When I was 49 years old, I felt a very small lump in my breast and decided to go to the doctor. After being examined, the doctor felt nothing and sent me on my way. Having regular examinations was common for me, and every October I would go for my check up. The following year I went again for my annual check up and still felt this small lump. The doctor still did not feel what I was talking about and suggested a mammogram, which turned up empty. It was only when my skin began to pucker—meaning it made an indentation, the doctor said that he finally felt the lump I’d been speaking of for about a year.
We then did a small operation, which proved that there was definitely something wrong and the best solution was to have a mastectomy. So, I decided to go to Scotland where a friend of mine had just done her mastectomy with a very well known and highly qualified doctor. When time came to get my results from my local doctor, he refused to give them to me. He thought I was wasting my money to go away when he was capable of doing whatever was necessary. Though this may be true, for my own peace of mind I still had my procedure done in Scotland. Because the doctor refused to give my results, we had to do a complete radical mastectomy, which is removal of the whole breast and the nodes under my arm.
I was then put on a drug called tamoxifen, which I took for 6 years post mastectomy and everything was clear. But, my journey did not end there. I was working in Tobago at the time running the food and beverage department for one of the hotels and my job was quite stressful. One day, I decided that the rubber prosthesis that was put in after my mastectomy was very uncomfortable and made the decision to do reconstructive surgery. I came back to Trinidad to see a local doctor who was one of the top reconstructive surgeons at that time. I was very fearful of having a foreign substance put into my body, and made it very clear that I wanted to use my own body parts to do the reconstruction. He advised on the different options, which were silicone implants or a procedure using the abdomen to create a breast with your own muscles. At this point there was an indentation in my chest where my breast used to be, so I opted for the latter but unfortunately this turned very bad. Post surgery I had a drainage tube with a bag attached to it, in my abdomen where the muscle once was. A nurse came one day to change the bag, that didn’t seem very knowledgeable of the procedure and pulled the entire tube of out my abdomen. She then proceeded to just push it back in. The doctor came to check up on me and I told him what happened—I immediately started a course of antibiotics to prevent any type of infection. I ended up getting a terrible sepsis from this experience, which nearly killed me. After that, I definitely would not suggest that type of reconstructive surgery.
Post cancer, I became an advocate for early detection and breast cancer awareness. I did a course on counseling and used to go to a cancer center in south Trinidad to counsel groups of ladies on early detection and cervical cancer. I did that for a number of years before moving to Port-of-Spain. The organisation would give me the names of ladies to go visit in the San Fernando General Hospital. What I realized during this time is that many women warded for breast cancer are sometimes not told exactly what is going on with them or how severe the situation is. There was one woman that I personally counseled who had no idea what she had and passed away a few weeks after we started counseling. I realized then, that doctors were not telling the poorer people what was actually going on with them, they were just being sent to the hospital and left to take its course. I hope by now that this has changed.