"Left side—problem.”
This was definitely not encouraging, but then, as I told myself, I knew there was a problem on the left side. I just needed to be told it was not sinister, thank you. The chittering started again.
"You need biopsy,” was the next clue.
That started another round of violent chittering!
The technician was lovely—calm and professional but very matter-of-fact and clear. I told her that I was worried and scared, and she smiled kindly at me.
"Don’t worry,” she reassured me. My stomach and heart lurched again with hope, only to be dashed by the second half of her sentence: "Your doctor is a great specialist in breast surgery, and you are in the best of hands.”
She then started pegging the dimensions of a shape she was seeing in the scan. I was compelled to watch, but kept looking away as she pegged a strange shape and clicked to save it. Then my stomach turned as she started to key in explanatory text. I saw the letters as they appeared on the screen one by one, spelling out M-A-S-S. That was a very big clue, and not a good one. My heart stopped as she continued to type and N-O-1 appeared on the screen. I closed my eyes and swallowed: Mass No 1.
Oh. My. Dear. God. There was more than one lump in my breast.
I think it was around then that the surgeon himself appeared, his Bluetooth flashing in his ear, and he joined the party. Or maybe it was a training workshop because he had a magic marker in his hand, and he methodically started to draw on my shivering chest. He and the technician reassured me that they were not going to hurt me, just draw on me! These were the markings for the biopsy.
Eventually the drawing was complete, the ultrasound images all recorded, and I knew that the time was coming for biopsy and review of the scans.
I changed from the gown back into my clothes and headed back to the waiting area. I was about to down when I was ushered into Room 59, the surgeon’s consulting room. Even at that stage, I seemed to have developed a strong sense of trust and faith in my doctor. That might have been connected with the fact that he had trained in Scotland. Of course, I grasped another auspicious sign in that. He examined me again, and all the while the biopsy instruments glinted at me wickedly. I knew that the biopsy procedure would be painful as well as frightening.
He invited me to sit down and started to talk through the findings of the mammogram and ultrasound. He talked about the calcification a bit, but I could not really make sense of his words. It seemed that calcification was not as innocent as I had assumed and hoped. He highlighted aspects from the mammogram, including large areas of calcification. Then he moved quickly on and focused on one of the masses from the ultrasound. The mass highlighted on his large computer screen was cigar-shaped, and he pointed out to me that it was irregular in form and growing in different directions.
He paused, turned away from the screen and looked directly at me.
Gently, irrevocably, he told me, "This is highly suspicious of cancer.”
At that single, defining moment, my life changed forever. I stepped into a new world, a world in the Tropic of Cancer and of tropical cancer. I could feel myself shrinking, detaching from reality, as his words danced in the air around me, rushing, echoing as they gathered speed and volume, pounding, thundering down all around me, just like a tropical rainstorm.
Epilogue
That day, October 2nd 2009, I did indeed step over into a different world. My official diagnosis came three days later, when I had major surgery and the pathology confirmed cancer in two of the three masses, as well as in my lymph nodes. This started a journey of acute treatment as I became a wheelchair-using, mask-wearing, single-breasted frequent flier commuting between Yangon and Bangkok during treatment and recovery.
The fact that I am telling this story today confirms that I am very much alive and kicking, albeit living with a fear and paranoia of recurrence and a cocktail of after-effects and side-effects from long term medications. I am wonderfully cared for by my medical team in Yangon and Bangkok who have seen me through a few bumps in the road, and whom I unashamedly adore!
I am still living and working in Myanmar/Burma in a different and changing context, still finding it a fascinating environment rich in inspiration, and still smiling when the monsoon rains pound down outside.
Scotswoman Philippa Ramsden is a development and humanitarian professional, writing in any leisure time. She had been to Asia only once when she stepped off a plane in Kathmandu in 2000 to take up a new job, with no idea what to expect—and has been in Asia ever since. She has lived and worked in Nepal, Mongolia, India, Sri Lanka, and Burma/Myanmar. She is currently working on a memoir, and blogs as Feisty Blue Gecko.
FIVE WEEKS ON
By Nicola Chilton
The Japanese used to believe that earthquakes were caused by a giant catfish, the namazu, who lived in the mud under the surface of the earth. Guarded by the god Kashima, he was held down by a powerful, magical rock that kept him under control. But when Kashima let down his guard, the giant catfish writhed around in his underground lair in an attempt to escape, causing violent tremors and earthquakes on the surface.
*
In Tokyo, the first signs that things weren’t quite normal were in the shops. The supply of batteries was limited to one pack per person. It was the same for candles. And milk. Half of the lights in the supermarkets were switched off, as were the Family Mart and 7-11 signs. But everyday life, on the surface, seemed to carry on as usual. Harried-looking salarymen with grey faces and grey suits hurried to their next meetings. Women with perfect hair and perfect make-up balanced on their heels as they went from department store to department store. In Tokyo, beer was still drunk, karaoke was still sung, taxi drivers still proudly polished their cars, and the cogs and wheels driving the city still turned. Life went on almost as usual. If you could ignore the aftershocks, that is.
It was a very different story up north. The Tohoku Expressway was much quieter than usual that Sunday night. This is the road to the northernmost prefectures of Honshu, home to people known for their stoicism, their ruggedness, their resilience to the region’s harsh weather. The expressway was dark, lights switched off to save electricity. There weren’t many vehicles on the road, but those that were making the journey north had signs announcing that they were delivering aid to the disaster zones. Police cars from all over the country and Self Defense Force trucks and jeeps made up the rest of the traffic.
There was a sense of foreboding as we made the journey northwards, through Saitama and Tochigi Prefectures, towards Fukushima, home of the embattled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, still spewing who knew how much radiation into the ocean and air five weeks after the disaster. The 20km exclusion zone had just been extended to 30km, although the British government advised against traveling within 60km of the reactor, and the US government insisted that anything within 80km was potentially hazardous. As we drove north through the night, we talked, we laughed nervously at times, we listened to music.
We traveled in two vehicles—a two-ton refrigerated truck full of fresh food, preserved fish, vegetables, fruit, beer, all donated by friends, supporters, and members of the Japanese surfing community who wanted to do something to help the people of the coastline they loved. The other van was filled with non-perishable items: clothes donated by surf-brand sponsors, trainers, underwear, children’s books, crayons, colored pencils, and tents, sleeping bags, water and food for ourselves. The aid mission had been coordinated by a Hawaiian pro surfer, Kirby Fukunaga. There was a strange irony in an aid mission organised by a pro surfer to a region decimated by waves.
We stopped at the service area for hot coffee, cookies, chocolate. We looked at maps, spoke about where we should go, where most aid was needed. We all had a sense of purpose, a mission that needed to be accomplished. We were about to head into the aftermath of one of the worst natural disasters the world had ever seen, and we tried to remain focused. I didn’t tell anyone that I was worried how I’d react
when we got there and I got my first glimpse of the devastation. I had lived in Sendai for three years and felt a desperate need to do something to help the people in what was once my hometown. I’d tried not to tell people where I was going and what I’d be doing. I was worried that somehow I’d make this personal, that somehow I’d make it all about me. I didn’t tell anyone that I was afraid I might break down at the wrong moment. That I was afraid I might not break down at all. That the reality might feel no different from watching the coverage of the disaster on CNN.
We drove on for a couple more hours. The surface of the road started to get uneven as we entered Fukushima prefecture, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake that shook the country on March 11th, 2011 having twisted, cracked, and torn the asphalt. A quick repair job had temporarily fixed the worst cracks, but the road still had dips and troughs every few hundred meters. We bounced along, banging our heads on the roof of the van at times. Vehicles slowed to avoid damaging the precious cargoes of supplies being transported to the north, and for the first time, I felt that I was witnessing the truly terrifying power of nature.
I had seen the earthquake and tsunami unfold in my office in Bangkok, watching the helicopter footage of the waves racing towards the shore and the oblivious drivers in their cars, the images of boats being swept onto bridges, of elderly people trying to outrun the waters to higher ground. The casualty figures started to come in slowly, small numbers at first. It was impossible to believe that the numbers would remain that small, but it was impossible to imagine just how enormous the final figures would be. My immediate fears were for my friends and their families, for old colleagues. There were no telephones, no electricity, no ways for people to be contacted. The news continued, the figures remained small, and I went home from work to pack for a weekend of what seemed like unbelievable frivolity in light of the disaster that was unfolding in a place that was once my home—I flew to the Golden Triangle to take part in an elephant-polo competition. For the next two days I was in and out of mobile-phone range, snatching snippets of news where and when I could, constantly distracted, seeing the death toll grow. By the middle of the following week, I’d managed to trace all but a handful of friends and their families, all physically unharmed. It was another ten days until I found the last ones, alive and well, but without water or gas.
The aftershocks were unsettling. Throughout the seven days of my journey I felt many. After years spent living in Japan my body had become accustomed to earthquakes, and I’d learnt how to feel them. At first, even the slightest tremble was terrifying. I’d wake in the night with a feeling of blind panic, call friends, asking if they felt it too, waiting for another, stronger rumble. But after you’ve experienced a few, you learn to wait, to stay in bed until it gets stronger, to pull the covers over your head. In the dead of night I had an unflinching confidence in the power of my duvet—unless the earthquake got much stronger, the duvet would keep me safe. Apart from a few CDs tumbling off shelves and the TV falling on the floor one day, I never experienced anything more powerful. But during those few days in Tohoku, the earth creaked and groaned. One evening, sitting on the ground around a campfire in what remained of a fishing village, I felt a rolling, angry, growling rumble under the surface of the earth. I’d never felt anything like it, and with my body in direct contact with the ground, it felt even more real, yet unreal at the same time. And there was the sound, almost imperceptible, impossible to define, but very much there.
Nothing can quite prepare you for that first glimpse of the devastation left by those waves, no matter how many times you’ve seen it on TV, recycled every thirty minutes by the twenty-four-hour news media who supply the public with a constant flow of disaster porn, something to make us gasp in horror, to give us a frisson of morbid excitement, to make us thankful it wasn’t us. And the truth is, I felt that frisson too. My first glimpse of the destruction was of rice fields that were now full of debris. I’d watched the footage over and over again on the news. I’d read all the newspapers, witnessed horrifying images of bodies partially submerged in the mud, of the devastated relatives left behind. And now, seeing it for the first time, I was shocked, horrified, speechless, strangely excitedly nervous, yet numb. Something in the brain disengages to let you get on with what you’re doing—the initial shock doesn’t last long. I suppose it is what’s called the human coping mechanism. But it kicks in surprisingly quickly. At least, it did for me. The usual clichés are the easiest to grasp onto, the "it-looks-like-a-warzone,” "it-looks-like-a-tornado-hit-it” type of comments. But it looks exactly like what it is—the aftermath of a devastating tsunami. Huge stretches of flat land dotted here and there with crushed cars, a fishing boat lying on its side two miles from the sea, towering electricity pylons crushed into the ground as if by an invisible hand. It was difficult to connect the surreal landscape that I was witnessing with the people who had perished in this very spot.
During the first couple of days, I felt strange being there. I felt like a tourist. I wanted to take photos so that I wouldn’t forget, and so that the people I showed them to wouldn’t forget the need for help. But at the same time it felt strange, almost as if I was collecting memories, images of other people’s misery, for my own use.
We didn’t stay in the disaster areas most nights. We didn’t want to put a strain on the limited resources available there, nor did we want to put ourselves at risk. The likelihood of another magnitude 8 earthquake was high during those days. So every day, we commuted. We would leave the disaster areas in the evening, driving away towards the normality of life only ten, fifteen kilometers away. We’d stay in cheap hotels where we were guaranteed a hot shower, electricity, food. In the morning, we’d wake up early and get in the vans, driving back towards the ocean, music on the radio, wifi switched on in the car so that we could follow the news on our laptops and phones. But the normality very soon turned into devastation once again. The difference between the areas that were practically unaffected and those areas that were completely destroyed was as sudden as turning a corner. We drove down streets where houses still stood intact, rubbish carefully piled up at the side of the road, but we’d turn at a junction and once again be plunged into scenes of destruction.
The survivors were doing everything they could to make the lives of their fellow survivors less difficult. People like the three teachers from the local school who were cautiously navigating the piles of debris in Kitaizumi, looking for memories of the now broken homes of their students. Kitaizumi used to be a popular surf point in Fukushima. One of the teachers pointed vaguely to a pile of timber, futons, and blankets that looked very much like all of the other piles of rubble, and said that one of his students’ fathers died there. There was nothing left of his home. On another of these piles someone had made a memorial to a lost surfer—a skateboard, wetsuit, and a clock stopped at 3:39 pm, the exact moment at which the world changed. But amazingly, amongst the rubble, photographs survived, CDs, books. Items that had somehow miraculously escaped the waters, and were now waiting for their owners to come and find them.
Walking along the seafront, I looked out at the ocean, quiet now, gentle waves softly washing over the beach, as if embarrassed by the wreckage they had caused. But five weeks on, huge blocks of concrete designed to reduce the force of incoming waves lay scattered throughout the rice fields. Concrete foundations remained where houses no longer stood, their timbers smashed to splinters. Clothes, shoes, handbags, underwear, letters, teddy bears. Thousands of carefully guarded private lives turned inside out and laid out in the open for strangers to see. But others had already been there. Photographs, school albums, books, and toys had been carefully and lovingly retrieved from the dirt and placed in boxes along the side of the road, in the hope that their owners may still be alive, and may one day soon come and collect them.
At my feet was a box containing a water-damaged photo of a man smiling at a party, a small running shoe, a girl’s rubber boot, negatives that had been carefully placed under ro
cks so they wouldn’t blow away, and a Winnie the Pooh soft toy, gazing expectantly upwards, waiting to be picked up by the child who had lost him to the waters.
We drove south, stopping to deliver food and supplies to makeshift evacuation centers, getting closer and closer to the invisible, sinister shadow that was impacting the rescue effort more than any of the other visible, physical aspects. Five weeks after the tsunami, the small city of Minami Soma, once famous for its thousand-year-old samurai horse-racing festival, was a much quieter place than it should have been. With a population of seventy-five thousand, it should have been a bustling town, with people working, shopping, going to school. But it wasn’t. A closer look revealed that the convenience stores were closed, their windows covered with newspaper to hide the empty shelves within. The few people visible in the streets were dressed in the dark green uniforms and helmets of Japan’s Self Defense Forces. Restaurants were closed indefinitely, as were the supermarkets. Cars were few and far between. This was the outer circle of the Nuclear Exclusion Zone. The center of Minami Soma is about twenty-five kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, but other parts of the town are well within the twenty-kilometer zone. Residents within the thirty-kilometer area were told to stay inside their homes. Residents of the twenty-kilometer area had already been evacuated, and at the stroke of midnight on April 22nd, a new law was introduced making it illegal for anyone to enter the twenty-kilometer exclusion zone, resident or not. Each household was given two hours to send one member inside to retrieve items from their homes, before being ordered back to the evacuation centers. As of midnight, anyone attempting to enter the zone would be fined JPY 100,000 and face possible arrest. In spite of the stern warnings, there was no information made available to let people know when they would be allowed to return to their homes. And there were still countless bodies within the exclusion zone, as well as abandoned pets and livestock.
How Does One Dress to Buy Dragonfruit? True Stories of Expat Women in Asia Page 22