"All that I hope is for you to get better, and then she cried..."

In a room full of twenty something girls, discussing about boyfriends, mensies, PMS, and naughty dreams are inevitable. So does the discussion about PAP smear results.

Have you had an abnormal pap smear result before? What did they asked you to do? Come in 6 months? Biopsy? It IS a major pain in the buttski to have to go for pap smears every so often don't you think so? To schedule the once a year appointment is already a hassle, let alone twice. So,I can imagine why people would complaint about it.

But before I proceed, let me introduce you to Natassha. She is a girl from my past, when I was working in a big hospital wearing fancy white coats with stethoscope hanging on my neck and the all so important pager in my pocket. That was when I met Natassha. I was 24 and she was 28 then...the age that I am going to turn to on Oct 22nd this year.

Natassha had 2 children, a 1 and a half year old Ayesha and a 4-month-old little boy Areef who was barely weaned from the bottle. Because we were almost the same age, we became instant friends. With me being the friendly doctor and her being the end stage cervical cancer patient coming for follow up.

Other than that typical old scarf covering her obviously bald head, no doubt coming from vigourous chemo regimes, Natassha was a happy, positive young woman. Tall and slightly thin, as many other chemo patients I have seen... She would have looked breathe takingly beautiful if not for her pair of tired eyes. I always wondered, did she cry the whole night last night? She didn't seem like someone who would cry...at least not in front of others.

And maybe I was right.

I met her several times that month. She had weekly follow up then due to the extensiveness of her disease. When I first met her in the specialist clinic, I judged her. "She could be promiscuous because everyone knows that cervical cancer is a disease spread mainly by sexual intercourse. You must be extremely unlucky to contract the disease just from the one partner that you have.... I wondered, whether the husband knew about this before he married her? Slut!!! Huh, me and my glorious code of conduct. Give her a break. Get to know her first," I thought.

And I was dead wrong.

Like me, she married her husband at a relatively young age of 21.he was her first love. They were highschool sweethearts. They were busy studying and therefore had to postpone starting a family. Right after uni, she got a steady job as an engineer and few years later got Ayesha. While she was still nursing Ayesha, she was confirmed to be pregnant again.

Now, had she ever done a pap smear? Yes, she had once. A routine pap smear which was done to all post partum mothers 6 weeks after the delivery of a child. The smear was normal. And soon after, she got pregnant again, so that pap smear was her one and only.

Problems started when she was 7 months pregnant with Areef. She experienced post coital bleeding and staining for no apparent reason. Worried that she might had placenta praevia (low lying placenta), she came to the clinic. Ultrasound scan showed a good size baby with a fundal placenta.

Vaginal examination was carried out and you should know the finding because I have already given you the diagnosis. It was a growth (full stop). Bleeding and fungating. There was no other diagnosis left. But nonetheless, a tissue sample was taken.

She was shaken, but her husband....was devastated. By the painful look on his face, I knew instantly then how deep a man could love his wife. I knew he wanted to cry. Everyone in the room knew that he wanted to cry too. But he was the husband. If he cried, what would happen to Natassha and the healthily growing baby boy inside her?in my own interpretation, i think he swallowed his sadness and while he ushered his wife out of the clinic, he gave a second glance at the gynae specialist. A glance that was full of both hope and despair all at the same time.

As she sat there telling me this story, i listened attentively... I was filling the chemo form for her. Due to the pregnancy, she had to wait until the baby was mature enough to be delivered before she could start her chemo. There was no way she would opt for an emergency evacuation even if it would mean it could save her life. I remembered how the husband's face always changed when she mentioned this. He obviously would give everyhting in this world for her, but yet, all she wanted to do is to give him a boy.

On my last day of gynaecology posting, she was the last patient I saw that afternoon. I was writing her discharge form. But I was also worried for her. She had exhausted all her savings to pay for the good chemo drugs only to find out that her cancer cells were resistant to the drug. Even though she knew that she should just give up, but for her children and most importantly for her husband's sake, she couldn't...

She told me,"Now that I am sick, I couldn't work anymore. My husband is the sole breadwinner. Every month, we run out of money by the middle of the month to buy my medications and formula milks for the kids. Looking at our situation now, all I wanted to do is to quit trying so hard. I just want to stop buying meds and going for chemo because then we could save a lot. But my husband told me again and again that I should not worry about where we are going to find the money from. All I should concentrate now is to get better.."because all I hope is for you to get better"...," then for the first time I saw she cried.

Right after she said her goodbye, i ran to the cancer unit that handle all cancer patients in need of financial help. Whilst I ran, i felt warm tears budding at the corners of my eyes. "This job is so hard". I am a doctor. I know her prognosis was only 10%. i knew that before her financial help application could be processed, she would have long gone from the world. I knew that the 2 cheerful babies would never knew her mother who made the greatest sacrifice in the world and that loving husband was going to be a widower in 2 months time. Sure, their financial burden will be lifted up. But so does the love of his life.

Sad story, these cancer things are... I cry every time I think about them. Natassha especially. I hope she is in a good place now. Rest in peace, friend. May Allah bless your soul.

.....Come to think about it, I wish she just had praevia.

and as for the last order of the day, a reminder to all of us, girls...

wassalam,
Ana

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Location:Nedlands, Western Australia