Abu bakar@abbkar_ai
A heartbreaking tribute from a mother to her late daughter, who lost her battle with cancer. 🥲💔
To My Daughter, Zainab(R.I.P)
May 4, 2018 By Hafsat Aliyu
With a heavy heart and tear filled eyes, i summon the courage to write this Eulogy to my brave and courageous daughter, Zainab Aliyu, who lost the battle to Hodgkin Lymphoma (a cancer that affects the blood) on the 7th of May, 2015. Zainab was diagnosed with cancer when she was 20 years old. Her ill health started in 2003, between the ages of nine and 10 years. I remember she first broke out in a cough accompanied by catarrh and high fever which ended up to be Tuberculosis infection. She observed the free nine months TB treatment at Dantsoho Memorial Hospital, Kaduna, and at the end of the treatment, she was certified TB free and advised to return to the hospital for any complaint. Few months after, she came up with lymph nodes which her doctor thought to be residue of the TB treatment. But when it didn’t go, he referred her to Haematology Unit of Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Shika, where some lymph nodes were extracted and tested, and showed ‘Non Malignant but Positive to Brucellosis (an infection spread from animals to people, mostly by unpasteurised dairy products). The doctors were not convinced with the results though. In late 2012 when the ear pain persisted, a surgery was performed at Ear Care Centre, Kaduna, where part of her lap was removed to mend an opening in the Ear. All went well and she went back to school only to be brought back home due to excessive leg pain and body numbness. She was then taken back to her Ear Doctor, who advised she takes a Physician’s Assessment. On his advice, I took her to a renowned Private Hospital in Kaduna, where again, lab tests showed Brucellosis while Chest X-ray showed multiple Lymph nodes. She was placed on three weeks medication for Brucellosis and Cataflam for pain, but the more Cataflam she took, the more pain and sleepless nights she experienced. It reached a stage where she could not stand straight independently. She felt like her Spinal Cord could not hold her. Whenever she wants to walk around the house, I’d use a wrapper to hold her tight and straight while her brothers would support her. They would make jest of her, calling her an invalid. We were oblivious of what was ahead of us. At this stage, a kind relative who pitied Zainab so much sponsored her to International Medical Center (IMC), Cairo, Egypt, in late 2013. At IMC, it took three weeks of lab testing, City Scan, MRI and a PET scan before the team of Doctor Mahmud Salla determined her illness. Finally, the day he confirmed our worst fear, it felt like the world stood still. We were shocked and appalled. Accepting the fact that Zainab was a cancer patient wasn’t easy at all. I always wished the doctor would call us back and apologise for wrong misinterpretation of her blood tests. But my wish never came true; nothing changed the fact that Zainab was truly a cancer patient. The only good thing was she accepted it in good faith and looked forward to her treatment with strong conviction that she would win the battle. The best of times for Zainab was when she had her first successful Stem Cell Transplant which, as part of the treatment, made her stay for one good month in isolation.
The day she came out was one of our happiest days – the whole family was overwhelmed with Joy, we prayed and even made sacrifice to thank God. Our joy didn’t last long however, as she didn’t even get to achieve any of her plans when she started complaining of back ache again and rapidly losing a lot of weight. After series of checks, her doctor confirmed a relapse – that is, a reoccurrence of the disease, which necessitated her going through another circle of chemotherapy. Way into her new circle of Chemotherapy, she developed swollen feet as a result of having High Creatinine, an indication that her kidneys were affected and as such, the use of
