It was at a point in his life when Lieutenant Colonel (Ret’d) Egbert Field was “feeling fit as a fiddle” and could have been described as a “fitness freak”, he said, that he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The cancer diagnosis left the 57-year-old father of three crying like a baby as he thought that his life was over.
Were it not for his wife, Sydney’s persistence that he saw a doctor after she felt three split-pea size lumps just behind his left ear, his cancer might not have been detected early. It has been years since the diagnosis, which was followed by it returning five months after he was declared cancer free and early detection of prostate cancer five years later, and Field is grateful for family and now advocates regular check-ups as he is a living testimony to the well-known saying “early detection saves lives.”
Currently the Director General of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), Field has also encouraged his staff to be tested and went as far as having the Authority stand part of the cost to ensure that they were tested for various cancers. His initiative for the Authority to partner with the Guyana Responsible Parenthood Association, which halved the costs for various tests, led to one person being diagnosed with cancer and immediately being placed on treatment.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Sunday Stabroek, Field, who though many of his sentences were completed by his attentive wife, was not afraid to talk about his fears and how he battled the three diagnoses of cancer. It was not difficult to see who, apart from his belief in a higher being, he drew strength from during those difficult times as his wife Sydney sat through most of the interview and lovingly looked at her husband as he spoke, reminding him of a few details here and there.
‘Playing with my hair’
It was in October 2008 while he was working in Jamaica that Field was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 57.
“I must say thanks to my wife who was always vigilant when it comes to me, her husband, she observed certain signs… she felt three split-peas sized lumps under the skin,” he said.
The swelling was not on the outside but on the inside and he concluded that she was able to feel them because she likes “playing with my hair. I don’t know, but I guess she gets a kick out of playing with my hair.” Laughing, he said that during their courtship, this created a big problem as he never wanted anyone to touch his hair after he had combed it. “But I must say it saved my life,” he continued.
When she felt those lumps, Sydney insisted that he visit a doctor. At the time he felt healthy and concluded that they could be hair boils even though he could not feel them at the time. But Sydney kept on pushing for him to see a doctor and it was when he accompanied her to a doctor in New Jersey, where she and the children lived at the time, for a checkup that the process of getting a biopsy commenced after his wife informed the doctor of the three lumps.
It was on that doctor’s advice that he eventually did a biopsy that led to the diagnosis. He made a point to reveal that he was doing annual check-ups with his urologist because his father had died from prostate cancer.
About two weeks after he was called for the biopsy results, he finally visited the doctor. He recalled that he went in “nonchalant, the same way you see me with my tie and all spiffy” not knowing his life was about to change.
At first when the doctor told him there seemed to be traces of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Field said he had to ask her to explain and he was told it was a form a cancer of the lymphatic system.
“Miss Lady, when she said that, it was like opening a floodgate of tears. I just started crying. I cried to the point where snot came out of my nose. Big tall strong man… and I sat in that chair and I cried,” he said candidly.
He recalled that the doctor allowed him “to cry my heart out”. When he was finished he turned to her “through all the tears and the snot and I can’t even remember if I did wipe my nose but I know snot was running down and I didn’t care because all I saw was death, that was all I saw… I said, ‘So doc what would happen to my wife and children?’”
The doctor chuckled and asked the ages of the children and when he informed her that they were adults, she told him, ‘you shouldn’t be worried about your children they should be worried about you,’ while assuring him that he would be alright. She even showed him the evidence in a book that indicated an 85% survival rate of the cancer, but the only thought running through his mind at the time was that he could be in the 15% who die.
Today he still has the paper she wrote down the treatment regimen on, and on the advice of his wife’s doctor in New Jersey, the treatment was done in the US instead of Jamaica.
And even as he was about to take the lifesaving treatment, he was concerned with the fact that he was only four years on his job and he had to take time off when he had children in college, and a mortgage.
“So, you could imagine, I was a messed-up man,” he said. His wife chuckled as she leaned in, taking in his every word and at that point he said while she was supportive, he never let her in on “the inner thinking of my financial disturbance.” She laughed even more at that point.
The chemotherapy treatment commenced, and he travelled between Jamaica and the US during the process. While it was “strenuous and taxing on the body”, he added, it had to be done.
He claimed that he “defied the laws of chemo” because he never lost his hair; a relative had introduced him to a supplement called barley grass (his wife brought out a bottle) which helps to keep the body at a balanced pH level, a measurement of the hydrogen ion concentration in the body). The supplement also helps to rejuvenate the cells in one’s body at a faster rate and he used to cut his hair often because it grew quickly.
The support he received from his wife and children is what really helped Field through the treatment process. He never went for his chemo treatment alone, so during those long hours someone was always there to talk to him. “Family support is very, very important,” he reiterated.
Six months after
While the doctors told him at the time he was cancer free, Field said it was six months later that he felt lumps again and this was during the “second worse time in my life, being caught in the earthquake in Haiti” on January 12, 2009. It was the earthquake that killed thousands of Haitians.
“When I got out of Haiti, I was a wreck. I was suffering from PSDT because it isn’t fun to be caught in an earthquake where you see… houses falling, the dead lie down on the pave at the side of the road,” he shared.
A few weeks after that experience, a scan revealed further abnormalities and another form of treatment was recommended; it involved a new expensive drug that had just been released.
“At that point I felt very depressed. I felt very depressed. I didn’t break down and cry like before because I had gone through a regime and just coming out of Haiti that kind of hardened me, but I felt very depressed that I had to go back on another regime,” he said.
The drug he used the second time was so aggressive, Field said, he had to be given a second drug to help rebuild his immune system. He nicknamed the second drug “the terrorist drugs” because it has such painful side effects, he suggests it be given to terrorists.
He explained that the drug works on the long bones and the flat bones where the white blood cells are found. The drugs is taken 24 hours after the chemo and initially Field said he felt good until 24 hours after, when it kicked in.
“When I tell you pain; you ever feel pain in your bones and there is nothing you can massage or hold. It made me crawl on my all-fours to get upstairs, and no position you lie in is comfortable. That is why I say it is the terrorist drugs,” Field said.
However, his doctor helped him with the pain the next time by giving him oxycodone but even that had its side effects as it left him “floating”.
He finally completed the treatment and it has been almost ten years now since his yearly CT scan has shown no sign of the cancer.
Prostate
But while he was free of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Field said five years after that last treatment during one of his yearly checks with his urologist a biopsy disclosed that two of the 14 samples were cancerous. He was initially told it would not bother him for another 12 years, but Field said when he calculated the years, he would have been the age his father was when he died.
He was also told it was too early for two procedures, but it was suggested that since he already had children, he should remove the prostate.
“I had to agree too,” his wife chimed in, at which point he rolled his eyes in her direction and she burst out laughing.
“These things what it does to you, it reaffirms your faith in an almighty; prayer is the key because a lot of times when nothing could really console you, except you are praying… Then you really realise what faith is… it does something good to you and helps to build your inner being,” he said reflectively.
During that time, he listened to Yolanda Adams’s song “This Too Shall Pass” every day.
“But I am not discounting coupled with that was the family support. I got tremendous family support. My wife was there. She didn’t say throw me in the hospital and lef me alone [she] was always concerned about what I eat. Even onto now if I go to eat something she would say ‘No you not supposed to use that. Sometimes I would say to myself…;” his wife chimed in, “Mommy, you call me mommy.”
But then he finished his sentence saying, “If I did not get married to her, I would have gone already,” to which she laughed uncontrollably. And it was not just her, Field said his children were also “fantastic” and it was at those points he got to realise what family really is.
He now tells youngsters that while money is important, not to make it their crowning thought as he has never heard at the end of a man’s life where he says, “Bring me that big fat bank book let me hold it or bring me that gold nugget but he would say ‘hold my hand’ and so it talks about relationship, it has to be that closeness or bonding with another human being.
“So, I look back at my life and I say thank God.”
He advises men and women that checks are important to catch the cancer early adding that he was lucky he caught it early because of the little signs. “I was a hundred percent fit because I walked every morning up the hills in in Kingston because I was a kind of fitness freak…,” he said adding that he would never have known something was wrong with him.
“Cancer is not a curse, it is disease, so if it happens to you don’t figure it is a curse and somebody do this to me, or people would dislike me for it. It is a disease you could be rich as Steve Jobs [the founder of the Apple Company who died from cancer] was. It is for you as an individual to understand that life is short [make use of it],” he said.
