BEVERLEY Sobah has hardly slept in the last five months.

She lies in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence, lost in her thoughts. When that becomes monotonous, she will stand by her bedroom window staring into the still night at the grave of her son who died of cancer 13 years ago.

“Ricky, I will soon be beside you, because now I have cancer too,” she will say out loud. Last August, Sobah, 64, was diagnosed with carcinoma of the left parotid, a rare form of cancer that begins in the salivary glands of the mouth, neck or throat.

However, because the radiation machine at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) is not in working condition, Sobah is unable to do the required radiotherapy that could prolong her life. A tearful Sobah told the Jamaica Observer last Wednesday that her fear had been made worse because she lost both her father and her son to cancer.

A blue and white grave at the back of her Grange Hill home in Portland is testimony of the 33-year-old son who died of bone cancer. She explained that about a year ago she noticed a lump at the left side of her neck. In August last year she visited the doctor and was given antibiotics and told that it could be her sinus draining.

However, upon completion of the medication the problem persisted. “I went back and told her to please give me something to go and do a test to see what is happening because my son died of cancer and my father died of cancer,” Sobah said. “She referred me to the ENT clinic at Kingston Public.

When I went there the doctor referred me to do a biopsy. But if I waited on them to do it, it would be months before I would get back any result.

So I called a friend — Rena — a lady I met a couple years ago who promotes reggae in Finland. She sent the money for me to do it and when it came back the doctor said it was cancer.

“At first I wasn’t that fearful because I know that technology exists,” she said, adding that since the discovery, she has undergone two surgeries. One was to remove part of the tumour to test whether or not it was cancerous.

The other was to remove “the best of what they could” after it was found to be cancerous.

“They did everything so quickly,” she said. “The doctor was even congratulating me on how I was strong so they wanted to do everything as quickly as they could when they heard that cancer was in the family,” Sobah explained.

“That was in August. So I did two operations in less than a month. Due to where it was, the doctor said it was a rare cancer but it was also aggressive.

He said that radiotherapy should get rid of what was left. The doctor said that he took out most of it and that it was just traces of it that was left.

He said as long as I get the radiotherapy I can live for years,” stated Sobah, who cries consistently. “So when he told me that, I felt good.

The problem was when I realise they couldn’t do it at KPH.” Sobah has been referred to the Radiation Oncology Centre of Jamaica for the radiation treatment.

A copy of an invoice from the centre, dated November 13, 2014, showed that daily treatment over a seven- to eight-week period for the required 3D radiation would cost $2,058,752 or its equivalent in United States dollars calculated at US$1 to J$110 at the time. “Now when I can’t sleep at nights and I look through the window at the back I will just look out at his grave.” The tears flowed down her cheeks as she spoke.

“Because there is no way I can get this amount of money to do this so I know I will be beside him soon.” Sobah said that when her father died she had been pregnant with her son.

But despite the shock of learning that she was among millions stricken with the deadly disease, Sobah said that she was okay because she did not expect it to cost her so much.

She said that it was her friend in Finland who footed the cost of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and the biopsy — $80,000 and $20,000, respectively.

“But this is the one now that is the problem,” she said pointing to the invoice. She said that she operated a small grocery shop from her yard a long time ago but had to close it because she could not afford to stock it as required. She then started farming, alongside her husband, and would get enough produce to eat and sell.

Today, she said that her 67-year-old husband still tries to farm but diabetes and high blood pressure prevent him from doing much. She said that in the past, her five children would go to school many days without lunch money.

Therefore, she did not have enough to properly care for her family and to put aside for times like now. However, with the help of her friend in Finland, Sobah said that she has put together $153,036, along with $50,000 in a fixed deposit account which she had set up some years ago, the latter figure, which has now matured to $112,000, for a total of $265,036. Still, there is a shortfall of $1.8 million. “That is all I have,” she said.

“I was supposed to do the surgery from September and is January now, so I feel it may have grown since then. That is now my problem. I can’t sleep.

Every night I get up and cry. I just lie looking up in the house top and all I am thinking is, what am I going to do? How am I going to get some help?” she reasoned.

Sobah said that she has tried to get help from a couple of private sector companies but so far nothing has materialised. Sobah said that she called the Jamaica Cancer Society but was told that the organisation had used up all the funds that it had and would be unable to help her.

Her daughter even took a letter to the Ministry of Health addressed to Health Minister Dr Fenton Ferguson six weeks ago, but has not received a response.

Sobah, who has to visit the National Chest Hospital regularly to treat asthma, has become so depressed since the news of the cancer and the reality that she cannot afford the treatment that her flower garden at the back of her house now stands neglected. She has also put aside embroidery and crochet, which she once enjoyed.

“I’m always doing something. Now these last days I just lie in bed. I cannot sleep. I just lie there. I don’t sleep in the nights and I still don’t sleep in the days.

I start feeling like I don’t even want to eat. My husband has to be forcing me,” she explained. She said that her husband, Seebert, has been suffering as a result of her condition, as they have been together since she was 16 and he 19.

She was his first girlfriend and according to her, the bond between them is so tight that she feels he would not last long, were she to die. Her husband’s voice broke as he started to explain the toll that his wife’s condition was having on him.

When he was finally able to speak, he admitted that it had been affecting him badly and he, too, has cried over the situation. “It’s just the problem with the money.

I don’t have any and I feel bad to know that I don’t have any can help her,” a quiet and withdrawn Seebert said. Despite the lack of the machine at the KPH to carry out her therapy, Sobah commended the doctors at the ENT clinic at that hospital whom she said treated her “really well”.

“They were very nice. But it’s just the facility,” she said. “I have seen patients put on their green clothes to go to theatre and the lift (elevator) not working and they had to come back.

It’s so sad to see the condition at the hospital. It’s really, really sad. I can’t believe it.

I never dream that I would have cancer and then I can’t even afford to pay for it. I never dream that something like that would happen,” she said.