By Nicole Heyns
October marks the 25th anniversary of Breast Cancer Awareness month, and brings with it a flood of memories dating back to the year 2007 and beyond. Breast Cancer is a life threatening disease, with 1 in 11 women being diagnosed with the disease every year. Breast cancer does not only affect one’s health, but also one’s state of emotional well-being. I have experienced the side affects of this first hand.
When I was a ten-year old girl the last thing that was on my mind was the possibility of losing my mother; Denise Arlene Heyns was the epitome of a "cool mom". She drove my friends and I around, spoiled me with gifts, covered up for me with my dad when I did something wrong and was always willing to talk, no matter how ridiculous or mundane the subject. I had never expected that one day she would tell me, with tears in her eyes, that I had to be strong and look after my sister; that I had to help look after my own mother. Weren’t the roles supposed to be reversed? But an illness as violent and damaging as cancer can result in the strangest of circumstances to occur.
Her operations came first: she removed both her breasts and replaced them with gel-filled sacs that looked so easily about to burst that I was scared to hug my mother too tightly at first. Next came the chemotherapy, which resulted in her hair falling out clump by clump until she was left with nothing but a light fuzz covering her scalp. I remember that I bought her a few bandanas for her birthday that year; she was grateful for the gift and put one on immediately, but the sadness at the loss of her hair was clearly apparent in her expression. My mother and I had always prided ourselves on our thick, blonde locks; it was a part of our character, and with the loss of her hair my mother’s positive attitude towards the world seemed to fade away along with it.
The weeks that followed my mother’s chemotherapy sessions were always less than pleasant; she was constantly nauseous and couldn’t hold anything down. She was too exhausted to move, but despite the side effects of her treatment she pushed on, caring for her family and radiating as much happiness as she could. After almost two years of treatment my mother was finally declared benign, and she launched herself back into her career with so much eagerness that it was clear that she had been in more emotional pain than we had realized. My mother loved her career; she was a natural hard worker and she was good and passionate about what she did, and for another two years everything seemed to be going well. But with the career, however, came the stress that accompanied it, and it was soon confirmed by doctor’s that the cancer that had originally begun in her breasts had now spread to her liver. Liver cancer is not easy; breast cancer looks like the flu in comparison to the pain my mother went through when undergoing treatment. The liver is important for keeping your body healthy and functioning properly. The tumour was so large, and had been left undetected for so long, that it engulfed the majority of the organ. My mother abandoned her career and once again underwent chemotherapy, but after another two years of torture she had had enough. She decided, against her doctor’s advisement to put chemotherapy behind her and progress to radiation. The radiation seemed to work…in the beginning. The cancer had become so aggressive that it had spread further down her body, reaching her legs and making it impossible to walk. Her bone structure weakened, and she adopted a walking frame and a wheelchair in order to get around. Her hips broke more than once because of the weakness of her bone structure, and she underwent surgery once more to gain a hip replacement in order to improve her quality of life. It was short-lived, however. She lived off morphine, swigging it from bottles as if it were water in order to minimize the pain, and her treatments were no longer having any effect on the improvement of her health. At the beginning of 2007 she was admitted to hospital in order to care for her. The cancer had begun to spread even further, and her inability to move, to talk or care for herself emphasised the vicious nature of this disease. My mother passed away in April 2007 after being in hospital for almost two months straight. In the last two weeks of her life she had been unable to recognise any member of her family, and never spoke a word unless she was moaning from the pain. The death of my mother left a large scar on her family’s heart, but she had been remembered as an idol in the fight against cancer; her courage and strength was seen by everyone, and she made sure to pass that quality on to her daughters while she had the chance. The reality of Breast Cancer and the cancers that follow it is there; value your health while you have it, and respect your body enough to take care of it and protect it against illness. You never know when it may be too late. |