‘Just do it and get on with life’

AT 70 years old, breast cancer survivor Rubyline McFadden says she feels as fit and fine as she did at 30. As one of the faces of Sagicor Group Jamaica’s Together We Can breast cancer awareness campaign, McFadden uses her experience to reassure women that there is life after a breast cancer diagnosis and remind them that early detection is key to surviving.

In 2003, at 50 years old, McFadden first noticed a lump in one of her breasts. Having done her annual mammograms, she was puzzled by the discovery and asked her sister — a nurse — to check it out.

“We had actually just come back from my mother’s funeral, and we were just there talking when I felt it, and she felt it too, and said I should go to the doctor,” McFadden shared.

She was referred for a fine needle biopsy which returned inconclusive, so her doctor made a small incision and took a sample of her breast tissue to be tested. Two weeks later McFadden was called in and told the dreaded news: she had stage two breast cancer.

“I was just numb,” she recalled. “I didn’t express any emotion at all, to the extent that when I got up to leave, the doctor called me back and said, ‘I just gave you some news that is not very pleasant and there’s no emotion at all, what’s going on?’, I said I don’t know.”

It wasn’t until she got home that she broke down in tears. She shared the news with her son, who was 18 at the time, and her sister, and never cried about it again.

“I just felt like I had to go through it,” the sprightly woman said serenely. “I prayed about it and I got some courage. The doctor had reassured me that it was caught in the early stages, and my chance of survival was very high, so I just decided that I had to get it over with.”

After doing a mastectomy (complete removal of the affected breast), McFadden underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by radiation. This was a difficult period, she recalled, but she was prepared for the road to recovery, and had support along the way.

“I had chemo on Fridays, and for the rest of that day and into the weekend, I would experience symptoms — the nausea, fatigue, loss of appetite and so on — but thankfully, I wasn’t in a lot of pain,” she said. “And after the second round of chemo I noticed that I was losing my hair. That was a little difficult for me.”

One of the things that she held onto during treatment was a book that a friend gave to her shortly after her surgery at the hospital: Chemo and You. It prepared her for what to expect during the treatment, and she later got copies of it to share with other women to help them through their journeys.

“I also had help from my sister, my son and my friends,” she said graciously. “My former landlord, for example, would bring me soup on those weekends when I was out of it.”

After months of treatment and years of follow-up exams and bloodwork, McFadden was finally declared cancer free.

“After about eight years, I went to the doctor to do a chest X-ray, and she said she didn’t think I needed to be doing them anymore,” she recounted joyfully. “I still do my annual mammograms and regular self-exams, but otherwise I life my life normally.”

Reflecting on her life’s journey, McFadden shared that this ‘bump’ in the road helped her to learn to live in the moment, and not put anything off until later.

“I’m more aware of life and just how fickle it is. Anything can happen. You get up each day and that’s the only moment you have. Anything can happen. Just one incident. Just one lump… If I have something to do, I just do it, because I never know what tomorrow brings.”

Similarly, she encouraged other women not to put anything off — especially not their health.

“Life is what it is. We don’t buy sickness; it just happens,” she continued. “If you feel like there may be something different in your breast, don’t let it go and don’t leave it alone, because breast cancer can move so quickly from one stage to the next. It’s not a death sentence; so many people have survived. The early you catch it and start treatment, the better it is for you. Just do it and get on with life.”