Sharon Spence-Murray finds positives despite tough breast cancer battle

A two-time breast cancer survivor, one of Sharon Spence-Murray’s secrets to making it through chemotherapy without excruciating discomfort is Jamaican cornmeal porridge.

“Yes, I believed in cornmeal porridge. That helped me to keep my blood count up, so I had cornmeal porridge every morning. I think that helped to keep my structure as well. I was not really affected. I was not ill. I didn’t go through all of the nausea because I followed my oncologist, took my anti-nausea [medication],” Spence-Murray said Lifestyle.

She added that another secret to her not feeling much pain and bone aches was taking an antihistamine, which a friend recommended.

The former table tennis player, who represented Jamaica as a teen from 1973 to 1977, does not credit herself as a health nut. Outside of her past two chemotherapy treatment phases, with the first being 17 years ago and the second being concluded recently, she does not have a strict healthy dietary plan as many other cancer survivors do.

“As far as changing lifestyle [habits], as far as eating and thing, I didn’t do that, because I don’t eat vegetables, but I’ll have soup... . I figure I’ll get nutrients from that, but otherwise, I really don’t. I get bored too easily with food. I like to experiment. I’m a foodie. A friend just have to call and I’m ready in 20 minutes to go down the road to have a steak. Otherwise, when I’m in my treatment I behave. I don’t drink ... but otherwise,” she said.

FIRST DIAGNOSIS

Finding out she had breast cancer in the first instance was unexpected. She thought it was just a simple lump that would not go away.

“I have fibrocystic breasts, so I used to have a lump every month and it came up, went down, came up, went down for many years. In my mid-40s, I realised that one of them would not go down,” Spence-Murray said. Worried, she went to her gynaecologist who requested a lumpectomy. Three weeks later, while she was leaving her hairdresser, the doctor called, and, innately, Spence-Murray knew it was serious.

Her battle with breast cancer has not been easy, but as an experienced mother who has been through rough patches in life, she dealt with it head-on in both instances.

“Emotionally, it’s just a journey I had to go through. I didn’t cry or anything. My family cried, everybody else cried, but I wasn’t going to depress myself or put myself in any other state,” she told Lifestyle.

“All I made up my mind [about] at that time was, ‘Stress is no longer existing in my life’. I just let stress go,” she added.

It was not difficult for her to decide to remove her breasts, an option presented by her doctor. “I know too many women, whether it’s vanity or their other half or they’re young wives [and they refused to do the surgery and died], and all I had to say to my other half, who, we were only dating for three months, was, ‘I’m going to take it off’, and he said, ‘Whether it’s one or two, it doesn’t matter’,” she said.

Having beat her second brush with breast cancer, her story is readily on her lips and she now preaches the importance of getting mammograms done to everyone she meets.

Her advice to other women who are newly diagnosed or going through the battle is, “Eat properly, exercise, be focused on what you’re doing. Do what you’re doing quickly. Pray. I’m not a churchgoer, but I pray every day. I pray at nights. I pray [in the] mornings. Just say your prayers and find the right circle around you to carry you through your journey.”

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com