TWENTY-NINE-YEAR-OLD colon cancer patient Shaunice Dean is determined to fight the disease so she can watch her now nine-year-old son grow into a successful man.

Her journey with cancer over the past two years has been taking a mental toll on her son and it has also impacted the mental state of her older sister, Dadriann Smith.

“My son started counselling because it was affecting him at school. It has been affecting him emotionally to see me going through all of this. He is doing a little bit better now because of the counselling, and he has more sessions coming up. He will turn 10 in November. It is hard for the family. It is especially hard for my sister because we live together.

“Dem seh mi have less than a year, and the year start from January, but me nah work with that. I am fighting on. I have to fight on because mi nah lef mi son,” a warrior-like Dean told the Jamaica Observer.

She shared that she is awaiting surgery to remove her colon as well as tumours from her liver, and phyllodes from her breast.

According to Dean, she has her eyes set on continuing treatment at an overseas cancer centre once she successfully completes the local surgery.

“They say they have no more treatment available locally to help my case. I have a GoFundMe [account] and that is to help me with all my medical bills. Now, I am waiting on a response from a hospital overseas and in the meantime I am still trying to get in contact with other hospitals. I am still sending my records overseas so I should soon get an estimate of what care is going to cost.”

Dean was diagnosed with stage two colon cancer in 2020. The disease has worsened to stage four and in January Dean was given one year to live as a result of the cancer spreading to her liver. Last year she completed six rounds of chemotherapy and was scheduled to do another six rounds.

However, after completing just three, medical practitioners discontinued the procedure following a test which revealed that the treatment was not working.

Cancer was the leading cause of death worldwide in 2020, killing nearly 10 million people according to the World Health Organization.

Colon and rectal cancer accounted for more than 935,000 cases, the second-highest number of cancer-related deaths behind lung cancer with 1.8 million deaths. Liver cancer accounted for more than 830, 000 deaths. Stomach cancer and breast cancer were responsible for 769,000 and 685,000 deaths respectively.