The Faith Walker Story, Part 1; I still have a lot of living to do; I have a purpose

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

Before writing this women empowered feature, I had already had an opportunity to connect and interview Faith Walker. She had appeared on my television show In the Now on MyTCNTV Network, as one of my special guests on a segment that I call In Tune with the Universe. After our initial interview, I felt that there was still more to this story that the community needed to hear. I would like to present you Faith Walker, two-time cancer survivor and a woman most definitely empowered.

“Where do I even start?” Faith asked me, “There is so much!” “Please start anywhere Faith,” I said encouragingly. “Alright, let’s start when I was diagnosed with cancer for the first time. I was 26 years old, and I had noticed that I had this strange milky substance coming out of my breast. I was curious, so I went to the doctor. I did some tests and called in to follow up. The doctor’s office had this, “You don’t call us, we will call you,” tone, so I decided to leave it alone. It was about three months later that I found a lump in my breast. When I went for another doctor’s consultation, they told me not to worry about it because women my age did not get breast cancer. They still went ahead and did an ultrasound, and that is when they saw that it was indeed cancer and that it had doubled in size. I think it was the very first time that I questioned the health system. What they had told me to ignore turned out to be very serious.”

“At first, I was in shock, because of course, we never think it is going to happen to us, but this was the beginning of a very painful journey: mentally, physically and emotionally. Something told me that I was going to beat cancer; not sure what the feeling was, and I can’t really explain it, I just knew that I had to be there for my two children. I would not leave them, so I fixed my mind to deal with all that recovering from cancer would entail.”

“Can you take the readers through what this journey was for you?”

“Of course! So, let’s first discuss the fact that I was at the mercy of the Western way of dealing with cancer, which is something that I like to call Cut & Poison. I went through the surgery to remove the cancer, and this was followed up by chemotherapy and radiation treatments. I look back at pictures of myself, and sometimes the person in the picture looks foreign to me. During my chemotherapy, I had lost all of my hair, but I was still able to rock a bald look. A lot of people actually complimented me on it because I just looked like a young woman experimenting with her style. What really began to take a toll on how I looked is the radiation treatments. It had burnt and scarred my skin so much that they actually had to stop.”

“Then came the reconstruction aspect of my journey. I underwent a process where they had to take skin from my back and move it around to use for my breasts. They put in a temporary implant, and I had to go back each week to increase the fluid in the implant slowly. Once my body started to adjust, I had to go back in for surgery to put in a permanent implant.”

“This must have wreaked havoc on your body image?”

“It was very difficult. For a while, I only had one breast, and the other was a prosthetic. I had to find clothes that covered my deformation, and I really didn’t love what I saw when I looked at myself. You have to also take into consideration the fact that when I had cancer, I had different roles being a woman: I was a woman in a relationship, I was a woman single, I was also a woman dating. It was hard to explain sometimes, and you had to think, when do I tell this person that I am a woman living with cancer? What I did learn is that I had to stay away from toxic relationships in order for me to heal. I found it interesting that it was in my longest relationship that I had encountered both of my bouts with cancer.”

“Yes, let’s talk about that!”

“Well, this one really took me by surprise because I thought, I have already dealt with this; I have paid my dues. I had become pregnant again with my third child, and I began to feel severe pains in my back. I went to the doctor, and I was unsettled because they downplayed it again telling me not to worry. One day I was reaching for something and felt this searing pain in my back. I collapsed to the floor and was rushed to the hospital, what they told me completely blew my mind…”

Stay tuned for the second half of the Faith Walker Story!