Surviving breast cancer

-By Allwell Okpi

Cancer was only a news item to Florence Balogun until 2006. She never imagined that the little lump in her breast was brewing cancer. Four years later, she survived the ordeal but is still battling its effects.

“I never noticed that I had breast cancer until I was diagnosed after my friend died of it. One morning, my friend’s sister told me that my friend died the day before of breast cancer. I was shocked because she told me that she had a lump in her breast and I also told her I had a lump in my breast too. So I went to the hospital; the doctor did some test and said the lump was malignant, that I have cancer of the breast,” Mrs. Balogun said.

The prevalence of cancer in Nigeria, especially breast and cervical cancer in women, Kaposi Sarcoma, liver and prostate cancer in men, is no longer a myth. According to Peter Eric, the World Health Organisation (WHO) representative in Nigeria, 667,000 new cases of cancer were recorded in 2008 affecting 314,000 males and 353,000 females and causing 518,000 deaths involving 252,000 males and 266,000 females. With this statistics, cancer is now about the deadliest killer-disease in the country.

Fund-guzzling ailment

For Mrs. Balogun and her family this statistics is real. After she was diagnosed of cancer, the race for fund began. The treatment of cancer, reputed in Nigeria as “the disease of the rich”, is quite expensive.

“It was terrible. Family, friends, and my church stood by me. It was very difficult raising money. You know, it is a very expensive thing to treat. So one went through hell, perhaps a thing that would have lasted about four, five, six months took more than one year because of inability to raise funds,” she said.

“I can’t even calculate how much was spent on my treatment. The different tests that I did alone, was over N50,000; I think everything was over half a million Naira. I did my chemotherapy in UCH (University College Hospital) Ibadan, so I was going from Lagos to Ibadan everyday for four months. And since then I have been taking drugs every day; you must not miss any one for five years.”

Fear for children

Mrs. Balogun, who used to be a secondary school teacher, said the battle with cancer has left her weak and she is finding it difficult to do her business. But that is not her greatest worry. The fact that cancer is hereditary is giving her a deep concern about the fate of her three children, particularly the eldest, a girl in her early 20s.

“Early this year in the church when we were writing prayer points for the year, I peeped at what my daughter wrote and one of them was “God, let me not have breast cancer like my mother.’ I was deeply touched by this. My children are already concerned. I pray that they don’t go through what I have gone through,” the 47-year-old mother said.

As the prevalence of cancer increases, more and more people are going through an ordeal similar or worse than Mrs. Balogun’s. It is even more so because of the low interest in its eradication, compared to the attention given to HIV/AIDS.

While speaking at a seminar organised by The Bloom Cancer Care and Support Centre to mark the World Cancer Day on February 4 at the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research, Yaba, Aderemi Ajekigbe, an associate professor of Radiology, said it is unfortunate that Nigerian government is not taking cancer seriously.

“How can a country of 150 million people have only five radiotherapy centres, one of which is in a private hospital? The National Cancer Centre in Abuja is political; nothing is happening there. Even Lagos State does not have radiotherapy centre. If a private hospital can have it, then Lagos State can have 100 of it. They don’t talk about cancer until a prominent person dies of it, but people are dying of cancer everyday,” Dr. Ajekigbe said.

With her right breast free of cancer, Mrs. Balogun now has to raise money regularly for tests to ensure that the left breast is not affected while she keeps buying her drugs.

“It’s not easy for cancer patients that are not rich. The Lagos State government and the Federal Government should supplement to make the treatment affordable. Nigerians who are very rich should also assist,” Mrs. Balogun implored.

 

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