“I am woman; hear me roar!” declares Sharon Mayers loudly.
Over the past two years, this 45-year-old entrepreneur has indeed been roaring back against one of life’s deadliest predators – cancer.
When the Sunday Sun chatted on Skype with this survivor recently, we asked her what she’d say to cancer personified.
“I’d say, ‘I kicked your butt!! And you are not as strong as you think you are. It might seem that way but you aren’t. There is a way to beat you’.”
Sharon, born and bred in Barbados but living in the United States, has shared her journey on Facebook and, in so doing, has become quite the inspiration amongst family, friends and other cancer patients who are often channelled to her page.
Her journey began back in 2013 when, for months, she was plagued with persistent headaches.
“I went to the doctor May 13. They examined everything and then sent me to get an MRI the next day. By the 17th they called me in, all gloomy and with faces set up like rain. They said I had a grade three anaplastic astrocytoma. He said, ‘It’s inoperable and we don’t think you’re going to live to see your birthday this year’.”
Sharon was shaken to the core.
It didn’t help that she had an uncle who had died of a brain tumour many years before.
“He had had several surgeries so his head had been misshapen. I was sort of glad when they said it was inoperable because I did not want my head to look like that. But can you imagine being glad to hear it was inoperable because of that? Isn’t that the height of vanity?!” she said incredulously.
“I didn’t want to look bad. I just wanted to be cute throughout. If I was going to die I was going to do it with my lipstick and heels on. I was going out pretty!” she said with a laugh, before adding more seriously: “Throughout this entire thing, I thought if I looked torn up, then to me I was giving in and I did not want to give in . . . .
“If you sit down and go ‘woe is me’, cancer feeds on stress so the more stressed you are, the more weakened the immune system is.”
And fight it she did.
“I changed my diet entirely. I cut sugar . . . went back to the old things we used to eat and drink in Barbados.”
A girlfriend even provided her with leaves from the soursop tree – known for medicinal properties. She started using the leaves in tea and juicing everything.
Special person
When asked where she thought her strength in those initial months came from, Sharon gives quite a bit of credit to a special person she met just one month before she got her diagnosis.
“Some people are in your life for a reason and his season, unfortunately, has passed but there is a reason he was there right at that point in my life because he gave me a lot of strength,” she said.
Her positivity also made a huge difference in how her four sons dealt with the news. It might have seemed scary at first, especially for her youngest, who was 12.
“But after a while it didn’t bother them because she’s still doing everything, she’s still spending time with us, she is living her life, she is making healthy choices. They never fully embraced the juicing and stuff but they did at least modify their diet as much as they could . . . . My being strong helped them to be stronger.
“My doctors credit my positive mindset and my diet with keeping me alive. They never thought I would live even though I was getting the chemo and radiation,” she said with a wide grin.
It was while things were on the upswing, with an ever shrinking tumour that things took an unexpected turn.
“I found out I had a lump in my breast. I got that diagnosis while still going through chemo . . . . [But] they caught it pretty quickly so I didn’t have to lose my breast completely.”
While still undergoing chemo and radiation, she had a lumpectomy on her right breast. Following her lumpectomy, she had a few more months of chemo and radiation until finally, in June 2014, her doctors told her that there was nothing more they could do for her.
Her brain tumour had shrunk to less than two per cent of its original size and was no longer responding to treatment.
“Go, live long and prosper is what they basically told me,” she chuckled.
Sharon believed the worst was behind her. She had come through brain cancer, staved off breast cancer and, barring some tragedy, she had a long life ahead of her.
Or so she thought.
She moved from Florida to Kansas and, on arriving there, made an appointment with a new doctor. She shared her medical history, detailing all the surgeries she had had in her life, including a partial hysterectomy she had opted for in 2012 to combat abnormal menstrual cycles.
“So during my physical exam, the lady was saying, ‘Something seems strange. You are saying you don’t have your cervix but it seems as though you do’. I started arguing with her very adamantly, saying, ‘No, I do not have my cervix. I got it removed December 21, 2012’. I know this because I stayed in bed looking pretty in my red lingerie for three weeks!”
Pre-cancerous cells
As it turned out, however, she actually still had her cervix. It is one mystery she is yet to unravel as she was very clear on what the partial hysterectomy would involve. To make matters worse, tests showed that cells from her cervix were pre-cancerous.
“I felt like Bilbo Baggins from Lord Of The Rings – There And Back Again,” she sighed, chuckling and shaking her head at the recollection.
In January this year she had a trachelectomy to remove her cervix.
Because she has been so open with her cancer journey on Facebook, people have been reaching out to her to discuss their own battles. The decision to share her story on social media was not taken lightly but she says it has been worth it.
“Some people could not deal with it and, sad to say, I lost friends, some relationships. A lot of people had no idea how to deal with me after that. On the other side, though, you have people who are watching and who never say anything but they will send me private messages saying, ‘I admire your strength, you’re an inspiration’.”
She said the inspiration had been a two-way street as thousands of people have also shared with her, lifting her spirits in the midst of her darker days when she grew tired of being positive and strong.
Even while battling her illness, Sharon started a channel on Internet radio, broadcasting interviews she had done with people, several of them cancer survivors and their families.
Sharon has big plans for the near future. It includes restarting her YouTube channel My Big Red Couch. She intends, among other things, to share even more stories of people who have triumphed over their illnesses.
“I look at cancer as a gift, really, right now because it opened up my eyes to so many things that have made me much, much stronger than I was.
“All this time I thought I was strong but it wasn’t really strength – more of a façade. It wasn’t true-true strength . . . hmmm, was it? I think I have passed the test with flying colours. I really believe I know who I am. I am strong . . . . I am woman; hear me roar!” (Green Bananas Media)