Breathe
By Pamela Cerdeira
Gabriela Perea, Gaby, is a good person, and she grew up with the threat of breast cancer as if it were a "decree". Every year, twice a day, she checked herself. One morning when she felt a lump she went to the doctor, and she had the operation three months later, and she is good people, and she did everything as she should have done, and still it was almost too late. Because all that to the cancer, it didn't matter.
Her paternal grandmother died of breast cancer at the age of 40. Gaby checked herself daily when she bathed and before going to bed, and one morning at the age of 42, she felt a lump. The next day, the lump was still there; by the third day, she was at the gynecologist's office. She was only three months after having had a mastography, which yielded no results. The tumor was lodged just behind the nipple, but it was not the lump she had felt, and only the tenacity of the person who performed the ultrasound allowed her to find it.
As she left her appointment, in the parking lot, the man who was guarding the place told her: "You are very nice people, I'm sure it's nothing". It only took three months for her to undergo surgery; she insisted to the doctor to remove both breasts, who, in spite of not agreeing, accepted for mental health reasons. In what was going to be a simple operation ended up taking hours, the cancer had spread to lymph nodes that had to be removed. A couple of days after the operation, because of the time she was under anesthesia, her oxygenation dropped to 72; the knocking of those who were trying to remove the stretcher from the room, it was the stretcher-bearer's first day on the job, woke her up. She heard the nurse tell her partner: "Tell her to breathe for her daughter" "Mamacita, pull her, pull her", he said.
But breast cancer patients know that surgery is just the beginning; it's followed by a long road of chemotherapy and radiation, having a catheter, taking care of the heart and thoughts. Gaby would say, "Give me another chance and I'm going to make this worth it." She remembers one of her companions during the treatment: "she grabbed my hand, she said I wish you the best in the world, there are angels here for you, I am not going back, I am not going back, this is going to kill me".
Breathe
He had already undergone two chemotherapies and everything seemed to be going well until his body began to paralyze; he could not move or speak and heard strangely. Death spoke to him closely, so before giving up he asked himself a key question: what do I need to live? Breathe. Breathe, breathe. Today Gaby understands this as the basic principle of meditation, and she began, even in that calm, to make peace with dying. In the end, she was at home, her daughter was asleep, and she was not going to see her leave in a tragic moment. She was moved to her bed, and there, to one side, was the phone number of a therapist that a nurse had shared with her at the first chemotherapy session; it seemed like a sign.
We could imagine this story as a new life that runs in parallel: on the one hand, that of science that allows the body to fight, today there is an innovative therapy based on conjugated antibodies to treat metastatic breast cancer (clinical evidence has shown unprecedented efficacy by reducing the risk of death by 36%, compared to other treatments); and on the other hand, the emotional one that allows the person to be reborn . It will be until March that Gaby rings the bell, and although she recognizes that fear is always there, but now she is emotionally in another place: "you don't recover, you reinvent yourself", and this new version is focused on feeling, on doing what makes her happy.
This success story should be that of most patients, democratizing access to health care is a strategy that saves millions of lives, the availability of effective treatments in both the public and private sectors will mark a significant change in the course of the disease and prolong survival in a country where the incidence and mortality rates for this type of cancer are very high.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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