‘My husband saved me when cancer drove me to alcoholism’

It started with a sore throat and Emily* took Strepsils to relieve the pain.

The pain refused to go away. And her voice turned hoarse. A phone became a device of disturbance. Verbal communication turned into written communication. She would only text anyone who called her or write down whatever she would say in a conversation.

That was in May 2018. Four years before, she had buried her mother, who had died of breast cancer. She was still mourning.

The loss sent her to another world. A world where she felt confused and hopeless, having lost a parent who was her best friend and with whom she shared her deepest secrets.

Emily was the only one who knew that her mother had been living with HIV since 2005. She was now gone. She had two children and a husband to think about. They lived in Nairobi, and she worked at a city firm as a graphic designer.

Her health status worried her husband. He took her to a private hospital for diagnosis. Just before she saw a doctor, he received an urgent call and had to leave. She did tests and the results showed she had throat cancer.

‘The moment I was told I had cancer, I knew I was dying,” recalls Emily. “I fell into depression.”

A year went by without Emily sharing with her husband the outcome of the hospital visit. She only told her boss who took it upon herself to cater for her medical expenses for the whole year.

“I was scared that he would no longer value me if he knew I had throat cancer,” she says.

“I feared he would see me as a lesser human being. I feared he would see me as a person who is just about to die. Or that I would infect him and the kids.”

To suppress the fear and the depression, she dived into alcohol. “I’d go to hospital to get an overdose of morphine. I felt so much pain when swallowing, and morphine reduced the pain,” she shares.

“From the hospital, I’d head straight to the bar, drink my beers, then go home.”

Heartbreaking news

Emily had stopped drinking many years ago. The relapse put her into conflict with her husband. Twelve months later, her husband was fed up. She decided to throw her out.

As he waited for her to leave, Emily decided to come clean. “I told him ‘I’m not telling you so that you can let me stay. I’m only telling you so that you know that I have been sick,’’’ she recalls.

“The news broke him. He cried and that’s what I didn’t want.”

She moved out. Although he respected her decision to live separately, he provided her with whatever she needed to keep her alive. They fundraised to meet her treatment expenses, and today, Emily is free of throat cancer.

And she moved back after a year.

“My husband is a gem. He never abandoned me like I had expected,” she says, amidst an affectionate laughter. 

Emily is now fully devoted to counselling cancer patients and speaking with their families, as well as caregivers, on how they should be taken care of. 

She also equips cancer survivors with baking skills as some lose their jobs because of treatment-related complications.

“Sometimes chemotherapy makes cancer patients irritable. It is, therefore, important for their families and caregivers to know how to treat them,” she says.

*Name has been changed to protect her medical information.

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