Interview OV30

Age at interview: 48

Age at diagnosis: 46

Brief Outline: Ovarian cancer diagnosed in 2002 following abdominal bloating and bleeding. Treated by surgical removal of ovaries and womb, and colostomy, followed by chemotherapy.

Background: Unemployed community worker, widowed, one adult child.

Couldn't believe her diagnosis was real.

In beginning I told them they must be dreaming, it cannot happen to me, because in my family there's nobody who has ever had it. Even up to this day I believe it's a dream, and to me it's a dream, it's a bad bad dream. And when I went out of the doctor's hospital, I ran off from that doctor, I didn't want to see her again because I thought she was just trying to mess my life around. So I kept away 2 months but in the long run she caught up with me again so I had to go and have my operation done.

Felt less of a woman because her surgery left her with a colostomy.

And is your colostomy permanent?

I pray God that it will never be permanent, because it's not a good thing for a lady because every day you bath, when you change, you cannot even, you know, I feel that I'm half a woman, you know, I don't know how to put it, I'm little bit confused because it sometimes you mess around without knowing what is happening.

Hoped to be able to return to college, to find a husband and live to see her grandchildren.

How do you view your future?

My future, I have dreams, I have dreams. I have dreams that the minute I finish going my treatment, things like that, I would like to go back to college and do some counselling courses, because I love people, I love young children, I love aged, I can help them, what I've gone through back in Africa and here, and I've plenty to give to people, yeah, not to lose hope.

You know I had dreams when I came to this country, that for the first time I may find somebody to love me and marry me. I had dreams, I'd say to the Lord 'the boy has grown up now, give me somebody to look after me for a change' you know what I mean? I'm not giving up.

I have cried also, because I was hoping to see, and my dreams were to see my grandchildren one day, because he's only one boy. If he had 2 or 3 children we would be big family. That's all my dreams and I pray God even up to now to let me see them. 

Gained support from her Christian faith and her prayers.

But I thank God even up to now because after that the doctors were kind to me, they were good to me, they tried to explain to me, I still up to now don't understand, because what I do have is the faith that I believe, and that faith that's what helps me more that anything else.  

But now it doesn't matter, I know when God is with me and the God is with doctors, everything's possible. I'm not losing hope. I'll continue hanging on in my faith.

But through the faith things are much much better. And I'm telling you and I'll tell you again, and I'm not ashamed to say it again, I know he's able, God is able, and everything is possible with God, and I got my feelings, yeah I believe it, step by step, I believe it, because my dear, my stomach was rotten, I saw it. Even to sit here like this, it's the grace of the Lord. 

Friends in the African Caribbean community advised her to pray rather than go to the hospital for treatment.

But before I did that I told those people I went with to church, and they said to me 'you can't go there [the hospital] again, you have to stay in the church and pray'. But when I was praying my God said 'I know, I've heard your prayers'. So I said to the Lord 'if you have heard my prayers I'm going to go there. And because doctors they're your doctors, they're sons and daughters, and I know you are the one who gives them wisdom, let it be done, let it be done the way, let it be done your own way Lord'. 

But from there I lost many people, the friends I knew they never came to see me, because the minute they were told that I had that and I had this, they thought that was the end of me. And I asked my God to spare my life for my son's sake, because I've lost my husband and it was hard bringing him up alone and him having no friends or family near him.