Months after she started experiencing frequent blackouts Allyson Mc Dowell was faced with a grim diagnosis; she had cancer of the lung.
This was news that put an end to her plans of taking up a fulltime teaching job at a college and killed her dreams of starting her own clothing pattern making business. But at 67 and “living on borrowed time,” as she puts it, Mc Dowell has not allowed the disease, which has resulted in one of her lungs being removed, to stop her from enjoying life as she will live “life to the fullest” until her end comes. While that could be today, tomorrow or even another ten years (she is optimistic), she has no intention of sitting at home and waiting for her time. Instead she has been travelling and with the help of others has started a non-profit organisation which seeks to help the disadvantaged to access key services in the US.
Mc Dowell was a teenage mother and later experienced years of domestic violence. She has lived a difficult life, but today she is comfortable where she is and happy that she fulfilled her lifelong dream of being a teacher.
Flamboyant and with an infectious smile, Mc Dowell sat down with the Sunday Stabroek and recalled that it was just before her 62nd birthday that she had her first blackout. It happened one morning shortly after she arrived at the high school where she taught. She was hospitalized and was diagnosed with an asthmatic attack and she remained at home for a month. She returned to school but after repeated blackouts she decided to go into early retirement from her teaching job at the high school, but had intentions of taking up a fulltime teaching job at a college where she was already doing part time.
A lump in her neck informed her doctors that tests needed to be done and following another blackout which saw her being hospitalized it was discovered that she had cancer. However, she was not initially told of the diagnosis as her children felt it was better to allow her to celebrate her birthday.
“I had big plans for my 62nd birthday… it was discovered in January [2013] and my birthday was in February so they wanted to wait,” she said.
After the birthday celebration she was informed of the diagnosis by a doctor and she was not shocked, she said, but felt it was something she had to live with. She has always been aware that she had the genetic predisposition to develop cancer. According to her, many of her close relatives, including her mother and aunts and uncles passed away from some form of cancer.
“So we say I have the cancer genes, which we all do, but it is activated in some and remains dormant in others,” she said.
Initially, after she was diagnosed, Mc Dowell said, she started using a tablet to shrink the cancer as surgery could not have been done immediately. It was done in 2014, and the doctors were optimistic that the surgery was successful, but little did they know it was also in the hilar lymph nodes.
“Six months later it spread to my other lung… so I am living with it right now. I am living with cancer but it is controlled by pills,” Mc Dowell said.
She said that it is sometimes painful to walk and breathe and the medication she uses has “killed my immune system” and as a result if someone has a cold or any other infectious disease she will be susceptible to same.
“I don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow, and so when someone says we have tomorrow I would say ‘you have tomorrow I don’t’. The pill that I am taking has actually messed with heart so every month I go to the doctor; every three months I have to take a scan…” Mc Dowell said, highlighting the grimness of her situation. And she still passes out from time to time.
“There are a lot of side effects to the pills but it is keeping me alive so I intend to live on it until whenever and in the meantime I am going to help somebody if I can,” she said.
Always wanted
Mc Dowell had always wanted to start a charity and following her diagnosis she believed it was time to put this into reality. And while it took some time before this could have been realised, almost four years later, she is happy that Steps to Empowerment is now in existence. While it uses her church’s address for mails the group meets at Mc Dowell’s home.
“As a teacher I saw the need for referrals, for hope, for just somebody to talk to with the less fortunate and there are a lot of kids who were in really bad situations even though they lived with their parents…,” Mc Dowell said.
As a result, the charity focuses on families who find it difficult to access the supplies and services they need. She explained that at present they refer persons to where they can access the services and help to guide them through the process but eventually they also hope to offer literacy and training. The charity was founded in collaboration with two other women but there are others who support them in various roles; they meet every month.
Moving
Moving to the United States was not an easy transition for Mc Dowell as she initially went without her children and according to her it took “eight years to get myself together.” She went back to school and got her Masters and she was just about to enter a Phd programme when she diagnosed with cancer.
Her first job was working for Eileen Fisher, a clothing store and she attended the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) where she studied computer pattern making. Her focus was on the technological aspect of fashion as she pointed out that while a pattern can be made by hand a better one can be made on the computer.
“I went into fashion because it is my first love. You see me?” she said as she pointed to the colourful outfit she wore and laughed.
She worked at another clothing store before she became employed at the high school located in the compound of FIT. She taught fashion design for 15 years before she was forced to retire because of her illness.
She spoke of having to also shelve the dream of starting her own pattern-making company for which she had already bought the machines. In the end she shipped those to Guyana and donated them to the Carnegie School of Economics, which she attended for one semester when she was a child.
Very independent
Mc Dowell describes herself as someone who was always independent and while things did not always turn out the way she anticipated she would happy she did them her way.
Wanting to do things her way may have led to her becoming a mother at the age of 17, a period she described as difficult as according to her she had a “mother who didn’t understand me… so we fought all the time because I always knew I had to stand up for myself…
“But being a mother was the hardest. I wouldn’t advise anybody to try to be that,” she admitted and further revealed that she had her two other children in rapid succession and later adopted a fourth.
She does not talk about the father of her children but said after the first three she started partying.
“I had the kids and I started partying because remember I had no teenage years so I started partying after I got the kids because those were my freedom years and then one day I said to myself, ‘listen you have two daughters is this what you want for them?’”
She answered that question with a no and told herself the first man who asked for her hand in marriage she would accept.
And it happened as she imagined, she walked onto a bus and the driver told her she was beautiful and asked her to marry him and she accepted.
“I was crazy, I told you I was crazy,” she said with a small laugh.
“I married him and he almost killed me… he would beat me for a song. I spent ten years being beaten for just being me,” she said.
He migrated to the US and he sent for her even though at that time she knew she wanted to leave him. They parted ways and she got a job and one day she was leaving work when she was hit in the head with a stick and they finally separated.
“He eventually died. He died the same way he tried to kill me. Somebody beat him in the head with a stick and killed him,” she said quietly.
Looking into the future, Mc Dowell shared that in the past she always made long-term plans but because of her illness she no longer does this and it is not because she is a pessimist, but rather because she is a realist.
“So I don’t make long-term plans anymore and so I told my daughter I am going to enjoy life. I am going to travel to all of the countries I always wanted to go to,” she said.
