Johannesburg - Jacques Slabber remembers the day clearly.
He was driving along Bowling Road in Joburg when he received a call from a consultant from his medical aid scheme.
“The person said they just called to check up on me... on how I was doing through it all and I pulled over the car and I cried.”
Slabber's wife, Julia, 44, was diagnosed with stage three Triple Negative Breast Cancer in December 2013, and since then, he had been on autopilot - being supportive to his wife, taking care of their two children and maintaining focus and productivity at work as an IT professional.
“Cancer is a disease for the victim but also for the partner... it's a very selfish disease for the partner. It is scary and it is lonely,” the 45-year-old told The Star on Thursday, which was World Cancer Day.
The theme for this year is “We Can I Can”.
According to Professor Vikash Sewram, director of the African Cancer Institute at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University: “This theme recognises that the continued battle against cancer is not a singular effort and a unified response is needed to ensure a path to victory.”
Sewram said: “In South Africa, the latest statistics reveal that in 2010, just over 27 000 males and close to 30 000 females were diagnosed with cancer.”
The most common cancers in males are prostate, lung and colorectal while in females, breast, cervical and colorectal were the top three.
Currently, 8.2 million people die from cancer worldwide every year, of which nearly half die prematurely (between the ages of 30 and 69).
About 70 percent of deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries.
And while the focus is largely on the victims and survivors of cancer, little attention is ever paid to their families whose lives have to adjust to the upheaval the disease causes.
“It's very scary,” Slabber said.
“Within two weeks of chemo, Julia had gone very pale, thin and gaunt. It's scary for a child as well, when your parent looks like a ghost... There should be more information on how people can cope; it amazes me that to this day, there isn't.”
The couple have two children, a daughter, 12, and a boy, seven, and both parents said the transition hadn't been easy for them either.
“We spoke to them about it with a psychologist at the Breast Care Clinic at Milpark Hospital, but you can see kids internalise things.
“My daughter gained a bit of weight. More attention should be paid to families of survivors,” he said.
Julia recalled when their son was four and saw her hair falling out after her first round of chemotherapy.
“I remember when he saw the chunks, he started screaming and distanced himself. My daughter was a little older and would say: Mom, I don't care if you”ve lost your hair, you're beautiful,'“ she said.
Julia continued: “My husband has been really great... He can cook, he can clean, he makes lunchboxes... I've been really lucky.
“There were some young girls in the hospital wards whose boyfriends left them when it got too much.
“I think that's why Jacques does what he does... he has seen the loneliness. He has seen women drive themselves to chemo and drive themselves home.”
Slabber is a cancer survivor himself. He had a rare form of bone cancer that was treated in his early teenage years.
He credits that experience as being helpful in his being able to be supportive and focused during his wife's two-and-a-half-year battle.
Julia has since gone through nine months of chemotherapy, a double mastectomy and over a month of radiotherapy.
And while she is “cancer-free” now, she is still not out of the woods - not until she has been without the disease for five years.
She said: “I remember the needle going through my hand for the first time (for chemo), and you can actually feel the colour and life going out of you.”
Julia said her biggest message for this day to women was to keep their regular appointments for mammograms, as she regrets having missed her check-up in October 2012 due to her busy work schedule and believes the cancer could have been caught sooner.
Because of the suffering and loneliness Slabber said he encountered from other victims and their families at the oncology wards, he has started a running group named RunnersAgainstCancer which has 30 runners who will take part in the Two Oceans Marathon next month.
The group has already raised R270 000 in deposited donations, they have committed an additional R60 000 and have a raffle that should raise about R177 000.
Their aim is to get to R1-million.
All proceeds go to Cansa.
The Star