By Marlon Madden
Mere months after finding out that her grandmother had cancer, 23-year-old Jaelle Ramdin learned that she was also affected by the disease. But while she has episodes of worrisome days, she remains mostly hopeful and upbeat as she prepares to beat it, just like her grandmother did earlier this year.
It was back in late March that Ramdin visited her doctor after she observed abnormal vaginal bleeding. After ultrasounds and several blood tests, which came back negative, the situation continued for several days, resulting in her becoming very weak.
In April she was diagnosed with High Grade Dysplasia following a visit to a specialist. But after follow-up checks with the specialist and a CT scan, Ramdin received word by June that she had stage two cancer of the cervix.
“I did not have any pain or sickness or anything like that. It was only just bleeding,” she recalled. Back in November last year, Ramdin’s 73-year-old grandmother Helen Mayers was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has since had her surgery and has been cleared of the disease.
Ramdin told Barbados TODAY she too was looking forward to ridding herself of the disease so she could live a normal life. However, she is facing a major battle of not having sufficient finances to do the required operation in London, UK.
A Go Fund Me account (Help Jaelle SMASH the life out of cancer!!) has since been established by her cousin to help her raise some £15,000 (about BDS$41,890) to ease the burden.
Additionally, avid walker Johnson Johnrose is about to kick things up a notch as he seeks to help raise funds for her while at the same time raising awareness of motor neurone diseases (MND), from which his brother suffers.
Johnrose, who did a 20 kilometre walk last year to help raise funds for Mayers, said he will be doing a 25 mile (about 40 km) walk this time around to help Ramdin raise the funds needed.
He has Saturday, July 17, 2021 as the date for his walk, which will be starting from his Kingsland home in Christ Church and ending in Speightstown, St Peter. His path should take him to Warrens, along the Ronald Mapp Highway into Mile-and-a-Quarter, to St Lucy Parish Church and on to Speightstown.
“She needs to go to the UK to get the surgery done and get treatment. This is important so I am going to do something to help,” said Johnson, “I am going to do it rain or shine”.
Johnson, who promised to do a Facebook live at various intervals of the trek, said anyone was welcomed to join him along the journey. For the month of July he will be aiming to do a total of about 150 miles to raise awareness of MND.
“I want to help raise funds for MND research. So I am throwing in this as part of the 150 mile challenge that I posed to myself. I really want to use this opportunity to raise some money for Jaelle,” he said. So far, just over £3,840 of the total has been raised via the GoFund Me page. She is hoping to leave Barbados by the middle of this month.
Ramdin told Barbados TODAY she was encouraged by the outpouring of support so far, adding that she has been able to also speak with individuals who had similar experiences.
“I had moments when I was overwhelmed. When I get back test results for example. But for the most part, I have been trying not to let it have power over me,” she said, adding “the mentality you go into it with helps a lot”.
She said the most difficult part of the journey for her so far was at the very beginning when she had no idea what was happening to her and she was fainting, unable to eat as a result of her uncontrollable bleeding.
“When the results came back I was in shock but then there was still a relief . . . I was like ‘at least I know what it is I have to fix now. The two weeks to wait was the hardest part and not so much the diagnoses,” she said.
After learning of the treatment options for her to have a normal life, she decided to have an operation done in the UK since it was not offered in Barbados.
Thanking Johnson and all those who have supported her, Ramdin said she was at first apprehensive about going public with her diagnosis but now she did not regret doing so given the overwhelming support and love.
“At first I was scared to come out and tell people about it . . . I really didn’t want pity, but the support has been really overwhelming. Seeing people going out of their way to help me has been very encouraging considering I was scared in the first place,” she said.
Ramdin, whose grandmother’s mother died from breast cancer, is advising young women in Barbados not to be scared of doing a pap smear – a procedure to test for cervical cancer.
“Do not be scared to get a pap smear, speaking with my friends I realise that a lot of girls my age are scared to get a pap smear or don’t think they need to because they are young and don’t get cancer, as if it is for older people.
“But I would say definitely get a pap smear, and I would recommend getting the HPV vaccine. I would say do everything you can do make sure you protect yourself. I did not have any symptoms and if I did not have the bleeding maybe I still wouldn’t know and it would keep growing.
Everybody will not get bleeding so you could be living with it and not even know,” she said.
According to the latest data available for Barbados, cervical cancer is ranked among the top 20 leading causes of death.
marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb
