Breast cancer patient pleads for assistance

May 15, 2018, is etched in the memory of Lenette Green, as it was the day she received the dreaded diagnosis of stage-two breast cancer. A year earlier, doctors, she said, told her that nothing was wrong with her breasts. However, Green said the lump on her chest was growing and the pain was getting increasingly unbearable.

"So I went back to the doctors and I did a biopsy, ultrasound and another set of mammogram. That's when the results came up cancerous," she sighed deeply.

Green, who has a family history of breast cancer, having lost her grandmother to the illness more than a decade ago, opted to do herbal treatments.

"After I received my results, the doctors sent me to do an operation and I said I'm not doing it, because the chemotherapy and radiation, I'm not into it. My grandmother died from the same thing. She cut off her breast and she did the chemotherapy and radiation. A year later, it [the cancer] grow back in the same breast and it killed her," Green explained.

Her herbal treatment is led by breast cancer survivor Dr Debra Williams, who has been cancer-free since she had a lifestyle change. Green said she has been able to shrink the size of the tumour in her breast, but has run into a roadblock.

"I changed my life and eat organic food, but since I lost my job (last March) I haven't been able to finance myself. So I have to turn back and eat the stuff I'm not supposed to be eating. I'm on the right track, but the herbal treatment is very expensive," she said.

Green told THE STAR that her treatment costs up to $30,000 monthly. She was urged by doctors to do blood tests, ultrasound and an MRI from 2019. But the mother of five said she is struggling to find the $100,000 needed.

Her daughter, Chrisi Jeramills, 28, a mother of two young children, said she left her job two years ago to care for her mother, but tries to support the household by selling liquor from a makeshift bar. But that cannot suffice for the family's expenses.

"I can't tell when last I've been happy. I try to be, but I can't because [of] my mother being sick, and to know I'm a single mother with two kids and I can't help her. Oh God, it hurts a lot not being able to provide. I can't leave her, she can't even do her own laundry," Jeramills said.

The St Elizabeth resident described her mother as a hard-working and loving person who worked tirelessly to provide for her and her siblings; she is trying to return the favour.

"I know it might be rough for everyone right now, but I would just love to get help for my mother. I don't want her to die. It hurts to hear her say she nuh have nobody to help her. But right now she is in a lot of pain, and I'm asking Jamaica to have mercy; anything will help," she said.

Persons wishing to assist Lenette Green can contact her at (876) 359-6334.