Yeeehhh!!! I am dead! Mo Ku o!

Doctor! Doctor!! Doctor!!!

Those were the screams and agitations of Yetunde, a 17 year old girl at the General hospital, Gbadaga. She had just received a life changing news, she has been orphaned.

Her mother, the breadwinner of the family after the demise of her father 5 years ago had gone to join her husband. Cancer has done it again, laid its icy cold hand and dragged mama away. What a shame.

It could have been nipped in the bud, but it was ignored hoping it would vanish or some miracle would happen. It was just a small growth Mama said to herself, It would go away she reassured herself, steadily it became larger and spread from it’s original site to other parts. It was too late, the drugs could have been called to the rescue but they were ignored, some radiotherapy intervention could have been used, she resisted, just a surgical excision would have taken it out, she despised them all.

It’s too late, her body and its cancer are going 6ft underground. The story could have been told differently, poor Yetunde could have been spared the agony. It’s quite unfortunate.

What is cancer?

It refers to the disease that results when there are alterations in cells that cause uncontrolled cell growth and division.

Just like man and animals have a life span from birth to death, same it is for different cells in the human body, all cells are programmed to die after their life span, an alteration in this genetic arrangement causes cells to multiply out of proportion, thereby resulting in cancerous growth.

This growth places a higher demand on oxygen and nutrient supply in the body thereby depriving the essential cells of sufficient resources, which could result in them functioning at suboptimal level and prevent normal body function.

These events if not checked, progress to spread of the cancer cells to other parts of the body via lymphatics.