Jacqueline Ahow-Telfer is the first cancer patient that I know of, who left the hospital after a chemotherapy treatment which can be quite debilitating, came home and cooked a meal.
She calmly describes the discovery of a lump in her breast last October at 6.30 a.m. one morning: "I felt somebody had shot me in my chest and felt something the size of a pea in my breast, within three days it had grown to the size of a capsule, one week later it was like a plum seed. I could feel it growing and there was a grey mark which turned to deep purple."
Since she is married to Englishman, Jim Telfer, the 58 year old mother of three adult children, was on the first plane to England. The doctors were a bit baffled as the spot was tender and there is usually no pain. With the Mc Millan Cancer Care nurses at her side for the entire three hours of her initial examination, full explanation of the disease and lots of literature, Jacqui was not scared and considered "my cancer is a gift. It is helping me to help other people. My father (John) had died from cancer six months before my diagnosis and I saw what happened, loving people who came from everywhere gave him a beautiful funeral. It was truly a time of worship in these awful times that Trinidad and Tobago is going through, it was like a blessing."
There would be no surgery for this very upbeat woman but chemotherapy started immediately from which she recovered faster than most so that the doctors decided that her sixth and last treatment was not needed. Jacqui feels the relaxed atmosphere in which the English carry out the therapy in the chemo suite complete with reclining chairs, coffee tables, cold caps for the head which prevent ulcers and other things one gets with chemo, could have contributed to her feeling of well-being throughout the treatments: "The place looks just like a beauty salon."
Jacqui has been very lucky and has not had the reaction that so many patients have had, such as, loss of the use of your hands because the treatment affects your veins. The only "blips" as she called it was her chemo had to be put off twice as the mandatory bloodcount showed "my count was not right." Other than that she could eat and drink everything and while other patients were puking and crying right next to her, she was unaffected by the treatments.
Jacqui recently returned to England for partial removal of her lymph nodes which may have been infected by the cancer. It will be another two weeks before pathology tests and ultrasound will say if the doctors successfully removed it all. Also planned for Jacqui are three weeks of radiotherapy treatment which should commence within the next six weeks.
When we spoke prior to her departure I did ask this very spiritual woman "what if it comes back?" To which she replied "if it comes back it comes back. My body is on loan from the Lord, he can give it and take it anytime." Jim, being a Director of ICI Penta Paints, the Telfers have lived in many far away places including Malayasia, Nigeria, Dubai and it is in these three non-Christian countries that Jacqui's faith was strengthened.
Jacqui has a bit of advice for women with the disease, some of whom end up with swollen arms for the rest of their lives: "Never lift anything heavier than six pounds in your whole life, try not to get scratches or cuts, do not pull even a weed, wear protective gloves in the garden, and do not get bitten by insects."
This has not been the first testing of Jacqui's faith and strength. In 1987 she could not go up the stairs and did not think she was going to be walking by the turn of the century. Her arthritis was so bad that "my legs seized up while swimming and I nearly drowned, later the prognosis was sooner or later you are going to have to replace your knees." She has had other major surgery and also suffers from a hiatus hernia. But with her strong faith in the power of prayer she talks to her body and is firm in the belief that "the doctors would not be led to do the wrong thing for me."
When she comes home, in addition to continuing to teach Tai Chi, Jacqui's next project is to try to get a group of breast cancer patients to man a drop-in centre "as there is just no place where people can drop in and find people who can help in other ways." Also, after the care by the Mc Millan nurses in beautiful surroundings, she is convinced that when people are sick you need to have comfortable chairs with pretty paint and not hospital oriented furniture. We can only hope and pray that such changes will soon happen at the St James Radiotherapy Centre.