I was in hospital waiting for the results of my tests. The doctor was convinced that the bone marrow biopsy would confirm Multiple Myeloma (cancer in the bone marrow) and he wanted me to start chemotherapy in advance of receiving the results. I refused. My mind was racing in different directions.I How do I break the news to family and friends? How do I break the news to my aunty, my next of kin here in the USA? Her only daughter died of cancer. I called my friend Melly to tell her the doctor’s expectation. She is one of two closest friends who finally got me to the hospital.
Ngozi Uche
She spoke to the doctor and he told her I was refusing treatment. Melly was incredulous. How can you refuse treatment? She asked. She said Steve Jobs (of Apple Computers) died because he was trying out alternative cancer therapies. That may be true, but many who opt for chemotherapy also die.
Melly is not a practising Christian, I would say, and was not on my prayer support list. She’s more the pragmatic type who would gladly submit to chemo rather than dabble into prayers and alternative medicine.
I wasn’t quite refusing treatment. I just needed time to process the diagnosis and explore treatment options. Furthermore, the definitive bone marrow biopsy results were not in yet and I was still holding out hope it would favor me.
I told the Director of Women’s Affairs for women from my hometown in North America of the expected diagnosis and gave her permission to share the news with our Revival Committee Director who was in charge of organizing prayers for women and women’s issues. My church family was also kept abreast of developments in my health journey. I urged everyone to pray that the final verdict would not be cancer.
Once the final verdict came in, one part of me wanted to share the news with a wider circle of friends and family but I also wanted to hold back. I didn’t want my fighting spirit dampened by negative vibes.
I wished the words “…. I have cancer,” would never cross my lips. Oh! how I had yearned for a miracle. If that happened nobody else need know about my brush with cancer. But my name was now on the cancer registry and hospital records. Nowhere to hide. The insurance companies would get that information and so would every other agency.
Another dear friend, Nene – one of my relentless fire-brand prayer warriors, taught me to use the word “overcoming”. She sternly rebuked me for “claiming” pain by saying, “I have pain”. She said, “ You should say I am overcoming pain”. So now instead of saying “I have cancer,” I had to say: “I am overcoming cancer”. The goal was to keep me from cozying up with a cancer diagnosis and developing a cancer victim identity.
I thought Nene who was probably the most aggressive in firing me up to resist a final cancer diagnosis would urge me not to go for chemo once I broke the news of the final diagnosis to her. But she was the one who gave me a way out of the corner I had placed myself in. At some point I had decided I would rather have God just take me home than deal with chemotherapy.
But Nene said, “Regardless of what you decide to do, just remember that Jesus said, ‘even if you eat a deadly thing it will not harm you’. We will pray that the chemo will not harm you. It will only do you good. And pray over the medicine before they give them to you.” She’s a nurse and a prayer warrior. Wonderful combo.
My aunty brought two friends who had overcome cancer through chemotherapy to visit me share their experience. My sister in Nigeria reminded me that Bridget, a friend from high school who has been battling cancer, was still alive. I later learned that Bridget and I had the same diagnosis.
I tuned in to messages that gave me hope of survival. I heard a pastor on a Christian TV channel say something to the effect that: Sometimes God will deliver you from adversity and sometimes he will give you the grace to overcome.
My friend, Pastor Rose, told me that when she received a brain cancer diagnosis from doctors her spirit fought back right away. As a single mother and could not afford to leave her daughter motherless and she immediately rejected the diagnosis with all that was within her. And she never had to deal with the brain cancer that had afflicted her.
I understood that audio tapes on healing helped televangelist Creflo Dollar become free of prostrate cancer.
Now it was my turn to be deploy my cancer-fighting spirit. I resolved to employ chemotherapy in my fight against the disease. I was then overcome by nostalgia. Where were my high school friends? I longed to speak with them. Where was my best friend, Elizabeth, after 30 years without contact? I raced to resume contact.
