“Have you heard about Abby?” a friend asked me two and a half years ago.

“What about her?” I enquired, puzzled. Abby Younis is a good friend of mine.

“She had a double mastectomy this morning. Abby has breast cancer.”

I felt like my stomach had plummeted into my feet. How could this be? Forty-one-year-old mother of two young children and she was fine a few months ago.

Within days, I was at Abby’s house. I had not been there for her when she had had a pain in her right breast, only to discover there was a lump. I had not known that she had had mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy all in the same day, and that she had waited four weeks for the diagnosis. I had not been there to share her burden. I’d be damned if I was not going to be with her going forward.

She was about to embark on six months of chemotherapy, five weeks of daily radiation, then implant reconstruction. There would be phenomenal physical side effects with the life-saving chemo: metallic taste, numbing nausea, insane itchiness, patchy skin colour changes, hair coming out in clumps, fatigue that would make Zika sufferers stop complaining; and ongoing complications with radiation. Not to mention the emotional and psychological tricks that breast cancer can play on the diagnosed and their families.

Everyone with breast cancer is someone’s daughter, or son. Yes, men can get breast cancer. The incidence is not as rife as in women, which is one in 21 in Jamaica, but the male population is at risk. When Ronald Thwaites was 30 years old his wife noticed a lump on the right side of his chest. She sent him to have it checked and malignant cells were found. He had breast cancer, which had to be removed through surgery. Four decades later, Rev Thwaites has remained cancer-free, but he has not forgotten the harrowing news that haunted him the day he was diagnosed.

“I felt worried and strange,” he recently revealed. “I was incredulous, because I didn’t know men got it.”

I asked him if he had been open about it.

“Yes, but people laughed, until they realised I was telling the truth,” he said.

Over the years, this husband, father, uncle and son has been an avid supporter of the Jamaica Cancer Society and Reach2Recovery — a support group started by Dr Denise Thwaites in 1977.

“I encourage men to be aware of themselves and the possibility of getting it,” Rev Thwaites said. “Men tend to avoid the issue as they think it is unmanly, but I would say that screening for all kinds of cancer is necessary and when you do so, bear in mind that breast cancer is a disease that men can get.”

Breast cancer can also present itself in young people.

Physiotherapist student Josan Sutherland started finding lumps in her breast at 18 years old, all of which were fibrous masses that had to be cut out. At 21, she had yet another lump in her right breast. This time it was cancer.

“I was shocked because, while I knew I had to be cautious, I never really expected this,” she said. “I had bone cancer when I was 12, so they did a below-the-knee-amputation on my right leg,” she went on matter-of-factly.

Wait, what? This vivacious, now 24-year-old woman has dealt with cancer for half her life?

Josan was upbeat telling me about the ‘Bra Party’ she asked her friends to have for her before surgery and about dying her hair green before chemotherapy, that I had no choice but to smile and keep listening.

“I remember the day well,” she continued. “I left the doctor and went back to UWI (the University of the West Indies). I felt like I was moving through jello. It was all so absurd. My best friend and I were almost laughing because we thought it must be a joke, but the more I told people, it came home to me, and I was like, woah!”

There it was. The shocking reality. Immediately Josan, in-between classes, went to work with her medical team, undergoing CT and PET scans, blood work, and so on.

“I needed to assess the damage,” she explained. “I realised that breast cancer is a death sentence, but it didn’t have to be if I was proactive with treatment.”

Josan underwent a double mastectomy, lymph node removal, reconstruction, and chemotherapy.

It’s an expensive venture, however, and unless you have insurance to cover said assessments, treatment and numerous doctors’ appointments, breast cancer will set you back by millions and send you into bankruptcy, which will tail you for a lifetime.

Cashier Hyacinth Shakespeare understands these costs too well, as they and other health complications have been following her from her breast cancer diagnosis 15 years ago. Now, at 54, Hyacinth has been diagnosed with endometrial cancer and has just had her reproductive organs removed.

“The doctor told me that breast cancer can walk hand in hand with ovarian cancer, so he/she advised that I remove everything,” she related, adding that this surgery alone is costing her nearly a quarter-million dollars. “I am grateful for the help Reach2Recovery has given me; it paid for all the lab work and a minor surgery I needed last year.”

“While offering emotional and psychological support,” breast cancer survivor and Reach2Recovery’s chairman, Carolind Graham, told me, “we also offer financial aid for things like chemotherapy, radiation and scans, once you have been given a breast cancer diagnosis.”

However, Reach2Recovery relies solely on private donations and fund-raising events such as the upcoming Pink Run on Saturday, October 29th. With a current membership of 150 women, Reach2Recovery wants to help thousands more people with breast cancer.

The Insurance Company of the West Indies (ICWI), the title sponsor of the Pink Run, took on this objective last year and is striving to broaden breast cancer awareness and raise as much money as possible. ICWI has already donated $2 million to the cause between last year and the recent Pink Run press conference last month. Much more is needed and Reach2Recovery needs your support.

“You don’t want to hear that you are dying, yet can’t afford to save your life,” Josan Sutherland pointed out. “Reach2Recovery is aiming to ensure that you will never have to say that you can’t afford it.”

The way forward is to recognise that breast cancer could affect each of us. Jamaicans must be educated on the matter and be screened for breast cancer, no matter our age, gender, nor whether we have a family history of it or not.

“There is no cancer in my family,” informed Graham, a mother of three who was diagnosed 12 years ago at 55 and fortunately had her surgery and treatment paid for by insurance. “I have been cancer-free for years now,” she went on, tears welling up. “Sorry, I always feel emotional about it, because I am sad for the others who don’t survive and I see how lucky I am to have survived.”

Reach2Recovery meets on the second Tuesday of every month at 5:00 pm in Webster Memorial Church Hall on Half-Way-Tree Road. Everyone is welcome to attend.

The Pink Run over 5km starts in the parking lot of the ICWI at 6:30 am on Saturday, October 29 2016, with warm-up at 6:00 am. Entry cost is $1,200 for individual participants, $1,000 each if in a team of 20 or more.