VALDA ALLAMBY has been given six months to a year to live.
It is a grim prognosis doctors have given the 71-year-old who was diagnosed with angiosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer in late 2014.
As harsh and brutal as it may seem, it is not news that is written in stone for this woman who is described as a real trooper and a tough cookie by her daughter Deb.
Doctors gave Valda 12 to 24 months to live initially, but then shortened the span when they gauged the changes they saw in the woman who spent all of her adult life as a nurse.
There is no cure for this form of cancer.
Since being diagnosed less than two years ago, the physical changes Valda have been through, are stark and even jarring.
In the early days of the cancer, Valda, who lives in Airdrie in Calgary, Canada, never wanted to look at herself in the mirror.
It took a little while to get used to her new look, but now, she tracks the changes as they occur.
“I can see all the changes in my face especially on this side of my face,” she said, pointing to her left cheek which is swollen.
There is also a discolouration which she said started just after she found out she had cancer.
Her cheeks are very dark, her left eye is always swollen and shut tight, and her entire face and neck are inflated.
Right now the cancer is contained in her “neck, up”.
She explained that her cancer is in the blood vessels in her head and neck.
She said, very matter-of-factly that eventually, “the cancer will run out of room where it is and it will run out of space and will look to move”.
Eventually, she said, it will spread down to the chest area. But, so far so good.
Valda, along with her daughter Deb, is currently in Barbados spending the next three weeks with her parents Lilian and Clayton and her brother Winston.
Sitting on the couch at her parents’ house in St Matthias, St Michael, and with Deb next to her, Valda said she wanted to make this trip, knowing it could be her last.
Valda, who was comfortable being interviewed and taking pictures without the wig she sometimes wears, said she knew she had got worse in the last year.
That hastened her trip home to Barbados.
“I know I got worse since I was here last time. I figured this may be my last trip although, you just don’t know. It is all in God’s hands. I just wanted to make sure I came down to see them,” she said, glancing at her 92-year-old mother, who was sitting at the far end of the couch and her 92-year-old father who was sitting quietly at the dining room table.
With death hanging over her head, Valda remains positive and is definitely not about a pity party.
She laughed as she said she had only cried once and that was when doctors told her the first time that she had cancer.
“What can I do. Am I supposed to sit down and cry and say ‘o woe is me?’ I don’t do that. I don’t cry about this. It has happened, for whatever reason. I put my trust in God and I figure that whenever he is willing to take me home, he will take me home. I just live every day. When I wake up in the mornings, I thank the Lord that I will see another day and some sunshine.
“I don’t whine about it. I don’t wallow. I don’t cry. I cried once – after I found out from the doctor in Canada that I had the cancer. I cried that one time. I never cried again,” she said.
There was one other time that Valda shed a tear but it had nothing to do with her illness. It was when she got a visit from her grandson Tyrell last Christmas.
Occasionally rubbing her manicured hands across her bald head as she spoke, she recalled how it all started.
Valda, who left Barbados at 12 years old to head to England, before moving to Canada with her husband around 1968, was on her usual six-month visit to Barbados to be with her parents.
After discovering some spots on her head, she went to the doctor, who gave her some cream to apply to the lesions. That didn’t work.
The spots were still visible and the doctor decided to do some biopsies, the last of which revealed a sarcoma.
“I remember coming out of the doctor’s office and saying if this is cancer, I put this in your hands and whatever is going to happen will happen.”
“I got on the bus and came home. I told my brother that they said I have cancer. I said I need to go home now.”
She then called Deb to deliver the news.
Deb recalled her mother sounding really “meek and small”.
“It was shocking to take it in because she was fine,” said Deb, who admitted that she cried that entire day she heard the news.
In November 2014, Valda cut her trip short and headed back to Canada.
She was back in the doctor’s office doing more tests to confirm and determine the specific type of cancer she had.’
Tests confirmed it was angiosarcoma.
“I wasn’t sure about what was going to happen, but then the doctor said ‘we are going to get you into the cancer hospital’.
Doctors had earlier flirted with ideas that it may be a fungus or eczema they were dealing with.
After the diagnosis, she then went to the Cancer Centre in Calgary and where she was attended by about six doctors who consulted on the condition.
Deb, who was listening all the while as her mum spoke, then chipped in, saying doctors were amazed about her illness.
“They were not sure how it started or where,” she said, noting that even with the MRIs and CT scans, doctors were still trying to figure it all out.
“It is rare and aggressive, you don’t even know you have it until you have it and the lesions start to appear,” she said, explaining that they are different types of sarcomas.
Deb, who is now her mother’s caretaker, has had to educate herself on the illness, reading up as much as she can and questioning doctors.
Mother and daughter have had to move to Airdrie in Calgary, having lived in Grande Prairie for some years.
Deb explained the trip from their home in Grande Prairie for treatments was just over seven hours and just too challenging, especially in the cold wintery months.
It is now easier to make appointments with a 25-minute drive from their home.
Valda has already had one 18-cycle treatment of chemo, all of which finished late last year.
She was on a break, after which she had to go on a more potent and powerful course of chemo treatment of six cycles which took a toll on her body.
Deb said: “The first chemo she handled but the second, not so good. She was constipated all the time and nauseous all the time.”
That’s also when Valda lost her hair.
Deb said every week the doctors gather to discuss her mother’s medical condition.
“It is not like a tumour like breast cancer or lung cancer where there is a mass so, you can’t surgically cut it out,” she added.’
“Angiosarcoma is incurable, you cannot cure this. The chemo really is to contain it. What they do is try to give her the best quality of life. They try to keep her as comfortable . . .,” said Deb.
Valda has options, all of which doctors have already explained.
Deb explained: “The choice is hers if she wants to continue with chemo treatments and there are a lot of those. But the body can only handle only so much. If she wants to try another she can, or if she has had enough and she doesn’t want to do it any more, it is really up to her. But so far she has been very good.”
Valda has already made up her mind as far as her options are concerned.
She said if the cancer has moved below her head, she is not taking anymore treatment.
“Those treatments are not nice. Some of them are terrible. The side effects are not nice. If it has gone past my neck, no more treatments. If it is still contained to my head, well I thought I might try another one and see how it goes,” she said.
Deb said the sarcoma has affected her hearing and also her sight. Not having the use of one of her eyes, pressure is placed on the other.
She also has to sleep in a sitting position.
She said she can’t lie down like “normal people” because the fluids move around in her head.
Valda admits that it is uncomfortable because sometimes she just wants to lie down. But, if she does, when she wakes up the next morning, both her eyes are swollen shut.
Deb said that right now it’s about enjoying every moment with her mother.
“What’s crying going to do? It won’t help me accomplish anything in getting things in order for her,” she said.
“There is a time to cry and it’s just not yet. When that time comes it will happen.”
Valda said she is already prepared.
“If the Lord wants me to be well he will make me well; if he doesn’t . . . well that’s it. I am already prepared. I have my T’s crossed and I’s dotted,” she said.
Deb said her mother is an example for her.
“You know what the inevitable is. She is an example for me. The whole experience teaches you to be strong about it because at the end of the day there is nothing I can do to stop it. So I have to accept it.
When Valda and Deb leave Barbados, they are heading to Toronto to visit friends and work colleagues.
It was all made possible through the charity Give A Mile.
“It has been a rough journey, but He is carrying us,” said Deb, who said her mother is the 200th flight for the charity.
Deb explained that people donate their miles and points to the charity to bring the terminally ill together with their families.
Valda is happy she was able to make this trip and is looking forward to the Toronto leg.
In the meantime, Valda is enjoying her early morning sea baths and walks along the boardwalk, and pudding and souse before she heads back to the doctor on April 27.