Heartbreaking: A mother-son cancer story
Sharon Mathala | Tuesday April 4, 2023 06:00
Cancer has stolen the life of the family. Mother and son suffer from two types – bone and blood cancer, respectively. For the last seven years, their lives have changed dramatically.
The 14-year-old is currently hospitalised in South Africa undergoing treatment while back home his mother, 52-year-old Galina Lobo, spent the whole of last year bedridden.
Now as she struggles to walk again, cancer has hit her hard. She is now in stage four cancer, but she has hope. Her family is now only preparing for the worst, as they could lose her at any time. In an interview with The Monitor, Lobo believes the doctors who treated her last year can save her or at least buy her a bit more time.
She shows the team family photos. She says she grew up a healthy child and never had any health issues. It is only now that she thinks about it she remembers a time, during her young adulthood she once hit her elbow against the door. “I remember the pain. But I did not think much of it then. It was only in 2016 that I started experiencing pain in my leg.
The pain got so intense but the doctors couldn’t find anything,” Lobo tells The Monitor. She is unable to speak properly as she struggles to catch her breath. The cancer tumour has affected her face.
It has eaten away parts of her nose, closed off her left eye and almost shut down her right eye. Her face is practically deformed. A different sight from the person she was in the pictures shown. Before cancer ate away her dignity, Lobo was a very beautiful woman. She kept a slim figure, toned skin, and usually had long neat hair.
Her smiles in the family pictures told of an almost perfect life story. The government hospitals can only provide two chemotherapy drugs, but she needs four. “I was first diagnosed somewhere towards the end of 2016. In 2017, I was taken to India for treatment. I stayed there for three months and when I came back the cancer was in remission,” she explained.
According to Lobo, she had not fully regained her energies, but she was getting her life back to normal again. She was now participating in motherly and wifely duties, but COVID-19 hit and she caught the virus. She was positive. Lobo would spend the next six months very ill and was hospitalised for a month. When she finally healed from COVID-19 her cancer had returned. “I am in constant pain. Every minute and every second of my life, I have been so ill. It’s terrible. When I came back from the hospital after getting COVID-19, my cancer started getting very aggressive. I stayed in the hospital for a month. I wasn’t able to walk for almost a year; I stayed in bed. No painkillers seemed to help,” she says.
Last year when the country experienced shortage of medicines, things went from bad to worse for Lobo. “I have received four cycles of chemo and it got better. Now the tumour is back again and I believe if I can go back to the South African doctors, they will help.” Lobo’s 14-year-old son has also been diagnosed with cancer. “It is very terrible when your child is sick.
I was okay being sick alone, but to be a mother and see your child in that kind of pain, I especially know the type of pain. He was in a coma for six days,” Lobo says as she burst into tears. Her 14-year-old son has been living a fate similar to his mother’s since 2020. He was diagnosed with a type of cancer called lymphoma. It was already at stage two and now he is in stage four, just like his mother. He suffered several complications, according to his father, Jose Carlos Lobo. His son has been out of school ever since.
“This disease has drained me emotionally and financially. Our lives have had to change drastically and I have had to watch not just my wife but my little son go through the pain it is just too much sometimes, but I have to be strong for them,” the distressed husband and father said. Friends of the family are planning on hosting a fundraising event for Lobo on April 16.
Lobo needs about P200,000 for her next session whilst her teen son also needs about the same amount as his medical aid coverage has been maxed out because of his long stay in hospital. Tickets for the fundraising event are going for P200, with the family urging Batswana to buy the tickets including those who may want to support the cause but will not attend. Donations can be sent to banking details: Jose Carlos Lobo, ABSA bank, account number 1367040, branch code 290467.