut feel­ing when I left the of­fice so I made the ap­point­ment to do the tests the next day and that’s when I found out that I had can­cer.

I ap­pre­ci­ate irony as much as the next per­son and ac­knowl­edg­ing a lump and be­ing di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer at 48, al­most ex­act­ly 15 and 18 years af­ter my par­ents died (not can­cer) dur­ing breast can­cer aware­ness month, is about as iron­ic as it gets.

The scans showed scat­tered cal­ci­fi­ca­tions and prob­lems with my lymph nodes. To rule out the spread to any­where else, the doc­tors had me do a full-body CT scan.

At that point, I thought I was go­ing to die. I felt like a tick­ing time bomb. Hear­ing the word ‘spread’ and know­ing that it was not as lo­calised as I thought, made me pre­pare for the worst-case sce­nario. I imag­ined hear­ing the doc­tor say that they could not do any­thing for me.

Through those sce­nar­ios, I dis­cov­ered a whole new love for liv­ing that I pre­vi­ous­ly took for grant­ed.

I thought about my sev­en-year-old niece and it was hard to imag­ine not be­ing around to see her grow up. I told my­self that this is not go­ing to kill me, and I re­fused to die. A switch flipped in my brain and that is how it has been ever since.

It is not an es­cape mech­a­nism or de­nial, I have just de­cid­ed to fo­cus on bat­tling it through nu­tri­tion, fol­low­ing the doc­tors’ ad­vice, and trust­ing the sci­ence.

My treat­ment process has been man­age­able, and all of the nurs­es and doc­tors are great. I have done two rounds of chemother­a­py thus far. To pre­pare for that, I de­cid­ed to cut off my hair so I would not be trau­ma­tised by the hair loss and I have al­so changed my di­et com­plete­ly. I have a friend who was di­ag­nosed with ter­mi­nal can­cer five years ago and giv­en three months to live. Chemother­a­py and treat­ment worked for her and she’s do­ing well to this day.

In my fam­i­ly, there is a his­to­ry of can­cer. My moth­er’s sis­ter sur­vived hor­mone-pos­i­tive can­cer 10 years ago and on my fa­ther’s side, two of my aunts had it. One of them has passed and the oth­er is still alive. I in­tend to get ge­net­ic test­ing and coun­selling for my niece’s sake be­cause I want her to have all the in­for­ma­tion she will need.

My friends and fam­i­ly have been in­cred­i­ble. I re­alised with­in this jour­ney, that “Can­cer is ex­pen­sive.” I had to raise funds for a spe­cif­ic drug and they stepped up and or­gan­ised a ‘Go­FundMe’ and set up a bank ac­count with­out me know­ing be­cause they didn’t want me to be stressed. I’m al­so part of var­i­ous sup­port groups and it’s in­cred­i­ble to have that sup­port. The groups are a hub for peo­ple to show and ask for guid­ance. I try to share as well be­cause I ben­e­fit­ed a lot.

The Can­cer Cheat Sheet

Un­der­ly­ing all of this is my per­son­al choice to trust sci­ence but give it a lit­tle help. Every­thing I am shar­ing I’ve cleared with my on­col­o­gist and oth­er doc­tors. My main goal is to kill can­cer cells. Get your nu­tri­ents from ‘god foods’ as Dr Sab­ga says. As an­oth­er doc­tor told me when I plead­ed a case for the oc­ca­sion­al roti and non-or­gan­ic food - healthy peo­ple are at least 20 feet from the edge of the cliff. You are about three. You want to move away from, not clos­er to it.

I am not say­ing what worked for me will work for you, but these are re­searched tips and tricks that for some un­fath­omable rea­son, are not con­tained in one com­pre­hen­sive, kick can­cer in the butt bible. I had to search and con­sult and scour for some of these gems, and I tru­ly hope that they might ease your way a bit.

Mes­sage to oth­er war­riors

Even though it feels lone­ly, it does not have to be. The re­sources ex­ist. You can meet peo­ple like you and get the sup­port you need. Don’t give up. Do what you can to make your­self stronger and fight it.

My men­tal­i­ty is, if I get knocked down eight times, I’ll get up nine. I’m prepar­ing my­self for it to get a lot worse but I in­tend to stay stand­ing at the end of it.

Sub­mit­ted by Sari­ta Ram­per­sad

The full list of rec­om­men­da­tions on Sari­ta’s Can­cer Cheat Sheet can be found at https://www.face­book.com/Sar­i­taSaysFork­Cancer along with a host of re­sources and her re­cent in­ter­views. With­in it are help­ful sug­ges­tions to counter the side ef­fects of Chemother­a­py: Bone Pain, Mouth Sores, Metal­lic Mouth, Con­sti­pa­tion, Nail Changes and so much more. In ad­di­tion, more of her jour­ney is shared here for oth­er can­cer war­riors to feel sup­port­ed and con­nect: https://sar­i­tasaysfork­cancer.com/get-in-touch/]