My Beautiful Mom, aged 17 years.

Avril May Erasmus née Belcher

Born: 16th May 1926 Cape Town,  South Africa.

Passed away: 12th December 1986 Durban, South Africa.

Mom, this is for you and Linda.

I would urge the readers to understand that my mother did all her research for her own pleasure and conviction, so this is NOT a medical paper.  May I encourage you, if you have been diagnosed with cancer, to follow all the treatments offered to you by your oncologist and medical doctors.

Yes, do as much research on the internet as you can to help you to strengthen your resolve and desire and determination to get well.

Eating and sleeping well, is also a healing process.  So too is exercise.  But everything must be done with the direction and supervision of your own medical team.

I wish you everything that’s precious in this life, joy, laughter, healing,  family and friends to stand with you …………. Cancer can be beaten!

I will be writing more about my mother and her fight against cancer and placing it on this webpage, so please return.

Until next time .......... take care. Juanita De Jager

My Beautiful Sister.

Linda Marlene Pooley née Erasmus

Born: 11th January 1951 Cape Town.

Passed away: 10th April 1986 Johannesburg.

Following is an article that my mom, May, had started writing just a year before her death.  It is about Cancer.  It consumed her life, every moment she had she was reading and writing, a year later the Cancer she was writing about also finally consumed her body. On her death bed she told me of her disappointment that she could never fulfill her desire to tell her story.  So Mom, even though it’s nearly 30 years old, your article is being published, not in a magazine, with a few thousand readers, but to the Whole Wide World.  May it bring comfort and joy, determination and peace to the many people who may read it.  YES, MOM, we know that Cancer can be conquered!  And Mom, I never knew that writing this so many years later would cause me to be so overwhelmed with emotion.  Yes, I have so far outlived you by 3 years, and Linda by 28 years, how I wish you were here rather!  Everyone says I am so much like you!  It is a compliment!

The next day after my “operation” I too felt my chest and when my husband came to see me at visiting time I was happy to tell him that I still had both “titties”!

My joy was short lived, because the next day my surgeon and the ward sister came to see me, they seemed concerned and drew the screen around my bed.  The news was that the lump proved to be malignant and I would have to face a radical mastectomy the next morning.

How I longed for a way of escape!  I had to accept that radical surgery was the only way out for me.

That evening as I watched my family leave the ward after visiting time, my two little girls aged 12 and 9, wearing the pretty cotton frocks I had made them – sorrow gripped my heart, ‘would I ever see them grow up, what will happen to them? I thought.  I remembered a cousin who died 2 years after a mastectomy.  What would my fate be?

My surgeon was a very kind man, and assured me that he would look after me.  When I woke up after the operation I did not feel sad at all I’d accepted my fate, I felt an inner peace and God’s divine presence, many people were praying for me.

My friend in the next bed, who’d had the same operation thought I was dying, and when a nurse came to see why she was upset, she told her so.  “Is she a relative?” asked the nurse, “no” she replied “but she looks so ill”.

I phoned my chemist a few days later for a few necessities and she said that I had them all worried, my reply was that “God has been very good to me”. “What a funny thing to say” she answered.  She could not reconcile my statement with such a calamity!

I received encouragement from some of my friends.  A lady of the church said “Never mind my dear, you never know why God allowed this to happen to you”.  I had to accept that because I believe in Romans 8 vs 28 …. All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose.

Then there was another church friend who said that God had showed him that I would go through a bad time, but would be healed.

I remembered his words as the years rolled by 5, 10, 15, 20, 23 years.  A long time to enjoy good health.

The messages of gloom – from an elderly lady. “You should never have had that “op”, because cancer spreads once it has been cut into”.

One of the patients in the ward said to me.  “My dear, just make the most of what you have left of your life, even if it’s just another 2 or 5 years.  The poor dear she died 2 years later and I’m still alive by God’s grace after 25 years.

My dear surgeon told me to see him regularly for check ups as he wanted to keep an eye on me.  He died a few years later.

2

Before closing my eyes on the operating table I looked up into the beautifully made-up eyes of my anesthetist.  She died of cancer of the stomach some time later.

The driver Johnny who worked for my husband’s firm drove me to hospital daily for my post operative treatment.  He died in a car accident.  I was still alive!

The years slipped by, I had the pleasure of seeing my children grow up.  I was present for the weddings of my two sons and two daughters.  I made bridesmaids dresses for my eldest daughter’s wedding, and a wedding dress for my youngest daughter.  We now have 8 grandchildren.  I get many a laugh from them.  One of my grandsons when two and a half years old came into the bathroom to bring me some soap, he was told granny had a “sore” chest and the reason for it, now seeing me in the bath exclaimed “ Uhmm, yeth me can sthee you only got one”.

After having worked for 28 years of my married life I decided to retire and to take life more easily since menopausal years had arrived.

For a year I enjoyed my retirement I could visit my children and grandchildren and my shopping sprees were less rushed!

Then I felt the familiar lump in my other breast!  I did not mention it because I wanted to be sure that it was a lump I was feeling and not my breastbone.  When I faced the facts and told my husband we knew that an operation was inevitable.  Over 23 years since the last one! 

I asked the surgeon to do a lumpectomy (remove the lump only) I felt I could not face the trauma of a mastectomy (removal of the whole breast) he advised against it and remarked “I know how most women feel about losing a breast, as though losing their femininity, but your life is at stake and the chance is not worth taking”.  On passing this remark to a sister-in-law she said “You will never loose your femininity, no matter what they cut off”.  I felt flattered.

The surgeon told me that there is some therapeutic value in having both off.  I found it to be so.

After all true femininity comes from within.  The ability to laugh and find pleasure in every-day things and to be loving and kind having Faith, Hope and Love ( Charity), Theological virtues – Justice, Prudence, Temperance and fortitude – moral virtues all add to making life worthwhile.

Under the anesthetic the biopsy was found to be malignant, so a mastectomy was performed, but the operation was less radical than the previous one.

When I was admitted to the hospital the receptionist who took my particulars said “You are coming for a breast op, which one?”

“The only one” I replied.

“Left or right breast” she repeated

“I only have one” I retorted.  I saw the funny side!

3

Without any breasts at all I felt like a 12 year old, and now I could decide on the size I wanted to be.  It had it’s compensations.

Three months after my second mastectomy I decided it was time to visit my gynecologist it was two years since my last pap test.  I had just passed the menopause.  Before my appointment I went on a shopping spree.  I bought a lovely pair of pink curtains for the spare bedroom at half price! I felt good about my bargain.

On the examination I was told “You have a growth on your right ovary the size of a baby’s head; you must be admitted to hospital tomorrow for an operation the next day”.  I felt crushed, I went home to hang my pink curtains.  I had to keep busy to get my mind off the situation.  I wanted a way of escape but could not find one.  There was a growth which had to come out like a baby that has to be born …..

I thought of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26 vs 37-39 where He began to be sorrowful, and when he prayed ‘Oh my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt.’

The growth on the ovary was 14 cm in diameter and was malignant, and was reported to be a primary growth and not a metastases from the breast.

While in hospital I spoke to my Lord saying.  “Lord please tell me, are operations a modern day custom, or were they performed in Bible times?”  Later when I took my Bible to read I’d forgotten about my request to God, I just opened the Bible and read – Joshua, make thee sharp knives and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time ………

I was excited, I got my answer.  God actually instructed that the sharp knives be made for cutting away flesh!  I accepted that God was in my situation too.

After 5 weeks I went for a post-operative check-up only to be told I had another lump the size of a grape, that had to be moved.  It was in an awkward position between the front and back passage, so a biopsy would be taken first.  Needless to say I was deeply disturbed and worried I fasted and prayed to God for mercy, and I was comforted by The Holy Spirit.  After the “biopsy” my surgeon told me that the lump was a blood filled cavity which bled on incision. NO TUMOUR.

Over a year has passed and I’m feeling fine!

I’ve written about my experience in an effort to encourage others.  Cancer is conquerable if found in time!

I have my own views on the cause of cancer.  Science declares that there are many causes; there are said to be over 600 carcinogens. (cancer causing compounds)  I feel there is one common denominator.

4

A very interesting article appeared in the ‘Bulawayo Chronicle’ in 1961.

“Animals and plants have a sort of natural clock inside them.  In a cockroach for example, four cells in a large nerve ganglion under the esophagus tells him to run about all night and sleep all day.  Dr. Janet Harker of Cambridge University, kept some cockroaches in the dark by day and in the light at night until she had reversed their natural habits.  Then she transplanted these “disturbed clocks” into cockroaches who had led normal lives, giving them two clocks, of which one was wrong.

All the two-clock cockroaches developed cancer.  “Now someone has to figure out why, and what it all means”

It is said that we carry within us at least two built-in clocks, one working at cellular level, the other controlling the body as a whole.

The endocrine system, controlled by the hypothalamus and pituitary gland at the base of the brain, is closely linked with the nervous system.  Could these systems be classed as the clock which controls the body as a whole?  Do we get cancer when these systems are unbalanced?

It is known that many cancers occur after extreme worry or shock.

Cancer is treated as a local disease, yet cancer could be the end result of the body as a whole, gone wrong.

Dr. Josef Issels who ran his Ringberg Clinic in Germany since 1951 believed in natural therapy for his patients, checking on bad teeth, tonsils, sinuses and ear passages, which he believed contributed to the diseasing of the body as a whole making it susceptible to cancer.

Another way in which our ‘clocks’  are being disturbed could be by the things we ingest – preservatives in food, chemicals and drugs.

Consider the Thalidomide tragedy in 1960 (?) when thousands of babies were born with abnormalities due to their mothers having taken the tranquilizing drug.  I have been noting many press reports linking certain drugs with cancer and abnormalities in newborn babies.

A report in The Sunday Tribune 20/9/81

“A research group in Birmingham has found important clues about the cause of childhood cancer …………

About 1250 children in Britain aged up to 15 develop cancer every year.  About half of these suffer from leukemia.  Others have brain tumours or cancer of the kidney or adrenal glands.  Some have other, rarer cancers about 250 of the cancers may be caused by mothers taking drugs in pregnancy …… The data for 1972 -77 shows that mothers of the period’s 2707 child cancer fatalities were more likely to have used sleeping tablets, tranquilizers or antibiotic drugs during their pregnancies than mothers of healthy children ……

5

Let’s consider hormones.

The Mercury 4.11.75

“The hormone estrogen prescribed for women in menopause may be the cause of an increase in uterine cancer cases, according to researchers at California in the United States” …..

The Cape Times 5.1.84

“London – New evidence suggesting a link between breast cancer and the birth pill was reported by British Researchers in the British medical journal The Lancet recently.  Professor Martin Vessey,  Dr Klim McPherson and their team calculated that women who take the pill for between one and four years before their first full-term pregnancy may run twice the risk of developing breast cancer than those who do not” ……..

Daily News 27-11-78

“Skin Cancer link with birth control Pill

New York: Women who use birth control pills for more than four years face almost twice the risk of developing the often fatal skin cancer, malignant melanoma, according to a new 10 year study”. …..

Cancer research is going on all over the world many remissions are gained and “cancer free” intervals sometimes of many years duration, but a true ‘cure’ still evades us all and will do so until the ‘cause’ of cancer is found.

In 1980 INTERFERON was hailed as the new wonder drug for cancer.  By 1983 hopes were fading as to the effectiveness of the drug in all cases of cancer.  Interferon was actually “discovered” way back in 1957 and by 1964 no breakthrough was confirmed.  It was interesting to note the revived interest in the drug in 1980.

I have been making all these references as to the ‘cause’ of cancer because I feel they are relative.  I have also kept records of myself for over 30 years.  Prior to my first cancer I had a disturbed cycle and after receiving hormone injections I developed cancer.  I wonder how many people are alive, and as well as I am 25 years after their first cancer, and having undergone 3 major operations for 3 cancers. 

This is my experience.

My first operation was in 1960 in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia)

The removal of a breast was              ……………

6.

My mom was not able to finish this article that she so badly wanted published in a magazine.  She started caring for my sister Linda, who passed away a few months later.  My mother’s health deteriorated rapidly and I went and cared for her the last few months of her life.  She passed away peacefully at home, just 8 months after my sister.

Friday

20th December 1985

In the 25 years that I have been involved with, and stricken by cancer I have observed many things.  Through my own experience I have tried to put the pieces together.  I am heavily burdened about the cause of cancer.  The treatment offered by medical men is very drastic, it maims the body and tortures the soul, but that is the price we have to pay, they say, to rid ourselves of this deadly abnormality.  It is not a sickness or a disease caused by infection I believe it is only body growth gone wrong, inborn genetic errors, triggered by a carcinogen maybe; or a normal body forced into abnormal function due to our modern way of life!

Claims are made that cancer is curable, my experience is that it is not curable, only removable because there is no guarantee that after the organ involved, is cut away (thereby effecting a cure) that it will not re-occur again in some other organ.

My first major cancer operation was in 1960.  The removal of a breast, in my early thirties.  What a traumatic experience at that age!  I was fortunate in that I new the 7 danger signals of cancer, and when I felt the lump in my breast I knew I had to act quickly, having my breast removed, saved my life and although maimed; life carried on.  My mother died of cancer at the age of 48 years and that was my reason for being cancer conscious.

While lying in bed reading one night in August 1960 my hand wandered over my chest and I discovered the lump.  Although I did not want to accept the worst, instinct told me that something was wrong.  I’d been having menstrual problems since after my third child was born, I now had another child the youngest of four aged 9, with no change in the menstrual cycle. I knew there was something wrong with my whole system and not just my breast. 

I would like to add an eighth danger signal to the other 7 cancer danger signals namely.

Any abnormal or irregular menstrual cycle!!

I was admitted to the Bulawayo General Hospital and had the biopsy done on the 1st September 1960.

My husband drove me to the hospital and because he had a most terrible toothache and needed to see a dentist right away I told him just to drop me at the hospital entrance and I would admit myself.

I picked up my little suitcase and walked in to be admitted while he drove away, I don’t know who was in the greatest distress at that moment.

I was no sooner relaxed between the cool white sheets, when I noticed a patient in the bed next to mine, ‘coming round’ after her operation.  The type of operation she had was obvious when I saw her hand wander over her chest, only to feel bandages.  I saw the tears roll over her cheeks!  What would my fate be?

1.

May  Belcher - Erasmus

  23 rd June 1945