Ultimate survivor

The arrogance of a doctor in the public health system cau sed her cancer to spread and almost cost her her life.

However, after much pain and suffering, Michelle O’Kieffe has bounced back and today helps other women in their battle with the disease, through her non-governmental organisation, Embracing All Real Survivors (EARS) Cancer Support Foundation.

According to O’Kieffe, in February 2000 at age 32, she was a “super healthy and energetic” mother of “two wonderful boys” when she discovered a lump in her right breast. At the time she did not think anything negative about the discovery but wanted to find out what it was and so decided to visit her family doctor.

After a physical examination, her doctor advised her to follow up with a surgeon in case it needed to be removed. She therefore visited a public health facility and the surgeon decided that a needle biopsy was necessary.

At the time I wasn’t aware of sonograms or mammograms but, as a layman I asked him if there wasn’t some other tests he should do. He told me he was the experienced person here and he knew what he was doing so I said fine, and scheduled an appointment for the insertion,” she recalled.

Therefore, she took time off from work as the manager of a children’s store, went to the hospital and had the procedure done. It was as she was driving to work afterwards that she started experiencing pains in her right arm. She assumed it was normal after such a procedure and so was not concerned.

However, when she tried to reach up into a cupboard she experienced extreme pain and realised she could not extend her arm. “I did not call back the doctor who did the biopsy because of his attitude. I was more comfortable with my chiropractor.

He spoke to a senior doctor who suggested that I see him immediately,” said O’Kieffe.

The next morning, at a private institution, the doctor examined her to find that her lymph nodes were swollen. He suggested immediate surgery, which was scheduled for the next day. The doctor removed a portion of her lymph node, performed a biopsy, and one week later he doctor confirmed that she had cancer.

O’Kieffe told Sunday Newsday when the doctors told her they had to remove her auxiliary nodes as well as some breast tissue, she immediately asked to have a double mastectomy. “I was under the impression that if something is giving trouble, get rid of it. If it’s the breast then get rid of both of them one time,” she said.

However, her doctor refused to do this because he said she was young, and so performed a lumpectomy instead in order to determine if the cancer was still in the breast or had spread, the stage of the cancer and if she had to do chemotherapy. While in recovery, her oncologist visited her bedside.

“I remember him asking me how I felt about all of this. I looked up at him from my bed, with tubes and everything coming out of me and said, ‘I don’t have time to feel anything. You need to tell me what you are going to do about this,’” she said.

He told her he did not want to wait for the pathology report but wanted to start chemotherapy as soon as possible, which she did on March 18, 2000.

She recalled how her employers helped by purchasing the drugs for her, as well as funding some of her treatments, and allowed her to stay home for a week after each treatment and expressed her heartfelt gratitude to them.

O’Kieffe’s next step was radiation.

However, about two weeks after her chemo was completed and while waiting for radiation treatment to begin, she felt “something happening” again in her breast - a strange stretching and pulling of her muscle.

“Initially, because of the fact that I had just completed this rigorous six months of chemotherapy, the doctors thought it was scar tissue, which would have been normal after my surgery,” she explained.

Unfortunately, after further examination, they realised that the tumour had recurred. Again she wanted to do a mastectomy but again the doctors said no. Instead, she went through 30 sessions of radiation in the hopes of reducing the tumour and it worked. It disappeared.

However, in November of that same year, her breast became red, hot, and the tumour became almost as big as her breast and she had to go back under the knife for a third time. “The third time, I felt as if I would die because that one...

I was down and out for about two months,” she said.

“While the main purpose was to remove the tumour, they were looking to see how the recurrence could have happened so quickly after chemo, after radiation. While in surgery, they actually saw the area where the original needle insertion was done and so decided to remove that thin strip of muscle.

That meant that the muscle where the doctor did that was infected so the tumour kept coming back,” she explained. O’Kieffe said she later found out there was a possibility that initially, her breast contained a cancerous tumour with a cyst inside.

When the doctor inserted the needle, it could have punctured the cyst, which was filled with fluid, and as the liquid passed through the cancerous tumour, it caused the cancer to spread. If the tumour had been biopsied the way it was done in the private institution, a simple removal and a short round of chemo may have been all that was necessary After the removal of the strip of muscle, she never again had a recurrence of cancer.

However, she did have other long-lasting effects from her treatments.

The chemotherapy drugs caused sever degeneration of her bones so that she now has cervical spondylosis. Also, in January 9, 2001 she was put on hormonal drugs which she took for five years and which immediately thrust her into menopause. In March 2010, at age 42, during a routine check up, she discovered she was six months pregnant with her daughter Correne O’Kieffe. “For almost ten years I did not have a period and, after bleeding for two months after she was born, I never had one again. I believe my daughter is divine proof that God is very much alive. She was a sign of complete healing,” she said. Her personal experiences and those of other cancer patients over the years have moved O’Kieffe to create the NGO, Embracing All Real Survivors (EARS) Cancer Support Foundation, whose aim is to support “survivors” - anyone who has ever been diagnosed with cancer, whether they are in remission, going through treatment or .