4 years survivor.
Diagnosed: 2005. Age:41.
Ps 18:29 “…. met my God spring ek oor ‘n muur.”
This is my story of hope; I will be married for 19 years in December, blessed with four children.
The youngest two, twins born in July 2004 – boy and girl, was only 5 months when I visited a doctor to examine a lump in my right breast. As we do not have a history of cancer in our family, and I breastfed all four my children, we were not worried and neither was the doctor.
But on the 10th of January 2005 I lost my breast to cancer and as we found out later that due to the fact that I was breast feeding at the time, I lost much more skin and muscle making the reconstruction very difficult.
Well, three weeks later I had my first chemo, followed up by five more sessions and 30 radiation sessions over six weeks. The twins were still very young and I had to rely heavily on my mother and the twin’s nanny to get through every day.
Sadly this was not the last of the darkness in our family’s life’s in 2005, I had one week of radiation left……………..! Our daughter Sone, the second oldest aged 8, was playing with her cousin when the sliding gate came off the rails and fell on her. She passed away exactly 9 months after my cancer operation, 10 October 2005.
That was why I started cycling in 2008; I dedicated my first Argus race that year to Jesus and Sone, it was a very emotional 110km’s. I have done six races of which this years Argus was by far the most challenging. I have been clean since 2005 but has hit a small bump in the road, just after doing the Argus this year a growth was removed from my neck and this lead to picking up a growth on my lung. Both have been removed and have started a course of chemo again. But God is faithful and has promised a full recovery, but I have learned as a Christian we live every day to its maximum.
I see it as a honor to have been given the opportunity to ride with the 2009 Journey of Hope Team. I believe that as I share my journey with others, a message of faith, hope and peace, I will also heal and grow within myself.
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