Cancer killed my daughter within six weeks – she was twenty four years old

I still remember every detail like it was yesterday. I came home one day and went into my daughter’s room to gist with her as usual. She’d just graduated from the university and was waiting for her NYSC posting. She was naked from the waist up when I got in and I noticed a small protrusion on one of her breasts. Frowning, I asked her what it was and she shrugged it off, saying it was nothing. When I expressed worry, she smiled and told me not to worry but I could not get myself to relax and after about ten minutes, I left her. Quietly, I called a close friend of mine, Nene, who was a nurse at the teaching hospital and she asked me to come in with her the next day. So, we went though I had to practically drag her along …and that was the beginning of the end.

My daughter, Anna, did not let me go in with her to see the doctor so I was stuck, nervously waiting for her to come out. After her consult, my friend, Nene, came over from her section and called me out for a private talk.  When we walked into a room a few doors away, the doctor was waiting there. He had not wanted to tell Anna directly but her breast cancer was really advanced and his recommendation was for an immediate mastectomy. As he spoke, I felt like someone had taken a machete to my heart. I tried to breathe but for some reason, my nose could not function. I began to cry and Nene tried to get me to stop, saying we needed to stay strong for Anna as this was going to be very trying time for her.

Together, we went back to my daughter and gave her the news. Ironically, I was the one who could find the words to speak as Nene was quiet. She lightly grabbed Anna’s arm, started shaking her head, softly repeating ‘why?’ Anna was as much my child as she was hers and probably spent as much time with her as she did with me. We both held on to my daughter who had started crying by then.

Her surgery happened three weeks after and we hoped for the best. In recovery, Anna tried to keep her spirits up but it was hard with the intense pain she was in. Two weeks after, she was discharged but three days after we got home, we had to rush her back to the hospital because she was screaming in pain and could not stand up or walk on her own. She was rushed to emergency and tests were run at once where it was discovered that the cancer had damaged her liver. Water was entering her lungs and some other stuff which they tried to explain but which I really could not understand. The summary of the story was that these things were the cause of her pain.

As the doctor spoke, I knew it was over. His eyes were sad and he tried but could not manage a good enough smile. He explained that the cancer had been caught too late, so much damage had been done and there was not much they could do at that point except try to make her as comfortable as possible. Anna died a week after – about six weeks after I saw that lump and dragged her to the hospital.

The day Anna passed away, I was sitting right with her, holding her hand and assuring her she would not die before me.  As she struggled all through, she’d kept saying to me, ‘mummy, I don’t want to die; I don’t want to die.’ I knew the end had come but I still prayed for her to survive this or maybe I would wake up and it would all be a bad dream…but it wasn’t.

The hospital staff must have called Nene immediately Anna died because she was in our room a few minutes after. Walking past me, she grabbed Anna and started crying, ‘Why? ... Why did you do this to us? Why?’ This went on for a while but I was too caught in my grief to ask her what she meant, if anything. It was days later when I asked and she’d looked at me sadly. Apparently, two years before, Anna had come to her with a story about a friend who’d noticed a lump in her breast but was too scared to do anything about it. Nene said she’d told Anna to encourage her friend to get checked out at the hospital so that even if the lump was anything bad, early detection could nip it in the bud. She said she’s asked Anna about it a few months after and she’d said she told her friend but didn’t know if the girl had gone to the hospital. Now, in retrospect, she knew it was Anna and blamed herself for not probing further. So, that’s how my daughter died of breast cancer, and she was only twenty four years old.