I survived cancer but my marriage didn’t, he left me

• One of the two men I shared my life with could be the source of the cancer
• This virus (HPV) is sexually transmitted. Men are often carriers.
• I have nothing against any of these men. I have moved on

In 1993, I got married to a man I loved. We would have a son together. Ours was like any other marriage. We had a few quarrels – like many couples did – but kept going.

Initially our differences were mundane: nothing unusual really. But I guess bad behaviour gets worse every time it is excused.

My husband left me for another woman. In an effort to get things back to normal, I marshalled friends and even family to come in and help solve what was ailing our marriage.

He did come back and for a moment, we were the good loving couple that we had been when we first fell in love.

His old habits, however, came back. Quarrels sipped back into our marriage. We disagreed – vehemently. We had spurts of arguments. And our marriage was once again sour.

The amount of disagreements and misunderstandings had piled up to toxic levels and he left home (read me) for a second time.

I stayed without him – raising my son the best way I knew how. After a brief hiatus, my husband wanted to come back to me – again.

This time round I put my foot on the ground and said I wouldn’t accept him back.

I was afraid that he could have been involved with other women out there and would bring me a deadly disease.

Plus, I recalled something he had told me after returning back home the first time he left.

He had said that he only came back to me because his relatives had prevailed upon him to do so.

Which basically meant that he didn’t come back because he truly loved me and wanted to make things work.

So, I told him ‘no’. We ceased being husband and wife in 2003.

Fast forward to 2007: I began a new relationship with a man who I believed loved me. But that relationship lasted three years. We lived together between 2007 and 2010.

In 2012, I began experiencing improbable pain in my lower abdomen and heavy bleeding at the same time.

The bleeding, I could tell, was abnormal because it was irregular and unusually heavy. There was no way it could have been normal menstruation.

The first times I visited health facilities I was told I had an infection and was given antibiotics. But there was very little change every time I went back and would be given antibiotics.

Eventually, I decided to try a better equipped facility. I visited one where the doctor asked that I do a Pap smear test. I began bleeding during the procedure and the doctor could tell that there was more than met the eye with my case.

Even before my results were out, the doctor told me that he suspected stage 2 cervical cancer. And indeed the test came back two weeks later confirming that I had cervical cancer.

I went to Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) where a biopsy – to determine to what extent the cancer had developed – was done. They confirmed stage 2B cancer.

In my struggle to get treatment, I realised just how difficult it was to be treated for cervical cancer in Kenya.

First, I had to wait for four months to get surgery from which biopsy was to be extracted.

Once the cancer had been confirmed, I had to wait for another four months to start radiotherapy and chemotherapy. All the while I was still in pain and bleeding heavily.

I remember being told that the queue for treatment was so long – I probably had 1,000 patients ahead of me.

Tests and treatments had cost thousands upon thousands of money: which had been contributed by friends and family.

After six weeks of radiotherapy and chemotherapy, I still wasn’t completely healed. The cancer recurred a few months later and a doctor told me I needed brackitherapy – a type of radiotherapy that targeted the cancer cells better. Apparently, I learnt, brackitherapy was recommended for patients battling cervical cancer. Why my doctors didn’t recommend it right away beats me.

Anyway, I needed to have brackitherapy. But I didn’t have the Sh100, 000 that a private hospital was asking from me. I also couldn’t bother family who had contributed already to see me through radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

By a stroke of luck, I met officials from Women for Cancer (W4C). They offered to pay for my brackitherapy treatment.

Around the same time Kenyatta National Hospital had just acquired the brackitherapy machine and were offering sessions for Sh30, 000 compared to the Sh100, 000 that the private hospital charged.

I went through two sessions of brackitherapy and began noticing change.

As at last year October, the last time I remember going for a pap smear, I was cancer free.

The last few years, I have spent a good amount of my time volunteering at W4C to help other women who are in situations like mine.

It is while volunteering that I discovered that one of the two men who I shared my life with could be the reason why I contracted cervical cancer.

Many women who suffer from this disease have Human Papilloma Virus infection (HPV). This virus is sexually transmitted. Men are often carriers.

It is women who get actively infected by the virus. This virus tampers with cells lining the cervix, causing cervical cancer.

I have nothing against any of these men. I have moved on. But I wish I knew that the actions of a man I am intimately involved with could lead to me suffering from cancer.