Kam­la Sinanan, 71,

south Trinidad

The year 2013 saw a dras­tic change for me. It was around Au­gust or Sep­tem­ber that I was giv­en the dev­as­tat­ing news that I had cer­vi­cal can­cer. Need­less to say, I felt numb for some mo­ments un­til the enor­mi­ty of my sit­u­a­tion be­gan to sink in, and a roller­coast­er of emo­tions kicked in, the fore­most be­ing fear and anx­i­ety and, of course, hav­ing to break this heartwrench­ing news to my fam­i­ly. But it had to be done, nonethe­less.

With­in days of my di­ag­no­sis, I had con­sul­ta­tions with my on­col­o­gists and had to un­der­go quite a few tests and pro­ce­dures be­fore my ac­tu­al treat­ment of ra­di­a­tion and chemother­a­py start­ed. I did not need surgery at all. Many women may think that surgery such as a hys­terec­to­my is need­ed for all cas­es of cer­vi­cal can­cer, but that is not the case. It was still a very dif­fi­cult jour­ney for me, filled with many anx­ious mo­ments, es­pe­cial­ly the fear of not know­ing whether or not there would be an end to it all.

My treat­ment spanned a pe­ri­od of six weeks, and many times I felt very lost and very alone but al­ways tried to put on a brave front even though my in­sides felt torn apart. All dur­ing this up­heaval in my life my daugh­ters were my rock and dri­ving force–en­cour­ag­ing and sup­port­ing me all the time, giv­ing me that ex­tra push–en­sur­ing that I nev­er missed any of my treat­ment ses­sions, doc­tors’ vis­its or any tests I had to un­der­go.

My jour­ney, even though rough, was made a bit smoother by the de­gree of pro­fes­sion­al­ism, care, pa­tience and un­der­stand­ing I ex­pe­ri­enced with my doc­tors and all staff di­rect­ly in­volved with my treat­ment. At the end of my treat­ment I had to con­tin­ue with “fol­low-up” vis­its with my on­col­o­gist, who con­tin­ued tests for ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten years, when I was then de­clared can­cer-free. I am thank­ful that I am one of the lucky ones to have sur­vived it so far and am grate­ful to be able to share this ex­pe­ri­ence.