Our health is perhaps the most important thing and quite often we take it for granted. We have conditioned ourselves to believe we are healthy until we fall sick and that should be the only time we go to the doctor.
However, we need to be constantly checking on our health not only for our own benefit but for also those around us. For 33-year-old Shirlean Alexander, it was this idea of checking up on herself that led her to the discovery of cancer.
Like many people, when Shirlean got her diagnosis, she felt that it was a death sentence. But the journey to her diagnosis was one that was filled with a lot of questions and countless doctor’s opinions.
“In January 2013 there was a lump on my neck and I thought it was mums and I left it there for 2 weeks. So when it did not go away I went to the hospital and they did an ultrasound and they said it is a lump and they advised a biopsy. They did the biopsy and sent it over to the Georgetown (Public) Hospital and it came back with a recommendation of surgery because they can’t find anything.
“I was afraid to do a surgery so I decided to get a second opinion at another hospital and they recommended an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) and after they saw the results they advised surgery as well,” she remembers.
At the time of the medical advice, Shirlean had a vacation already planned so she took her vacation to relax as well as contemplate her next medical move. Before going on her vacation, Shirlean had a persistent cough which only intensified.
She knew that something was wrong when she had been coughing for over six months. So that led her to another hospital in Georgetown.
“When I returned from the vacation, I went to get a third opinion from another doctor. I was still scared of the surgery because I did my own research and found that when you do surgery on your throat you could lose your voice and so on and also the doctor advised that. So I was scared. Based on all the tests I provided the doctor with, he also recommended that I do a surgery as well.”
However, before Shirlean could have done the surgery she had to get rid of her persistent cough. Tests would reveal that the cough was as a result of acute bronchitis. She was placed on a treatment regimen and was still unsure of whether she wanted to do a surgery on her throat or not.
As fate would have it, Shirlean was working with a Pharmaceutical Company at that the time and constant interactions with doctors there led her to cement the fact that she needed surgery. A doctor at the company relayed, through Shirlean’s coworkers, that she should no longer postpone the surgery since the lump in her neck had the possibility of becoming cancerous.
When she heard the word cancer, Shirlean became fearful but knew that it meant the surgery was now inevitable.
So in November of 2013, some eleven months after her receiving medical advice, Shirlean had her surgery done. The doctor performing Shirlean’s surgery had advised her that he would be taking out one of her thyroid glands since taking out both would mean her having to live on thyroxin medication for the rest of her life. She felt somewhat relieved at that.
When the doctors went into her throat, they took out the lump with the affected thyroid gland and sent it for further testing since they had no information that it was cancerous at that time. Shirlean was at home recuperating when two weeks later she received a call from her doctor to visit him.
“When I went to see him he told me that I had cancer. I was shocked. They told me that I had papillary thyroid carcinoma and that I would need to do another surgery to take out the other thyroid gland. That was two weeks after my first surgery so I was concerned and I asked my doctor if my body was ready for another surgery and he said I am strong enough. So they went back in and took out the other thyroid gland.”
After her second surgery, Shirlean was advised that she would need further treatment to ensure that the cancer cells are killed. She was given the option of travelling to the United States of America or Trinidad for treatment since it was not available in Guyana. Weighing the financial implications and the urgency of the treatment, Shirlean chose the Medical Diagnostic Center in Trinidad.
There she met Dr Omar Khan, a Guyanese, ho administered her 131 Radioiodine therapy treatment.
According to WebMD, radioiodine therapy is a nuclear medicine treatment for an overactive thyroid, a condition called hyperthyroidism, and also may be used to treat thyroid cancer. When a small dose of radioactive iodine I-131 (an isotope of iodine that emits radiation) is swallowed, it is absorbed into the bloodstream and concentrated by the thyroid gland, where it begins destroying the gland’s cells.
After she received her first radiation treatment in June 2014, Shirlean has been visiting Trinidad once per year for checkups and more treatment. At the moment, based on her last visit in August 2019, she is cancer-free.
“Now that I have taken care of myself I realized that taking care of your health is important. Take your health seriously always and make sure that you get your regular checkups. You have to eat healthily and exercise. Treat your body like your cellphone because if your cellphone runs out of credit then you will do everything to get credit so that is what you should do with your body. Do everything to make sure it is healthy,” the mother of 1 advises.
