Living with breast cancer is an experience of living in the present. It reminds us that all we have and are experiencing are in the present; the day, light, hours, joys, breaths and everything we have. When uncertainty comes banging at your door, as it did for Claire, a third-year finalist at Makerere University, the future becomes scary.
Her nightmare started the morning when she felt a lump in her breast as she was showering; preparing to go to campus and work for a future she is no longer sure about. She says that morning is the most hopeful day of her life.
Her hopes were as high as heaven. She hoped it was just a lump! She brushed away all the thoughts that made her think it is- actually- breast cancer. Little did she know that she was brushing away reality.
She had never listened to disheartening, terrifying and heartbreaking words as those of the doctor as he diagnosed her with cancer. For a moment, she says, her life froze. She went numb. Seated right in front of the doctor watching him move his lips- that never made a sound that moment.
“I wondered if there’s really any man that I’ll get betrothed to and eventually marry a woman with one breast,” she says.
Since then her life has been living on tests. As if that’s not enough, he told her she might end up not losing just her hair but also her breast that has a large tumor. Since then her life has been going through overdrive imagining the most terrible scenarios.
“I hope to finish University in August next year. I wonder how much of my life I will have to celebrate. With this heavy weight of uncertainty, the only thing left for me is to hope,” she says.
All this hasn’t taken her health; it has taken her joys, future, time, and even friends who can’t deal.
She fears losing more when her breast and hair are gone. The only magic she has found is kindness and friendship in some people she didn’t think cared. To her in such hard time, their friendship is a flag.
Sometimes she notices those moments when she is not in pain but they never last. The psychological pain grasps her and takes control.
Despite her current situation, Claire has decided to stay open to the uncertainty of life and be present for as many moments as she can since no one is assured of tomorrow.
As told to Noelyn Tracy Nassuuna
