Health & Fitness
“HOW HOUSE ON THE ROCK CHURCH SAVED MY LIFE …MY ONE YEAR BATTLES WITH STAGE 2 BREAST CANCER”—BOMA SUSAN BANJO TALKS ABOUT HER LIFE SHOCKING ENCOUNTER
She is indomitable as a survivor of most dreaded breast cancer that has seen many females to their early demise. Boma Susan Banjo is your everyday next neighbour youthful looking lady who is unassuming and serious minded GRAND DAUGHTER to Chief (Mrs.) Adaobi Whyte as she controls multi million naira enterprises in Port Harcourt, Rivers state capital as a successful female entrepreneur running SIGNATURE GLAM STUDIO, LUXURY BY SIGNATURE and EMERALD AND GARNET in Port Harcourt.
Boma Susan Banjo, the University of Port Harcourt graduate of Psychology (Guidance and Counseling) has been through a lot in the past one year battling stage 2 Breast cancer and finally as a survivor tells, EMEKA AMAEFULA (08111813069) her heart thrilling experience while undergoing chemotherapy and breast surgeries that saved her life. Read On.
For the past one year you have not been active in business, what happened to you?
Well, it has not been easy, but I thank God, I thank my family and friends for standing by me. It has not been easy because I was battling cancer. So, it was hard, you know but thank God that I survived. It was really difficult but I thank God that I survived.
In the beginning, how were you able to know what was happening to you?
You know, I attend House On The Rock church Port Harcourt and in Church we have this group known as Army Of David which is the Ministry arm of House On The Rock church, we normally have Health awareness checks and all that, they do Free Health checks for all kinds of people and It was during one of those times that they now gave us awareness on cancer and how to check yourself and all that, funny enough it stuck on my subconscious mind because I now always do the check and I now begin to check until one day I stumbled on a lump and I asked myself was this thing there before but because I have the habit of checking regularly and I now found out that ok this is a lump and it wasn’t there before but it wasn’t painful and I felt a bit relaxed and I told my grandma and friends to check for me and they were like ‘Boma you worry too much’ this is because normally I have the habit of if I have rashes if two days it doesn’t go I will go to the hospital as I don’t normally do those self-medication thing so I left it a bit and I went to Lagos to visit my mum. It was while I was there that the lump started getting painful like a month later and I now I felt a biting pain and I won’t feel it for the next two or three days but it became more frequent I got worried and I went somewhere at Lagos to do a scan but the doctor said that with his machine that he cannot see anything and I am like “Doctor leave this your machine thing use your hands because it was manual check that I did and I felt it. He said with his hands yes, he can feel it but his machine wasn’t seeing anything. So, I left him and he said it was a benign lump. I wasn’t convinced. So, that was when I now told my mum and this my aunt who now told me ok there is this Professor (specialist doctor) at Lagos State University Teaching Hospital-LSUTH. That was how we went to him and he saw it and checked it (breast) and it was lump and he had it removed. And when he tested it, barely two weeks later the result came out that it was a breast cancer. I felt like they just handed me a death sentence and my whole world it felt like you are going to die. All I remembered is that I stopped talking and it felt like I left this world a bit.
Then after that I came back it was like what are my chances but my aunt and her friend that went with me …because I had already told them what I was going through and they all came with me to the hospital for support. I had no idea that I was going to hear such life changing news .So, when we got there I asked what my chances are? He said ‘well thank God’ that I found it out early. That it is still very early and that it is treatable. Those days were the hardest days of my life. This is because each day I remember coming out of that place and I feel like ‘Oh God you don’t love because if you love why would you allow such thing (cancer) to happen to me and if you love me why would you want me to die?…If you love me why have I been in this world working so hard only for me to go down this way’. So, I was miserable in fact. Now I know why some people are suicidal when they go through certain things. For me, before now I used to say it to myself that nothing in this world will make me kill myself”.
DECISION TIME …LIFE AFTER DIAGNOSES
“After that I decided that no this is a battle it has come and I must face it. And if I know that I have to win this battle I have to be strong. That was how my days of crying reduced to ‘oh I have to win this’ and then I started chemotherapy and then I did surgery and I am here today.
How many times did you do the surgery?
The first one I did was the lumpectomy that is to have the lump removed and after that I did the chemotherapy as I started doing the chemotherapy before the main surgery this is because chemotherapy will shrink the size of the tumor first so as to weaken the cancer cells so that they will not have time to spread while they are doing the surgery. I did like four rounds of Chemotherapy first, before my next surgery and I now did the surgery which is breast conservative surgery. At first I am supposed to do Mastectomy surgery which is total removal of the entire breast so that you can be alive. So, I ended up doing Breast conservation surgery as I didn’t do mastectomy. After the four rounds of chemotherapy I went in for surgery…then I completed two more rounds of chemotherapy making it six circles of chemotherapy altogether. Then I did Radiotherapy at the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority N.S.I.A Cancer Center at Lagos state University Teaching Hospital-LSUTH”.
ALSO READ: PORT HARCOURT CELEBRITY TOP FEMALE BANKER ADAOBI NNANI DIES OF BREAST CANCER
HOW EXPENSIVE IS CANCER TREATMENT IN NIGERIA
“So, it has not been easy…. But one of the most challenging thing is that I remember when I first had the diagnoses a lot of people came saying that Nigerian doctors cannot treat cancer ‘Oh Nigeria! They can’t treat cancer oh! Go to India, go to South Africa Go to Dubai and it was like someone came and said go to Egypt and I am like, Egypt again that I have never heard that before?
I have faith in Nigerian doctors because the doctor that treated me Professor Oluwole Ateyobi of Salvation clinic Ilassa Maja, he has treated so many people in the past so, luckily I spoke with some people he treat 15 years ago and I am like now so, I am like I have faith and I have confidence that this man knows his job. I didn’t listen to those who were saying go to India, Go to here and there…because cancer treatment is quite expensive even in Nigeria you can imagine going abroad and maybe you getting stranded. Our doctors here are really trying it is just that they do not have enough facilities I mean equipment in treating people.
At what time did you notice this lump and had the first surgery?
Okay I noticed the lump in May 2018 and I traveled to Lagos that same month May 30th. And it was in June 2018 that I went to do the scan that first said that it was benign and that there was nothing there. And when I saw the doctor and I did another scan which said that there was a complex mass…so I did my lumpectomy first procedure surgery on the 21st of July 2018 and 2nd of August 2018 was when I saw the doctor and he told me that I have breast cancer. And that I needed to start treatment like chemotherapy. And at first even my mum said ‘no’ that my daughter is not going to do chemotherapy because a lot of people are scared about chemotherapy. You hear people say that chemotherapy kills and I tell them that chemotherapy does not kill but it is the retrogression of the disease that kills as a lot of people have cancer and they hide it. Some people think that it is a spiritual attack… I remember someone very close to me telling that this is not ordinary and that it is spiritual and I said to the person “no problem I am a child of God that I will pray while I take my treatment and that it will work” So, we need to get rid of that mentality of it is not ordinary and that it is spiritual as it kills a lot of people and at a point they now want to go for treatment it is already late and by the time they start taking treatment it is already late and they will die they will now say it is chemotherapy . It is the retrogression of the diseases that kill them and they allowed it to spread and attack their whole body. So, we really need to be health conscious here in Nigeria although our economy is not helping, the government has a whole lot to do because a lot of people are suffering before now if someone had told me that one injection will cost three hundred and Fifty thousand naira to Five hundred Thousand naira and some are above Five hundred thousand naira for one I would not believe…and they will tell you to take 18 doses of that injection depending on the type of cancer that you have. So, a lot of people that are dying, it is as a result of lack of money. As when they hear such kind of bill that they have to pay of course they will run to churches and spiritual homes …anybody that is willing to tell them what they want to hear and say herbalist as a lot of people are willing to go to traditional healing homes even ordinary malaria if you don’t treat it you will die. Some say supplement can cure cancer and I tell them even on the pack of supplement it is written that Supplement cannot cure malaria. So, cancer treatment is very expensive.
What is your advice to government in helping citizens reduce the cost of treatment of cancer and other related terminal diseases?
I think our Government has a lot to do, first let us talk about radiotherapy, in the whole of Nigeria we have Radiotherapy machines that are not working. The one at LUTH there are so many people. I went to National Hospital Abuja first and I was supposed to do it there I couldn’t do it there because the CT scan machine broke down. And you need to do the CT scan first they can plan you for your radiotherapy. I was at Abuja for over two weeks and the machine didn’t come up and I went back to Port Harcourt before they now called me to come to Lagos that the machines have started working. I was at Lagos and because of the crowd at the one at Lagos… I was at Lagos for almost a month before I started the Radiotherapy itself. I don’t know why we cannot have Radiotherapy machines in all the 36 states in Nigeria and I don’t know why Government cannot subsidize or make cancer care free for its citizens. Nigeria is Oil rich nation as we have all the resources and we have all that it takes to cater for our citizens. I don’t know why our government is unconcerned because when they get ill they travel abroad for treatment. So they neglect all the healthcare facilities in Nigeria. So the normal person cannot afford it as I remember meeting a girl at LUTH and her brother had to register her with N20,000 and they were asking me that this people are asking them to pay N20,000 that how much is Radiotherapy? And I said radiotherapy costs about Eighth Hundred and fifty Thousand naira (N850, 000) and the other one costs about Four Hundred and something Thousand N400, 000 or more depending on the type of palliative or curative that the person wants. At that point the boy said that they cannot afford it and it means they will resign her to fate even if she finds out early and availability of funds is a problem as she can’t afford it. And it is like going home to wait for death to come. And there is a lot of people like that they told them to come and do CT Scan for N40, 000 and they are like where will I get N40,000 from? So, governments need to put all these things in place and provide the adequate machines and not when our Law makers are ill they go abroad for treatment…no they should do it in a way that when they are ill they should take treatment here as Americans don’t go abroad when they are ill of course they cannot come to Africa, we have nothing to afford them.
We have development interventionist agencies like NDDC, what is your opinion on what they can do to help citizens live and have better healthcare?
I think they really have a lot to do.
They can actually set up awareness. The first thing to cancer is to create awareness as information is key. And if we are talking about NDDC they are just going to do for Niger Delta but even if they start with a few people they can touch lives by subsidizing the cost of drugs, make them free. If you are going to treat somebody and you are asking the person who doesn’t earn Fifty thousand naira a year or less enough to pay about N3m or N15m for treatment they will resign themselves to fate saying maybe God wants me to die or my uncle or my grandmother in the village wants to kill me or my enemy wants to kill me. Even our oil companies multinationals can help to create awareness about cancer and support the health system in Nigeria.
Recently have you had any experience with any female who couldn’t survive breast cancer ill-heath?
When I posted about my cancer journey on Facebook a female friend reached out to me on Messenger saying that she is going through the same thing and that she has done her second chemotherapy the previous day. So, I encouraged her and spoke with her and told her that everything was going to be fine. And she asked for my number which I gave and she asked what kind of diet was right for her? But she never called and of course I was quite busy. Few weeks later her cousin reached out to me and said that I need you to help me reach out to my cousin and that she is going through the same thing that you went through and he said you need to talk to her that she was dying. And he sent me her picture. When I saw her picture I really knew that it was a bad case as she was all skinny and all that. And when I asked about where they were treating her, she said it was at University of Port Harcourt Teaching Hospital Port Harcourt. And he felt that it was as a result of where they were treating her but at UPTH they have good doctors as well but that it was about the stage …maybe it has gotten to the stage where they really cannot do anything except the palliative treatment.
What are the stages in Breast cancer development?
The stages of breast cancer development are stage 0, stage 1, stage 2, stage 3 and stage 4. And stage 4 is like the really terminal stage of breast cancer where it has spread to other vital organs of the body. He sent me her picture and her number that he had wanted me to speak to her …but because of the way she looked I was already scared as she was coughing and on oxygen. And I knew that at that stage it has affected her lungs. So I called the number he gave me as she was with her sister In-law and that she was sleeping. Unfortunately the next day when I woke up and I saw a message saying “ Thank you so much for your efforts my cousin passed on last night “ I felt really bad because I remember that he told me that her family were hiding it as they were going from one place to the other saying that it was spiritual. And now when it was getting to the terminal stage that is when she got to the hospital. And I have a problem with that, if you know that you are going to go the hospital eventually go from the beginning and pray. It is spiritual and it is spiritual …Yes, understand I know that we are very religious in Nigeria …because this young lady kept hiding her problem and she went to the hospital when it was late. I was talking to my friend about a Clinic that I wanted to go and she said ‘don’t go to that hospital that people are always dying there’. And I said that people will always die in the hospital especially in a residential area because in Nigeria we only go to hospital when there is an emergency when the person is almost dying at night we rush the person. It was when I now got to that hospital that I realized that it specializes in the cases of Breast cancer. So, I knew that okay this is why people are dying here because people always present late. And when I asked that Professor that owns the hospital he said that people are always presenting late…that is the problem we have.
Which hospital is that?
It is called Seaside surgery Clinic at Victoria Street in Port Harcourt Town and it is owned by Professor Jamabo. My doctor at Lagos referred him to me. And it has been wonderful as well. Because I go to do my regular checks there even a couple of people who say ‘oh I feel pains in my breast’ go and do your checks there you will do a test …you will see your breast by yourself…you will even see the inside of your breast and what is going on and know. That awareness needs to be there so a lot of people always present late and that is the grievous problem that we have and if you present late you have reduced your chances to zero let me use that word. People should be aware of this and hasten up and don’t wait until it is bad …until the breast is ulcerated or until you can’t walk and you now say that you want to go to the hospital. Our bodies will always speak to us that is what I tell people. Your body will always give you a sign you either take it or you leave it but don’t ignore it…because every little thing your body is telling you matters. The only sign my body gave me was that biting pains that I felt maybe once or two or three times a week. And I don’t feel it more than few seconds. And If I didn’t listen to that little thing that I was feeling I shouldn’t have been here anymore to even say this or encourage anyone anymore talk less of people to listen to me to hear my story.
