Tunde Babs-Akinyemi is a man filled with seething anger and regrets. His pain stems from watching his mother eaten up by breast cancer and his regret borne out of the family’s ignorance of what the sickness is all about and the attendant consequence of spiritualizing it.
Pained by the avoidable exit of the mother, he was forced to embark on painstaking research to know the causes of breast cancer and how it can be averted. The outcome of the efforts is a well-researched 141-page book titled: “Demystifying Breast Cancer: A Stitch in Time.
Aside from the book, he has also taken it upon himself to move from one public hospital to another to educate women about the reality and dangers of breast cancer. In the course of doing that, he said, many women who have been having symptoms of the disease have secretly approached him to know what next to do. To such women, he said, he has always advised that they should quickly visit the hospital to do the required tests.
His words: “I cannot remember exactly how and when what I now consider a non malignant tumour that was noticed on her more than 30 years before she died changed and became malignant. Immediately after the birth of our sister, our mother noticed that she was having pains on her left breast which made it difficult for her to breastfeed.
“After getting some treatment traditionally, the pains abated and she was able to carry on with breastfeeding again, but this time with concentration on the breast that did not give pains.
After some time, she started having pains on the same breast. It was never taken seriously this time because she had stopped childbearing. The pains got worse and when obviously the tumour had spread to other organs that she cried out forcing us to be running around to seek solution to the problem.”
He continued: “But our running around was not in the right direction. Rather than going to the hospital to consult with experts, our focus was spiritual since we strongly believed that it was a spiritual attack . How terribly mistaken we were.
“Even as an undergraduate then, I hardly knew anything about cancer. I had heard the word cancer, of course, but it made no tangible meaning to me. It was of no consequence to me because there was no awareness, no enlightenment and no education. Nothing much had been said or written about it back then.
“By the time we started taking action, I believe the damage had been done. The cancer had metastasized, it had spread. We visited many spiritualists who recommended one treatment or the other. We applied traditional medicines and often times, they gave palliative relief.
“I do believe very strongly that if we had started to apply those traditional herbal medicines early enough, at the onset of the disease, we would have been able to achieve positive results.”
Giving his reason for this, he said: “ There was a particular type of cocoyam which was recommended for her use. What we did was to mash the raw cocoyam and apply it using cotton wool on the breast and in a few hours, the pain would subside. A few days after doing that, the open wound caused by the cancer would begin to heal up.
“However, after some weeks, the wound will reopen causing the pains to return. Apart from the treatment, there were local ointments that were also applied periodically and they helped reduce the pains and closed up the open wounds for a while.
“All these were however palliative because although they worked on the physical wounds, internally, some processes were taking place as the tumour was spreading rapidly and metastasis taking place because the course of the disease had been irreversibly set.”
Regretfully, he said: “All this while, we did not deem it fit to take her to the hospital. We still had hope in the traditional healer who would have been of help had the tumour not become malignant.
“Mother was in this pain for a long time. We applied every medication given, visited al those that were recommended for us to visit. In spite of her condition, she still managed to carry on substantially with her day-to-day activities, although there were times she would writhe in pains.
“At a point, I noticed that she was emaciating and at a point, she started having pains in her joints and pains. Her gum started to peel and she could hardly walk erect. It was at this point that we thought of giving orthodox medicine a trial. When I brought her to Lagos, the first person that I called to examine her raised the alarm by informing us that she was suffering from breast cancer and that the disease had eaten too deep into her and that urgent steps needed to be taken if she had to survive.
“We went to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) through the help of Venerable J.A.I. Olawale of St Jude ‘s Anglican Church, Ebutte Metta,Lagos . He was gracious enough to bear the financial responsibility of treating her as I was yet to secure employment then. We were told at the hospital that my mother would have to go through mastectomy and that she had very slim chances of surviving.
“When she was informed that her breast would have to be cut off, she vehemently objected, especially given the way she was feeling at that time. She said that if she was going to die, she’d prefer to have all the members of her body intact rather than dying with a part cut off.”
At this point, he said it was apparent her days were numbered, saying: “We took her back home to continue using the alternative therapy. She lived for additional two months during which she got weaker everyday with the pain getting more severe. She finally passed on on June 14.
“My mother’s experience kindled in me the fire to learn about breast cancer. I vowed there and then that I would commit myself to learning about breast cancer with the intent of making whatever information I was able to gather available to the society.
“My mother’s story taught me that negligence is dangerous and self-medication catastrophic. I have come to know that not seeking for help health wise in the appropriate quarters could be disastrous. Often times, we dealt with quacks, people who were not knowledgeable about what they claimed to know, charlatans who only played on our gullibility.
“I am not selling the books. I only produce them and distribute to people to equip them with the knowledge of how to avoid being caught in the same web with my mother and my family. I am seeking the support of well-meaning Nigerians and government at all levels to massively produce this book and distribute it far and wide to educate our people on how to avoid the illness,”he said.
