I got breast cancer thanks to years of cigarette smoking

After smoking cigarettes for decades, John Rono wasn’t shocked when he learnt that he was suffering from liver failure. What shocked the 62-year-old was the doctor’s pronouncement that he had breast cancer.

I felt a swelling in my left breast near the nipple in March 2017. A month later, I checked myself into Eldoret’s Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital when the swelling persisted and became itchy. Biopsy tests at revealed that I had stage 1 breast cancer.

News that I had cancer shocked me. I remembered having lost a sister to what was suspected to be cancer. When my sister first noticed one of her breasts turning pink, she was advised to go for cancer screening. However, she turned to herbalists when she heard that she would have to lose one of her breasts in the event that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The herbs didn’t help and she succumbed to her illnesses in 2012.