SHAKERA Facey is trying her best to remain hopeful.
But a huge mass which started to grow on her left shoulder five months ago is weighing her down both physically and mentally, to the point where her hope is waning thin.
So large is the mass that it has outgrown the size of the teen, preventing her from moving around on her own, or even showering herself.
The family said that despite a number of visits to private doctors and hospitals, so far no one seems to know for sure what has caused the swelling or what should be done about it.
Shakera, who turned 19 last Tuesday, said that it all began in June last year when she was working as a bartender in St Ann’s Bay, and went outside to dispose of garbage. During the process, she slipped, and broke her fall by catching herself on her left arm which she said twisted under her 200-pound weight.
After a few days she started feeling pain in her shoulder and a small swelling developed.
A few weeks later, the pain was so bad that she had to visit St Ann’s Bay Hospital.
She was given medication and a date to return. When she went back she was told that she could do one of three things — a minor surgery whereby doctors would put an instrument inside her arm to see what was happening; take more medication for the pain and swelling; or do physiotherapy.
She chose physiotherapy.
The therapist gave her something for the swelling, but this, she said, did not work, therefore she was encouraged to do an x-ray in early September.
However, she said that the pain was unbearable and she immediately went to get the x-ray done after leaving St Ann’s Bay before returning to her home in Redwood, St Catherine.
“The pain was just on me so bad that I couldn’t work, but I didn’t know what was wrong with it,” Shakera told the Jamaica Observer. “I went to a private doctor in Linstead and he sent me to Spanish Town to do the x-ray. As soon as I did the x-ray I took the result back to the doctor in Linstead.”
The doctor told her that he could not see what was wrong and said it could possibly be an infection inside the bone.
She was then referred to a private laboratory to get the arm further examined. The results showed that there were no damaged tissues or fracture of any kind.
But still in pain, she was again referred to a bone specialist in Spanish Town. This was at a cost of $35,000, which Shakera said she could not afford. However, after hearing about her inability to pay, the doctor wrote a letter of referral to Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) with directives that the matter was urgent.
There she was told that the machine to do the required computerised tomography (CT scan) was out of operation and would not be up and running until January.
Unable to wait, she decided to go the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), armed with only $7,000 that she could put together, and made arrangements to pay the remaining $27,000 later.
“When I took the result back to Spanish Town they said it showed that it was a large mass; that means it could be cancer,” she said. “So they said they were going to cut out piece and carry it to the lab to test. And they said the result came back to say that it was cancer. But up to now I have not seen the result. I asked and they said I would have to go around to the clinic. So I have nothing at all to show what is wrong with me.
“They say it’s a bone cancer gone to the lungs, and the lungs eating out. The doctor come to me and him say ‘you suppose to do the chemo because it is a 50/50 chance. You know what name ‘kick the bucket’? You can dead anytime’. That is what the doctor said to me at Spanish Town Hospital,” Shakera said.
She explained, however, that the massive growth now seen had not yet started to form. That came after the minor operation to remove a portion for testing.
In an attempt to get a second opinion, she went back to her private doctor in Linstead and did another x-ray. She was told by the private doctor that it was an infection and was again instructed to go to KPH.
“At no point did he tell me that it was cancer. He said they would cut and leak it out, but when I went to KPH to cut it and leak it, they said they not troubling it because they didn’t want to trouble it and something further go wrong. But what they said there is that they see that it is cancer, and that the tumour was growing.”
They, too, told her that she would have to undergo chemotherapy to shrink the cancer cells and reduce the swelling.
“But I never did want do the chemo. I was scared,” the teen said. “They not showing anything to prove that is cancer, and they telling me that if I do the chemo I might not live. They telling me that I have to cut off the hand, and they say the hand too swell and if they cut it, it will have to be from way up to my neck and mi don’t must live either.
“They all touching mi breast, say they would have to cut from there. I don’t feel good about cutting it, so I told them ‘no, I am not cutting it’. They say is cancer and it can spread and take over your body and you can dead. But I don’t really put it on my mind like that because I have it in my mind that I don’t have any cancer. So I don’t worry about it being cancer,” she said.
“But the hand giving me a hard time, and that is why I worry. Sometime I will hear my friends out on the road and mi can’t go out there. I have to just lie down inside here,” the teen said as she struggled to breathe properly. “Is pure pain. I cannot sleep at nights. I can’t sleep anytime at all. I am uncomfortable. It heavy. I cannot walk by myself. Because it is so heavy, is my family have to tidy me off, and sometimes I have short of breath.”
Shakera’s father, Vincent Facey, is at his wits end.
“Nobody saying anything concrete, and because they not telling us exactly what wrong it look a way for her to go do the chemo and to cut off her hand,” Facey told the Sunday Observer from his Redwood home last Wednesday.
“So she say she ‘fraid to do it because she say she don’t know exactly what wrong, and she don’t want do the chemo and then go dead. But is different things they telling her,” he added.
Facey said that Shakera — the youngest of his four children and the only one who now lives with him — is desperately in need of help. He, too, does not believe that “severe action”, like the removal of her arm, should be the first resort without proper testing and assessments.
“If they are going to say if she take off the arm she might not live, it don’t make sense,” he said. “I would love to get some help with her, even if it is to make a good doctor look at it and see what wrong with it… If is even to go overseas, run some good test and see the problem. Every day the bump get bigger and bigger. She need a good doctor who can take care of it.
“If you follow what is happening now, they sound like they want to kill her off — they say she suppose to do the chemo and if she do it she may die. They say she should cut off the hand and yet they say if she cut it she may die. From June when she get the fall ’til now and nothing at all don’t do to the hand, all she get is pain killer. She need the help because she is 19 and she can’t bathe herself, she can’t do anything for herself. It rough, you know. She don’t live nuh life yet. Mi carry her go doctor and them not doing anything to it. It look like they ‘fraid.”
Facey said that in December, after his daughter was admitted at KPH for nine days, he was given an ultimatum — sign and remove her from the hospital, or sign to make them do the chemotherapy.
“So mi say mi will just sign and take her out, because if they can’t tell what in it, nuh cut they going to cut her and kill her? I feel they can do something to know what is inside there and take it out, but is pure cut them talking about, and yet they say if she cut she don’t must live,” the distraught father said.
He said that the last x-ray done in December showed that the teen’s joint was still dislocated, while the last doctor she visited in January said it was an inflammation that had developed. The family, he said, doesn’t know for sure what to do or what to believe.
“The most I can do is go and pray for her, jump around her and do what I can do,” Facey said. “I had a little money and the money spend out, and I don’t have a permanent job. I just do some farming and those things don’t come in regular — mostly nine months or eight months before I reap something. So it rough on me because I don’t have it. So I wouldn’t mind get some help with her,” he said.
“Is now and then somebody who in favour of me and see how she stay may give me a bill or two bills, and that can just buy one soap or so, or make up buy a pound of sugar and so on.”
Facey said that the teen’s mother, who resides elsewhere in Linstead, also cannot afford the medical expenses.
“I would like her to be alright because is a nice little girl. She nuh live no age yet and she don’t make nuh trouble. She need financial help,” he pleaded.
Shakera said that she spent her 19th birthday last Tuesday in pain and tears as she lay in bed reflecting on her condition. The weight of the growth causes chest, arm and neck pain for the teen and does not allow her to sleep. She said that there are times when the growth will start bleeding out in clots.
Her cousin, Marsha Facey, said that Shakera’s illness has shocked and stressed the entire family.
“This is the first in my life — from mi born until now — I am seeing something like that,” Marsha said. “Every day it get bigger and bigger. Right now it stressing her out because she cannot do anything for herself. I am the one who try to help her out and she so young. So we would really like someone to help her.”
