Chester Sam­bra­no

For Can­dace Chin Choy, a 45-year ca­reer as a sec­ondary school teacher 45 years is a re­mark­able achieve­ment, but de­feat­ing pan­cre­at­ic can­cer is even more mo­men­tous. Hers is a re­al-life sto­ry of faith, hope, sup­port and most of all per­se­ver­ance.

Al­most ten years ago, Chin Choy, who was at the time a Home Eco­nom­ics teacher at El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary School, was di­ag­nosed with what is com­mon­ly a ter­mi­nal dis­ease.

Re­count­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence re­cent­ly as she sat in the gallery of her Sec­ond Street, Tumpuna Road, Ari­ma home, she said it start­ed with a pain in her low­er stom­ach that she thought was gas. How­ev­er, the pains per­sist­ed and got worse. She went to sev­er­al doc­tors and got a va­ri­ety of di­ag­no­sis.

Even­tu­al­ly, “by ac­ci­dent,” she was put on to the doc­tor that would give her the life-chang­ing news.

“He di­ag­nosed me and told me surgery im­me­di­ate­ly,” she said.

But the surgery did not go as planned and the tu­mour could not be re­moved. Doc­tors broke the news to Chin Choy’s on­ly child, Ja­nine.

“He ap­proached me, and he said, “Are you an on­ly child?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Get your doc­u­ments ready, your mom would prob­a­bly not go past six months.’ Hear­ing that I just broke down,” Ja­nine said.

How­ev­er, Ja­nine did not tell her mom the bad news. In­stead, she ral­lied and chose to tap in­to her in­ner faith.

“I just prayed prayed prayed and we had a lot of fam­i­ly sup­port and friends sup­port,” she said.

It would be al­most a year that she kept that se­cret. The on­ly per­son she told was Chin Choy’s long­time col­league and friend Jas­min Sama­roo. The two met when Chin Choy joined the staff of the El Do­ra­do West Sec­ondary School. The two hit it off im­me­di­ate­ly and have made many mem­o­ries to­geth­er since then.

When she learnt of the can­cer di­ag­no­sis, Sama­roo was crushed.

“I was very an­gry and then I was re­al­ly sad. I said this hap­pened to my good good friend. If she should die, I would lose a re­al­ly good friend,” Sama­roo re­called.

But some­thing in her told her she need­ed to be a rock for her friend and she quick­ly went in­to sup­port mode.

She said, “One of the things was to just be there, keep call­ing and ask­ing, ‘What’s next? What do you have to do? Do you have peo­ple to go with you? Do you want me to go? I would say to her, ‘Just call me, I’m on­ly a phone call away, any­thing just call.”

In ad­di­tion to Sama­roo and Ja­nine, friends and fam­i­ly at home and abroad swooped in and of­fered help and com­fort when Chin Choy need­ed it the most.

“I re­mem­ber when they said I had to get blood for the surgery and my daugh­ter called the school. I was out of it so I don’t know what was told but I re­mem­ber past stu­dents who I hadn’t seen for years and their fam­i­lies just go­ing to give blood and I mean that was so touch­ing,” Chin Choy re­count­ed.

While she knew she had pan­cre­at­ic can­cer she didn’t un­der­stand the enor­mi­ty of it be­cause that in­for­ma­tion was kept from her, even through­out her chemother­a­py.

In ad­di­tion, Chin Choy said the “an­gels” at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal helped lessen her pain.

“You could imag­ine a nurse sit­ting with you when you in pain and rub­bing your hand and talk­ing to you, bring­ing lunch for you? That is the kind of thing that you get. You al­most for­get that you are there for can­cer,” she said.

For three years she did chemother­a­py then ra­di­a­tion “and they re­al­ized that the tu­mour was shrink­ing. Every time I did a scan it was small­er un­til even­tu­al­ly af­ter nu­mer­ous scans one day Dr Capildeo opened the pa­per and he said to me, ‘Well you are can­cer-free’.”

This was for three years with an­nu­al check-ups. One day doc­tors found “some­thing” on her liv­er, and she had to do an­oth­er surgery, this time at Mt Hope. Again, most of the tu­mour was re­moved and she went back on chemother­a­py. The last scan she did four months ago was clear.

Had it not been for the sup­port of car­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers, self­less friends and com­pas­sion­ate med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, Chin Choy is not sure how it would have all turned out.

Most of all she be­lieves the wise de­ci­sion by her daugh­ter to with­hold the dev­as­tat­ing news from her could have been the mo­ment that saved her life. In ret­ro­spect, Ja­nine is grate­ful she made that choice at the time she did.

“I wasn’t aware that is what I was do­ing at that time I was just pro­tect­ing my mom, pro­tect­ing her faith and her strength,” she said.

Pan­cre­at­ic can­cer is still con­sid­ered large­ly in­cur­able, ac­cord­ing to the Amer­i­can Can­cer So­ci­ety. For all stages of pan­cre­at­ic can­cer com­bined, the one-year rel­a­tive sur­vival rate is 20 per cent and the five-year rate is sev­en per cent.