Family of cancer survivors faces another battle

Dubai: It’s been 45 days since Betty Bailey and her family heard the bad news — breast cancer, stage one.

At 66, this is the first time the international gulfnews.com reader will undergo treatment in the UK for breast cancer, but Bailey is well aware of the disease.

Her daughter and UAE resident, Lynn Jackson, is a breast cancer survivor and right now her mother’s biggest emotional support. With October being the international Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the family shared their experiences with Gulf News.

“I hope my mother has the comfort of what to expect because she had nursed me and been there for me,” Jackson said.

“When I first heard the news, my wish was that I could just hold her and say everything’s going to be alright. I’m here and we can beat it.”

Having to re-live the whole experience was in no way easy for either Bailey or Jackson, but then they come from a family of survivors.

Jackson was just 35 — and preparing to become a teacher in the UK — when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Early detection and treatment helped, and so did a positive attitude.

“I did not put my ambition to be a teacher on hold, if at all it forced me to carry on. The doctors and nurses were amazed that the day before my operation I was in hospital writing my essays, but it took my mind off things,” the 45-year-old primary school teacher said.

This fighting spirit, according to Jackson, is something she’s inherited from her father, Eric Bailey, another cancer survivor.

He was diagnosed in 2003 with cancer in his vocal cords. Because of his treatment, Jackson seriously reconsidered her decision to move to the GCC in 2004, but the first person to object was her father.

“He told me: ‘never put your life on hold.’ Because if you do that, life’s beaten you.

Talking about his operation and treatment, Jackson said: “I’ve never ever seen my father ill but after the operation, he had something like 200 staples on his throat. To see a man you love and know completely immobilised was a bit of a shock.”

After the treatment, learning to speak once again using the valve in his throat was no easy task. The biggest challenge, according to Jackson was trying to understand him, without letting the frustration creep in. And the consistent efforts soon paid off, as Eric Bailey mastered the new way of speaking.

“I was worried that my dad wouldn’t sound like my dad after the operation. But actually he sounds the same. The first time he spoke in public was when he tried to place an order at a restaurant all by himself and it worked!”

More than a year after his treatment, Bailey visited his daughter in Dubai. Sharing that experience with Gulf News from Yorkshire, UK, Bailey wrote:

“I struck up a friendship with an Emirati man. One day he stopped to chat with me and realised that I spoke through my neck. He asked what the problem was and I explained that I had cancer.

“He went on and offered me his prayers. The sad part is that I met him a few times but I never even knew his name. So, if he reads this I hope he will contact me. May God bless him.”