Just after she started remission it was another painful journey for Melanie Africa.
Melanie lost her daughter, Stephanie (21), to Ewing’s sarcoma and synovial cancer last year.
She told the NEWS that her daughter matriculated in 2013 from Queens High School.
“Stephanie was an active child, she swam at the school and played hockey. Growing up she was not a sickly person like me,” she said.
Stephanie took a gap year after completing matric.
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“She worked that year until she decided what she wanted to study. In 2015 she enrolled for medicine at the University of Western Cape. She spent the whole year there when I was ill. In 2015 my second daughter, Kyla, matriculated and she decided to go and study law at the same university with Stephanie,” she said.
In 2016 Stephanie started to feel sick.
Melanie said she got worried because her daughter was not a sickly child.
“I told her to go to the doctor who referred her to a hospital. The doctors ran tests and told her there was a flight capacity that they hear so they will check it out. A week later they contacted her back with her results. She was told there was nothing to worry about and that it was probably posture and she must just use antibiotics.
“I suggested that she takes a mammogram which she tried but she was told she was too young to have cancer. All she did was to continue with her antibiotics but she was still not well. Towards the end of 2016 both my daughters took transfers to study at the University of Johannesburg and Witwatersrand respectively where they could be closer to me as I was still not well.
“Stephanie started missing out on school for weeks. I asked her what was wrong and she kept telling me ‘mommy I’m just not feeling well’ but its probably nothing. Even though she kept telling me its probably nothing she had this cough. She told me she will take the semester off because she needed a break. Months went by and she started losing weight. She started getting out of breath. She always had this little lump on her breast. She would often joke about it and say she had breast cancer and laugh,” she said.
In June, Melanie got worried and took Stephanie to the hospital.
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“She once worked in a TB ward so I thought she might have caught TB. I took her to Charlotte Maxeke Hospital on June 10 and we were told my daughter is fine but she must go to the local clinic the following Monday. I took her to the clinic and we were told to come back for the X-ray. She didn’t go back. Eventually, it became very bad and she ran short of breath by just walking from her room to the bathroom.
“I took her back to the hospital again and the same nurse who told us to go back to the clinic was there that night. She went through to see the doctor and she was immediately put on oxygen. We were told to wait for the doctors at casualty to see her. The doctor told me they were worried about her lungs and he admitted her the same night on August 11.
“She stayed there for two weeks and she was already permanently on oxygen. On August 18, the doctor contacted me and said he needed to speak to me and my husband. He closed the curtain as he did with me. I knew it was bad.
“That was when they told me my daughter has cancer. They said they were still going to determine which cancer she had but she had a stage four tumour. I told the doctor there must be something he can do, even if it means they must take out her lungs. The only thing the doctor told me was there is always hope,” she said.
Knowing what the journey was about when receiving treatment, Melanie said she cried and prayed.
“I asked God to rather take me and save my daughter. My daughter’s treatment was different from mine. She stayed in hospital because she was permanently on oxygen. She was given the date for chemotherapy but all of that didn’t happen. She was too ill the day we took her to the hospital for her first radiation. The hospital staff took her to the blue isolated room instead.
“Stephanie always cried and said she wanted to come back home. We arranged that she comes back with her oxygen and medication. She cried all the time, she used to tell me that I must just accept that she is dying and that chemotherapy and radiation are just busying her time. I cried, no mother deserves to bury her own child. It should be the other way around. But I had to face reality. I bathed my daughter as I used to when she was still a baby but she felt embarrassed.
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“Before she died she begged me to take her to the zoo but I told her I would take her there another day. Little did I know that it was her dying wish. My daughter died before any chemotherapy or radiation.
“The thing about cancer is that it hides. I want people to go for regular check-ups and I would like to raise awareness of cancer. My daughter was not given a mammogram because she was too young. People need to know that cancer can happen to anyone,” she said.
