VILMA HARPER is looking forward to her 80th birthday in January 2011. That is because Harper is in her 22nd year of surviving a disease that continues to take the lives of many, and seemingly didn’t miss a beat through it all.
At age 57 and with four grown children, the Green Hill, St Michael resident received news that she had breast cancer and was advised by doctors to have a mastectomy.
Devastating news to anyone and a seeming death sentence to many, the revelation removed the mystery surrounding the nature of the lump that she had found in her breast three years before.
“My son was going to study, and I just didn’t bother about me and . . . I was more concerned about getting him off. That took a lot of money,” she told EASY.
Harper had received treatment for a lump in her breast once before.
“I had had a little lump in my breast before and when I went to the doctor, my surgeon, it was a milk duct. So when he took it out, he said ‘Oh, there is nothing to worry about’,” she explained, adding that she had breast-fed her three sons and daughter.
When her son returned home from medical school in Jamaica to complete his final year, she mentioned it to him and, after an examination, he suggested she go “and see about that”. She obeyed.
Harper went to Dr Frank Ward, whom she described as a “fantastic” surgeon. A biopsy confirmed that the lump was cancerous and surgery was recommended.
“I said ‘I don’t know about that’,” she recalled.
With a mastectomy not the preferred option for Harper at the time, she was admitted to the hospital for radiotherapy. While there, she was persuaded to have the surgery by several family members who were in the medical fraternity.
Harper had the surgery on June 29, 1988, and a month of radiotherapy followed. She said her family was very supportive through it all and would even make jokes about it. She related one such joke from a son who suggested that were she to have another baby, she would have to find ways to nurse it.
“My husband said ‘I married you because I love you, I didn’t marry a breast’,” she said with a soft chuckle.
“I felt comfortable, so I really didn’t have any pressure from my family to feel funny about losing a breast and all that . . . . Then, I was 57. At 27 I might have felt ‘Oh my goodness, the breast gone’. And in those days they didn’t put the prosthesis inside right away or whatever. Maybe they did but not here. And I never thought of it, that would have been a lot of money, too,” said Harper, a retired administrative assistant in the faculty of Social Sciences at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
She is not one to boast, but she said recovery was a breeze. She has no “horror stories”, and cannot identify with feeling ill or the side effects from chemotherapy, such as weight and hair loss, pain or having to change her diet, which consisted primarily of ground provisions, rice and lots of fish. She was given a prescription for a drug [that she still takes today, however].
Harper went back to work six weeks later and busied herself with caring for her family. Prayer continued to be an essential part of their daily lives.
“After [the doctor] said to take it off, I didn’t bother about the dying part and all that . . . Looking back on it now, I am surprised that I [was] so calm.
But then I have to say that I would have been calm and all that because of my family, my husband and my children,” Harper said.
“Maybe because we didn’t bother so much about it, it didn’t feed on me or whatever. I really didn’t think a lot about it. I was busy at work, busy at home and the following year I had my first grandchild.
“So that was another generation to bother abou, instead of bothering about me. Even to this day, my bother is the children and my grandchildren,” she said.
She readily admits that she would go to the doctor at the last minute and take medication for pain only when it became intense.
Recovery was smooth, but adjusting to life with one breast took some getting used to even though she continued to dress as usual.
“I didn’t like it a lot, because I have small breasts and I hated the fact that you always had to put a prosthesis in yuh bra, and if yuh forget it yuh gine look funny. But I didn’t bother too much about it . . . My clothes fit the same way and I wore the same strappy things and what not,” she said.
Harper believes she survived cancer because God wanted her to do so.
“That’s God’s way. When He’s ready for you, yuh going. Yuh can’t say leh me get round the corner and come back. And it was not my time. God meant me to stay and be with my family,” the member of the 7 a.m. choir at St Mary’s Anglican Church said with conviction.
These days Harper keeps herself busy taking care of her six dogs – which are part of the family – cooking, church and other activities. She also helps the Barbados Cancer Society with their Pink Ribbon drive.
The sprightly lady, who danced and took part in athletics as a youngster, still looks after the affairs of her 96-year-old aunt, who is confined to a nursing home.
With a 22-year new lease on life, Harper continues to thank God for being “very, very good” to her and her family.