Idara watched her mother gradually loose grip on life as she battled with the monstrous illness. It started when her mother was sick and could not go to the market to sell as usual and Idara had to go on her behalf so she could at least raise money for her treatment. As the days passed her mother was not getting any better, then she was taken to the hospital and the doctors said she needed an operation in the breast and money was required. Sadly Idara had to skip classes and go to the market to at least raise a deposit fee so that treatment would commence but the money wasn’t forthcoming and 500,000 Naira was not a small amount to borrow from market women who traded on palm oil. Even her father’s wine tapping could only raise a little money.
The struggle continued for months and the operation was finally carried out but she still did not get better, then one day Idara returned from school and her mother was not on her hospital bed and the women around were all crying, then she knew her mother was no more. She imagined how at 18 she will have to raise her brother and her sister without her mother, she wondered why God would let her mother go through such pain and die at the end. The doctor told her that if it were detected earlier her mother would have survived. Idara imagined how many other children lost their mothers to undetected breast cancer and wished the government of each state took the breast cancer awareness campaign to the interior parts of the state like her village Ikot Eyop.
Women in most parts of the country have little or no knowledge of breast cancer so when they feel the symptoms and see the signs they try to treat it with herbs which worsen the tumor. It is therefore pertinent that the government at all levels take the gospel of breast cancer to the villages as well as establish centers’ with affordable treatment for the diagnosed. Also women should learn to go for a test immediately they notice a lump in the breast. Not all lumps are cancerous but you cannot determine that by yourself as this is one of the most common signs. Let us join hands together and stop this monster from killing women, health they say is wealth.
(Courtesy http://www.pinkpearlfoundation.com/blog/)