A 32-year-old woman who regained her sight after six months of total blindness due to a cancerous tumour in her brain, on Tuesday stunned guests at the launch of Breast Cancer Awareness Month with her story of triumph despite a slew of health problems.

Latoya Jones thought she had been dealt a bad hand when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 19.

“I was born with a huge navel and I would suck my finger and feel up my breasts, and I knew there was a lump there,” she told the launch at the Jamaica Cancer Society on Lady Musgrave Road in St Andrew.

“My foster parents knew it was there, and one night the nipple of the breast got swollen and was extremely red and painful. I remember telling my neighbour and she said ‘No, Latoya, go to the doctor, as it could be cancer’,” Jones said.

Struck by the neighbour’s comment, Jones said she recalled saying to her: “Cancer, wah? Yuh mad, gyal?”

Nonetheless, she decided to visit a doctor, and after a biopsy and mammogram were done it was confirmed that she indeed had breast cancer.

The news hit her hard, and Jones cried, as she thought the world had come to a stop because, for her, young people did not get cancer.

“I thought it was an old person’s thing. I remember being angry, and I thought, ‘Why God so wicked? No mother, no father, and now cancer,” she said, while explaining that she did not know her biological parents at the time.

Her situation worsened when Jones experienced metastasis as the cancer quickly spread to her lungs, causing one to be removed.

And just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, the cancer spread to her brain and caused her to lose her sight.

“I lost my sight two years ago,” she said, explaining that the tumour in her brain had caused compression within the optic nerve.

“When I lost my sight I was in church. The doctor had told me that my eyes were going, and I remember seeing things go blurry. Then I went totally blind and I said to my husband that I was blind and in total darkness,” she said as the guests at the launch listened wide-eyed and O-mouthed.

“He didn’t tell anyone, and when church was over he led me outside to the car, directing my steps the entire way. Whenever church was over people would call me to come and do things, and he said, ‘Stand here, and when they call you just tell them you don’t want to move.’ And I did just that, and he placed me in the car and no one knew,” Jones said.

But Jones said the reality of her disability hit her when she got home and was unable to do anything because she couldn’t find her way around the house.

“I didn’t remember how the house was situated, so I had to re-learn the different steps. However, my hearing was heightened,” she said.

“During this time, my husband would have to do everything for me — dress me, comb my hair, do my make-up, and take me to the support group meetings.”

But what pained her most was the fact that her son did not take the news well.

“He was eight at the time, and he had to go through all of this,” she said. “We took him to counselling, but it didn’t work. We had to leave him alone and let him deal with it.”

Jones said that she also suffered a stroke and lost her ability to walk or talk. Doctors gave her six months to live, but Jones said that instead of falling into depression she remained positive.

“I was admitted in the hospital then, and I gave a lot of trouble, and the doctors would say, ‘Latoya, behave yourself’, but I couldn’t, because if you say I’m going to die I needed to live out my last days,” she said.

She said throughout this time she didn’t change her lifestyle much and anything the doctor said she shouldn’t eat, she ate. Fortunately for Jones, radiation reduced the tumour in her brain, which made her regain her sight. This, she said, was a very emotional time for her and her family as it was six months since she was last able to see them.

“The day I regained my sight my son stabbed a child in school. The principal said he was going to beat him, but couldn’t because he was going through too much,” she said.

Jones explained that her son normally loved to play, but he just wasn’t in a playful mood that day.

“When he reached home and I saw him and shouted ‘Chad!’ he said ‘Mommy, you can see me?’ And when I said ‘yes’, and proved that I could see him, he threw himself on the floor and cried,” she said.

Reflecting on her experience, Jones said sometimes people have to face their storms in order to inspire others.

“God allows things to happen so we can inspire other people. Many times it’s not the big things in life that count, but other things,” she said.

Jamaica Cancer Society Executive Director Yulit Gordon said Jones was invited to the launch as the start of the society’s effort to have breast cancer survivors tell their stories in order to give hope to people living with the disease.