Lee An­na Ma­haraj

Re­porter

leean­na.ma­haraj@guardian.co.tt

Kadelia Mc Sween, a nurse for six years, has ded­i­cat­ed her life to car­ing for oth­ers. Now di­ag­nosed with ovar­i­an can­cer, the 34-year-old finds her­self ask­ing oth­ers to help care for her.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Ari­ma, Mc Sween moved to Vir­ginia, in the Unit­ed States, a year ago to work in acute care, hop­ing to im­prove her qual­i­ty of life.

“In T&T, there still weren’t enough po­si­tions to even be em­ployed with your mas­ter’s de­gree. So, some peo­ple worked for a long time as a reg­u­lar reg­is­tered nurse with a mas­ter’s de­gree be­cause of no avail­abil­i­ty of po­si­tions. So, the de­ci­sion was be­cause I re­al­ly want­ed more growth for my­self, and I saw that hap­pen­ing in the US and there was just this spe­cif­ic job op­por­tu­ni­ty at the time,” she said.

Symp­toms prompt­ed fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion

For about a year and a half, Mc Sween had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing pelvic pain, in­ter­mit­tent bleed­ing and, lat­er, bloat­ing, ear­ly full­ness and fre­quent uri­na­tion. Ini­tial­ly, she as­so­ci­at­ed some of the symp­toms with her men­stru­al cy­cle, but about six months ago, she be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing flank pain, prompt­ing fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“The fi­nal symp­tom was flank pain, which kind of made me won­der if it was re­lat­ed to the kid­ney. So that is what led me to get a CT scan done,” she re­called.

The CT scan, which she un­der­went while vis­it­ing Trinidad in March, re­vealed a pelvic mass, but at that stage, the source of the mass was not im­me­di­ate­ly clear. Af­ter she re­turned to the Unit­ed States, she un­der­went an MRI, which showed that the mass had grown sig­nif­i­cant­ly and that she had en­larged lymph nodes, rais­ing con­cerns about ma­lig­nan­cy.

In Ju­ly, Mc Sween un­der­went surgery to re­move the mass.

“They did the biop­sy mid-surgery. They had to pause, take a sam­ple, send it to the lab, and then con­firm it was can­cer. And that’s when they de­cid­ed they would have to re­move every­thing that it was touch­ing,” she said.

Di­ag­no­sis was dif­fi­cult to ac­cept

For Mc Sween, the di­ag­no­sis was dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with how she felt phys­i­cal­ly.

“I was in de­nial for most of it be­cause I didn’t re­al­ly fit the symp­toms of the typ­i­cal can­cer pa­tient. I wasn’t los­ing weight, I was still work­ing out and I wasn’t look­ing ill. I had a lot of pelvic pain, but I just put up with it. Even up un­til af­ter surgery, I was still hop­ing for the best, even though they saw en­larged lymph nodes. I was like, how could I have can­cer when I don’t re­al­ly feel like I do? But I did and it was,” Mc Sween ex­plained.

She was di­ag­nosed with Stage 3C ovar­i­an can­cer and is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing chemother­a­py fol­low­ing surgery to re­move the tu­mour. She is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue treat­ment for sev­er­al months.

Mc Sween de­scribed the treat­ment as phys­i­cal­ly de­mand­ing, with fa­tigue, nau­sea, hair loss and changes in her sense of taste among the side ef­fects.

“It has so many side ef­fects. The first two ses­sions were a lit­tle worse than the third. But there is that fa­tigued feel­ing post-chemo, where you just want to sleep all day, mul­ti­ple days in a row, and you’re nau­seous. The hair loss, of course, I had to go bald. Every­thing tastes metal­lic for the first week or two af­ter chemo and then even­tu­al­ly it comes back. But chemo is every three weeks, so the metal­lic taste and the fa­tigue and the nau­sea and every­thing comes back again. So, it’s like a cy­cle,” she shared.

Can­cer bat­tle changes her per­spec­tive as a nurse

For Mc Sween, the ex­pe­ri­ence of be­com­ing a can­cer pa­tient has al­so changed the way she views her pro­fes­sion. She said she now has a greater ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the emo­tion­al needs of the peo­ple she treats.

“Can­cer does not dis­crim­i­nate. It’s not al­ways some­thing that you can re­al­ly pre­vent. It just hon­est­ly has helped me un­der­stand more as a nurse, be­cause some­times you tend to think it’s just an­oth­er num­ber, it’s an­oth­er pa­tient, but every­one wants to be treat­ed with care and em­pa­thy. So, it kind of made me un­der­stand more on the pa­tient as­pect of things. And I think it in turn just made me a bet­ter nurse be­cause now I want to stop, I want to have a con­ver­sa­tion with them, I want to make sure they’re good,” she said.

Seek­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance

Al­though Mc Sween has re­cent­ly re­turned to work, she said the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with her can­cer treat­ment re­main a sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial bur­den. She is seek­ing to raise US$25,000 through a Go­FundMe cam­paign to help cov­er ex­pens­es she says are not cov­ered by her in­sur­ance, in­clud­ing med­ical co-pay­ments, chemother­a­py-re­lat­ed costs, scans and med­ica­tion.

Be­yond seek­ing fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance, Mc Sween hopes shar­ing her ex­pe­ri­ence will en­cour­age oth­er women to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to changes in their bod­ies.

“Many women, in­clud­ing my­self, and me as a health­care pro­fes­sion­al, need to pay at­ten­tion to our bod­ies, and when some­thing is not nor­mal, lit­er­al­ly speak up and check it out. I wouldn’t want any­one to end up in a sit­u­a­tion that I end­ed up in, that could have been avoid­ed by be­ing scanned soon­er. Even though there’s no one test to di­ag­nose ovar­i­an can­cer, you just have to look out for the signs, the bloat­ing, the fre­quent uri­na­tion,” she ex­plained.

De­ter­mined to keep dream­ing

For Mc Sween, her im­me­di­ate goal is to be­come can­cer-free, but at 34, she does not want her di­ag­no­sis to put her am­bi­tions on hold.

“I don’t want this to be some­thing that de­ters me or de­ters my fu­ture. I want to con­tin­ue to dream and have goals and plan, which is one of the hard­est things to do for peo­ple in this sit­u­a­tion, be­cause every­thing is just so un­cer­tain now. You feel like life is so un­cer­tain, so you don’t want to plan ahead. But I def­i­nite­ly want to plan. I want to ad­vance my ca­reer, maybe do an­oth­er de­gree,” she said.

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist Mc Sween can con­tact her via What­sApp at +1 (540) 815-8323 or by email at kvm­c­sween@gmail.com.

Do­na­tions can al­so be made through her Go­FundMe cam­paign at https://go­fund.me/f14ab­dc23.

Di­rect bank trans­fers can al­so be made to:

Ben­e­fi­cia­ry: Kadelia Mc­Sween

Bank: First Cit­i­zen’s Bank

Ac­count num­ber: 2547475