Yellowbelle Duaqui / Jeepney Press

The Year I Turned Forty: My Cancer Journey by Yellowbelle Duaqui

Like most of my friends, the pandemic relegated me to a work from home set-up. As a college lecturer at one of the country’s top universities, that would mean holding online classes every day or recording lecture videos for asynchronous sessions. I had to spend many hours developing online content, along with house work.

I was several weeks away from turning 40 years old that time; and I thought I was doing ne with my daily routine, my working up to the late hours, and waking up early to begin teaching. This went on until I felt some weakness in my body, with my face almost falling face down sometime in September 2022. I immediately went to my doctor who asked me to do laboratory tests. The blood work revealed my hemoglobin was below normal range and my white blood cells were elevated above normal levels. The doctor was puzzled. “It seems there is something in your body that your antibodies are fighting against,” the doctor remarked. I was put on iron supplementation right away. I was also asked to do a trans-vaginal ultrasound, having a history of abnormal uterine bleeding in the past.

The trans-V revealed the presence of cervical polyps. And so I undertook a polypectomy by the last week of November 2022. The sample taken from the procedure was then brought to the laboratory for examination. When I returned to my OB-Gyne in December 2022, she revealed the shocking finding that I had endometrial endometrioid adenocarcinoma. Then the doctor spoke in a sober tone, “We need to save your life. You need a major surgery immediately to remove the cancer cells from your body.” My OB Gyne also referred me to another OB Gyne who was an Oncologist at the same time. An OB Oncologist specializes in treating female reproductive disorders, particularly cancer.

That December would perhaps be the darkest December of my entire life. I felt the world crash on me, literally and figuratively, with the overreaching implications of my disease on my body, my finances, my job, and my personal dream of building my own family. As a child, I dreamt of becoming a mom and a wife. I liked children. I longed to build a loving family of my own, coming from a background of separated parents and growing up with my younger brother under the care of our kind grandma. The cancer diagnosis meant an end to my dream. I spent my nights in prayer, trying to discern God’s will for me. I was in grief, at the same time I noticed changes in my body that worried me –the prolonged and heavy menstrual bleeding that worsened months prior to my cancer diagnosis.

Several days later, I did a video call with a team of doctors. One doctor offered egg harvesting. Even women with cancer cells can still carry a baby, albeit with considerable risk. If I wanted a baby, they explained that I might still be able to have it via egg harvesting, surrogate pregnancy, and delaying the eventual hysterectomy and oophorectomy. But most of them, in the end, concurred that the safest option was to not delay the surgery any longer, which meant not having a baby anymore.

My Christmas and New Year passed by in silence and prayer. With my body seemingly going on a downhill with my plunging hemoglobin levels and elevated white blood cells, I resolved by January 2023 to undertake the major surgery at once to save my life. I trusted science for its objectivity and methods and surrendered my fears and doubts, even the pain from my broken dream to have my own child, in God’s hands. The priority was to stop the spread of cancer cells from my endometrium. Its contained nature and the early detection made the doctors believe that I had a fighting chance at survival. The surgery proceeded successfully on January 30, 2023.

I spent my February 2023 healing from the surgery. Even laughing or coughing caused me so much pain in the surgical area. A carer assisted me in getting up from bed and dressing up my wound. At this point, I received the biopsy result, staging my cancer to Stage 1A, the lowest stage, which has a high survival rate. But the cancer cells had already started to invade my myometrium from the endometrium, where they originated. This means, according to the OB Oncologist, that the decision to undergo immediate surgery was correct. Delaying it further to have a baby would have been very dangerous for me, as the cancer cells would have spread more.

But due to a considerably big tumor, the OB Oncologist asked me to undergo four sessions of brachytherapy, which meant infusing radiation via a cylinder into the target area. It was a highly uncomfortable procedure, but the pain was tolerable. My entire March 2023 was devoted to one session of brachytherapy per week. As of this writing, I have spent the month of April 2023 resting to fully recover.

No one is really fully prepared once a critical illness like cancer hits you. Your social security, life insurance policies, and even your employer won’t be able to readily help with the onset of the disease. It will be you and your oncologist and your personal savings, PhilHealth or HMO (health maintenance organization) coverage, your family support, and your closest friends who can help you deal with it. The processing of documents and filing of claims will take time and it shall be done after you’ve completed surgery, brachytherapy, and/or chemotherapy in other cases.

Most importantly, it was prayer that became my most powerful weapon against cancer. I know that God gave me an extended lease on life for a special reason. May I be able to pursue the raison d’etre for my second life for the greater glory of God.

Yellowbelle Duaqui

Jeepney Press