‘The thought of living with one breast was scary’ : Cancer survivors relive their fear of the disease

“It’s not just the chemo. It’s not just the surgery. It’s the fear of living with one breast.” These are the words of a breast cancer survivor who faced the fear of having to have her breast removed.

Speaking at a cancer awareness event in Kliptown, Soweto, on Thursday, 61-year-old Vicky Mothibi said she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2017. She knew that treatment would be painful but she was never prepared for the surgery. “After the surgery, I had to go through the phase of not having one breast,” she said with a deep sigh.

Mothibi said the diagnosis came at a difficult stage in her life, when she had just lost her mother and having to deal with fear and grief. “My brother became my biggest supporter and when I started chemotherapy he was even driving me to appointments, fetched me from the hospital while assuring me that everything would be OK,” Mothibi said. Another survivor, Fikile Dlamini,58, was a radiographer who spent years helping patients to detect illnesses early.

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“I have spent my life under a healthy diet, attended gym four to five times week, I’d never imagined that I would one day be on the receiving end of being diagnosed with breast cancer,” Dlamini said. In 2022, she felt a tiny lump on her breast and dismissed it thinking it was a mosquito bite as it was tiny. “My professional instincts kicked in and I went to check it out.

That is when results confirmed triple negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of the cancer,” Dlamini said. “I was in disbelief. You help patients every day, you counsel them. And suddenly, you are the patient.” Both survivors stressed the importance of early detection.

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