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Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Mel Gabriel’s scars tell a story of strength and survival

by

Kristy Ramnarine
121 days ago
20241020

KRISTY RAM­NAR­INE

Kristy.ram­nar­ine@cnc3.co.tt

Mel Gabriel is usu­al­ly the pro­duc­er be­hind a fash­ion shoot. She is known for cu­rat­ing the best of the Caribbean when it comes to fash­ion and cre­ativ­i­ty for her fash­ion and style plat­form, Caribbean Look­book.

The breast can­cer sur­vivor in­stead be­came one of the main mod­els, along with Anya Ay­oung Chee, for Lon­don-based fash­ion de­sign­er Melis­sa Si­mon Hart­man’s ‘Mas­quer­ade’ ed­i­to­r­i­al ear­li­er this year.

Wear­ing a white skirt and colour­ful corset made from fab­ric pro­duced in Ghana by Michael Es­suman, Gabriel con­fi­dent­ly showed her dou­ble mas­tec­to­my scars. “To do that kind of thing was in­ter­est­ing be­cause I am used to be­ing on the oth­er side. I am be­hind the scenes; I am pro­duc­ing the shoot, not pos­ing for a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er. I would take my self-por­traits, and that is it,” she said. “Just to wear her cloth­ing and her de­signs in a way that fur­thers the sto­ry of pow­er­ful women and show­ing up for your­self and be­com­ing the best ver­sion of your­self, it was an ho­n­our for me.”

Her scars tell the sto­ry of her strength, sur­vival, and all the pos­si­bil­i­ties of ear­ly de­tec­tion. “They re­mind me that every curve, every mark is a sym­bol of re­silience,” she said.

“Ear­ly de­tec­tion made my jour­ney less dif­fi­cult, and it can do the same for you. Reg­u­lar checks aren’t just an op­tion; they’re an act of love for your fu­ture self.” With a his­to­ry of breast can­cer in her fam­i­ly, Gabriel and her sis­ter were trained from young to look out for the signs and symp­toms of the dis­ease.

“Dur­ing a rou­tine check I dis­cov­ered a lump,” she said.

“I went to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Can­cer So­ci­ety and did an ul­tra­sound. This was fol­lowed up with a biop­sy, and I got my di­ag­no­sis the day be­fore my 37th birth­day (De­cem­ber 2020), say­ing I had stage 1 In­va­sive Duc­tal Car­ci­no­ma (IDC).” IDC, al­so called in­fil­trat­ing duc­tal car­ci­no­ma, is the most com­mon type of breast can­cer. In­va­sive means the can­cer has spread in­to sur­round­ing breast tis­sues. “What was sur­pris­ing is that it hap­pened at such a very young age,” she said. “I kin­da thought maybe I would get can­cer at some point, but clos­er to 50. I got it at 36, and I was like, Okay!”

Gabriel said she was not giv­en the op­tion of a mam­mo­gram screen­ing.

“They don’t typ­i­cal­ly per­form mam­mo­grams on women un­der 40,” she said. “We hope the pro­to­col would change be­cause more and more women are be­ing di­ag­nosed at a younger age.”

A mam­mo­gram is an X-ray ex­am­i­na­tion of the breast. It is used to de­tect and di­ag­nose breast dis­ease in women who have breast prob­lems, such as a lump, pain, or nip­ple dis­charge, as well as for women who have no breast com­plaints. The pro­ce­dure al­lows the de­tec­tion of breast can­cers, be­nign tu­mours, and cysts be­fore they can be de­tect­ed by pal­pa­tion (touch). The Amer­i­can Col­lege of Ra­di­ol­o­gy (ACR) and the So­ci­ety of Breast Imag­ing (SBI) rec­om­mend that women get year­ly mam­mo­grams start­ing at age 40.

Gabriel was then re­ferred to St James Med­ical Com­plex Women’s Health Clin­ic. “I went to the breast clin­ic there and had a con­sul­ta­tion,” she re­called.

“We came up with a treat­ment plan. The de­ci­sion was made to do surgery, fol­lowed by chemother­a­py, and then ra­di­a­tion. All of this is to pre­vent a re­oc­cur­rence of breast can­cer.

“I re­ceived stel­lar ser­vice. They are very com­pas­sion­ate, all that good stuff ... every­thing we think we know about pub­lic health care, they chal­lenge it every day be­cause of the good work that they do.”

In 2021, Gabriel had a dou­ble mas­tec­to­my. Eight rounds of chemother­a­py fol­lowed her surgery, then 16 ses­sions of ra­di­a­tion, which she com­plet­ed in 2023. “My main chal­lenge was the re­moval of con­sent,” she said. “Now you have to do these things; you can­not go back on it.

“There is an as­pect of the treat­ment plan that af­fects fer­til­i­ty, so if you are not pre­pared to freeze your eggs for lat­er, then you just have to cut and go through, lit­er­al­ly.

“I start­ed on Zo­ladex, which is a month­ly in­jec­tion that brings on ear­ly menopause; it af­fects your oe­stro­gen lev­els and your fer­til­i­ty. That part may be the most chal­leng­ing men­tal­ly. Phys­i­cal­ly, you can pre­dict how you are go­ing to feel.”

Gabriel said in her alone time many thoughts about her wom­an­hood en­tered her head.

“The idea we have of fem­i­nin­i­ty and then have to rec­on­cile with your­self what my ver­sion of wom­an­hood looks like now. What my ver­sion of fem­i­nin­i­ty looks like. How I’m go­ing to show up in the world and still feel whole while miss­ing body parts,” she said.

“A mas­tec­to­my is an am­pu­ta­tion. Call it what you want; it is an am­pu­ta­tion. You have to go back to the well of love and re­mem­ber this is not the on­ly thing that makes you a woman; hav­ing chil­dren is not the on­ly thing that makes you a woman. It’s a huge step in the de­ci­sion of choos­ing life, and I want­ed to live more than any­thing else, so I just had to deal with it.”

Ad­mit­ting that she was fear­ful about the re­al­i­ty of her di­ag­no­sis, Gabriel said her first pho­to shoots have been well thought through.

“Weeks be­fore I was gath­er­ing my thoughts, pro­cess­ing in­for­ma­tion, be­com­ing at peace with my di­ag­no­sis,” she said. “I didn’t see women my age look­ing like me. There were many im­ages of old­er women of all races, but to see my­self rep­re­sent­ed, I was not get­ting it. I thought about oth­er women liv­ing in the Caribbean my age who would have been di­ag­nosed; they don’t have that in­for­ma­tion to find. I took the de­ci­sion to rep­re­sent in that way.”

Gabriel first re­leased pho­tos of her dou­ble mas­tec­to­my in 2021. You can fol­low her jour­ney on IG @mehgabriel

Gabriel’s look

Skirt + corset + back­pack by @melis­sas­i­mon­hart­man • 🇬🇭 x ��🇹

Pho­to by @gifts_from_gab

Styling by @kezstylesinc Make­up by @__caramel­beau­ty__

Stu­dio @ai_stu­dios_tt @af­ford­ableim­por


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