World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) and Ro­tary In­ter­na­tion­al share a long his­to­ry. The ef­forts to erad­i­cate po­lio would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the com­mit­ment and sup­port of Ro­tar­i­ans all over the world. Then came an un­par­al­leled COVID-19 pan­dem­ic which caused ma­jor dis­rup­tions to health ser­vices that fur­ther ex­ac­er­bat­ed in­equal­i­ties.

A man­go tree ex­pect­ed to bear eight types of man­goes and a tree that will yield both bal­a­ta and sapodil­la. These are some of the in­no­v­a­tive of­fer­ings of Ra­jesh Ram and Sadee Sanichar-Ram of the Ex­ot­ic Fruit Plant Shed in New Grant, Princes Town.

If you are un­der­go­ing Chemother­a­py and ex­pe­ri­ence episodes of mem­o­ry loss, or dif­fi­cul­ty in fo­cus­ing or sim­ply feel your brain is all fogged up, you are not imag­in­ing these symp­toms. Some­times peo­ple with can­cer wor­ry about, joke about, or be­come frus­trat­ed by what they de­scribe as men­tal cloudi­ness or changes they might no­tice dur­ing and af­ter can­cer treat­ment. This cloudi­ness or men­tal change is com­mon­ly re­ferred to as “chemo brain”.

“My daugh­ter was di­ag­nosed with Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma on Jan­u­ary 23rd, 2020 at the age of 15. There were no symp­toms or so we thought. Look­ing at my daugh­ter at that time, I saw a joy­ful, en­er­getic and lov­ing per­son as she usu­al­ly is, up un­til the day she was di­ag­nosed.

“I de­cid­ed to share my sto­ry be­cause peo­ple need to know that you could be liv­ing your life per­fect­ly fine and in two days every­thing can change.

“Stress has a pro­found im­pact on how your body’s sys­tems func­tion,” says Dr Loren­zo Co­hen, Dis­tin­guished Pro­fes­sor in Clin­i­cal Can­cer Pre­ven­tion and Di­rec­tor of the In­te­gra­tive Med­i­cine Pro­gram at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Can­cer Cen­ter. “Health ex­perts are re­search­ing whether stress caus­es can­cer. Yet there’s lit­tle doubt that it pro­motes the growth and spread of some forms of the dis­ease. Put sim­ply, “stress makes your body more hos­pitable to can­cer,” Co­hen says.

Be­fore COVID-19 sur­faced, there was an­oth­er med­ical con­di­tion that all health­care pro­fes­sion­als dis­liked di­ag­nos­ing. That is “CAN­CER”; which is al­so non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, can oc­cur at all ages and can af­fect any part of the body. Pa­tients all around the world equat­ed a di­ag­no­sis of Can­cer to that of one step clos­er to heav­en’s gates and dread­ed this di­ag­no­sis.

Since the body of 30-year-old Japan­ese pan­nist Asa­mi Na­gakiya was dis­cov­ered in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain, on Ash Wednes­day in 2016, to this day, peo­ple are cau­tioned, es­pe­cial­ly women, to walk in groups if they must pass through the sa­van­nah at night.

This ar­ti­cle con­tains con­tent that might be trig­ger­ing for sur­vivors of sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse, sur­vivors of trau­ma from los­ing a loved one by kid­nap­ping and/or mur­der and those strug­gling with PTSD.

Two weeks ago, a group of diehard pan lovers com­mit­ted to their cause as they plant­ed them­selves on the Greens at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah (QPS). Sport­ing sneak­ers, shorts and face masks, and armed with chairs, cool­ers and eats, they com­mem­o­rat­ed Panora­ma semis Sun­day amid a glob­al pause on in­ter­ac­tive ac­tiv­i­ties due to COVID. To­day, on this Valen­tine’s Day and on what would have been Di­manche Gras, it seems on­ly fit­ting to ex­tend the love trib­ute to the home of Panora­ma and T&T’s heart­beat of cul­ture, food and recre­ation, the QPS.

It is not un­com­mon to feel dis­or­gan­ised and de­railed when you are feel­ing over­whelmed by trau­mat­ic events. But did you know that over the long term, trau­ma may change your brain in ways that af­fect your mem­o­ry?

Eigh­teen years lat­er af­ter her mur­der, they still hold on to her favourite scarf, though her scent from it has fad­ed, her par­ents say “hold­ing it takes them back”, and re­turns them to her cheer­ful smile. Eigh­teen years lat­er, there is still no jus­tice or even change as last week, we lost an­oth­er young girl sense­less­ly.