By Hannington Sebuliba
In June, 2001 my mother Jane Christine Sebuliba went to Masaka Hospital for a tooth extraction. After the tooth had been extracted, she started feeling throbbing pain in the wound and thought it would go away as time went by. This was not so as the pain continued for next few weeks. She later on went back for a checkup and was thinking that may be part of the tooth had been left in. The doctor found out that it had not been left in but the wound was taking longer to heal.
She started taking pain killers that would bring some relief to her but as soon as the effect of the pain killers had stopped, the pain would start all over again. This was the pain she had to endure for close to a year. It was after sometime in May 2002 that she went to Byansi Medical Centre in Masaka and the doctors found out that the pain was becoming cancerous but, they referred her to Mulago Hospital for further management.
My late brother Kyewalabye Robert who was working with the Education department in Masaka District brought her to Mulago in June 2002 but the lines were so long that they couldn’t see the doctor that very day. He then called me and informed me about the whole story and that mummy was going to spend the night with us and that I would take her very early in the morning because the appointment was for 8:00am.
The following morning, we left home at 6:00am and boarded a taxi up to Mulago hospital. We went to the Oral/dental department and met Dr. Kamulegeya who checked maama and decided that we should have a biopsy to rule out or confirm the possibility of cancer. Mum could not afford to go for biopsy, she just told me that she would go back home and continue with the medicines she was taking. I pleaded to her but she couldn’t accept. This was after we had seen a number of people suffering from different forms of cancer. She said that at least for her, she was better than many of the people we had found both at the Cancer institute and at the Dental Department.
After she had gone back to Masaka, I talked to my boss Prof. Henry Kasozi, the Medical Director of Kadic Hospital in Bukoto where I was working as PR/Marketing Manager. He told me to bring maama to Kadic so that he talks to her and you never know she would accept to have biopsy carried out. It took us another four month to convince her to come back to Kampala.
God was on our side, in that she accepted Professor Kasozi’s counsel together with the late Dr. Nkurukenda who carried out the biopsy and then confirmed that she had developed cancer of the toungue. It became very difficult for us to accept the outcomes and even breaking the news to mummy was very difficult. Everybody feared to break the news and they told me that since I was working in the hospital, I would be the one to break the news. I prayed to God for guidance and lucky enough when I told her, she accepted the news and said that all along she had believed that it was cancer. By this time she was not eating but only drinking and cancer had gone up to the throat.
This gave us a better way to start on the medication as we had been referred to Mulago Radiotherapy department where she would undergo radiotherapy treatment twice a week. I want to thank very much Dr. Kiguli, who welcomed us with two hands as I had been sent to him by both his friends Prof. Kasozi and Dr. Nkurukenda. My mother, my sister Sarah who was nursing her and I, would be given preferential treatment at Mulago for a whole year we had to seek treatment at the Radiotherapy machine. I must say that I was a bit lucky because Kadic Hospital surrendered one of their ambulances to help me take mum every time she needed treatment at Mulago.
On top of the radiotherapy sessions at Mulago, Hospice Africa located at Makindye, helped to offer her counseling and palliative treatment which included oral morphine that would bring a lot of relief to mum.
For close to a year and a half, while undergoing treatment, mum could not eat since the whole tongue had been affected by cancer and the throat too was being affected. Doctors had wanted to feed her through a tube but she refused it and would just use a straw to feed on milk and soup.
It was at this time that I came to know that cancer was a very dangerous disease because I would see that my mum had lost hope of living beyond her 60th birthday. She kept on telling us how that disease was more painful than labour pains and that she was looking forward to a day when God would call her home.
On Sunday 15th February 2004, she called all of us to go home and she told us whatever she had wanted us to know. All of us arrived home early and when she came out of her bedroom she, fell down in the corridor and said “eh! Ekigwo kino kitegeeza ki?” she asked literary translated as “eh! What does this falling mean?” we all just laughed it off. She then sat in the sitting room and told us whatever she had wanted to tell us. She concluded by saying that she was too hungry and had accepted to be taken to Kitovu Hospital so that they fix a feeding tube in her throat. She told me to go to Church and thank the congregation for whatever they had done for her, which I did.
After lunch, we all parted ways and she was taken to Kitovu Hospital, but at 7:35pm, she breathed her last. And that’s how cancer consumed my lovely mum. Therefore, this year, I am running for my mother and the many people who are suffering from the deadly cancer. No more people should suffer from Cancer.
When Rotary Started these Cancer Runs, I vowed to always run so that so many people out there who are suffering from cancer are assisted. I will continue to run until I will run no more.
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