Keziah Kiseu’s father started falling sick in 2011. He was 69 and had retired.
At first, they did not know what he was ailing from. They hopped from one hospital to another, hoping that he would get better, but each passing day he would become frail.
They lived in Mombasa then. Laboratories were few back then, and most samples had to be taken to Nairobi for analysis.
This sometimes would take time. Being a man and the head of the family, he remained firm, persevering despite what he was going through. Perhaps to give hope to his family that all was well.
The doctors did not tell them what their father was suffering from until Keziah confronted them to know the truth.
“They were like 'we are suspecting it is cancer of the throat but what you will do, the stage he has reached, just go back to the house and give him the best'," she says.
“You are told your dad is dying, what is the best? You have good memories with him, you just look at him and know he is dying because the only thing was to give him medication for pain,” Keziah adds.
She had to leave her job to take care of her father. With no medical background, she would sometimes google to get more information on what kind of disease she was dealing with.
Her journey as a caregiver had just started. She would make sure her father had something blended to eat because he could not eat solid food.
“I became a caregiver through my dad, walking with him through the steps till he passed on after three months because by the time they realised he was dying [it was too late],” she says.
Her father died in her arms, a very painful experience. It was the saddest day of her life, but she had to be strong for her mother and siblings.
It didn’t end there. In 2013, her brother was diagnosed with stage one colon cancer.
He had to undergo an operation at the Kenyatta National Hospital because the cancer services were not decentralised then.
“You are there watching your brother going, going, literally going and literally smelling,” she says.
After the surgery and a series of chemotherapy sessions, his brother became well. But he has to use stoma bags.
One bag costs Sh1,000. For some patients, one is not enough to last the day yet such rehabilitative commodities are not catered for by the National Hospital Insurance Fund.
“We should advocate for these commodities to be excluded in terms of taxation because we get these bags from Canada as donation but the hell we go through clearing from Mombasa…” she says.
She has taken herself to classes to expand her knowledge in community trauma response.
This enables her to offer psychosocial support to cancer patients, families and support groups, all by using her own resources.
Sometimes, she receives calls from families as far as Migori to go and help take care of their loved ones suffering from cancer.
She says it is not easy watching loved ones die. It sometimes takes a toll on her mental health, hence the need for psychosocial support.
“In Kenya, caregiving is not paying well so I would wish that we as caregivers get that support from the government,” Keziah says.
According to the data by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the burden of cancer in the country has been increasing in the last few years, with 47,000 new cases reported last year alone.
Overall, breast, cervical, prostate, oesophagus and non-Hodgkins lymphoma are the five top cancers in the country.
The NCI chief executive Alfred Karagu says the five cancers account for nearly half (48 per cent) of the cancer burden in the country.
Notably, cervical and breast cancers contribute to almost a quarter (23 per cent) of all cancer-related deaths in the country.
Currently, two out of every three persons diagnosed with cancer will die of the disease since 70 per cent of cases are diagnosed in advanced stages, when cure is impossible.
“We are part of the oesophageal cancer belt which runs across a number of countries that is Kenya, Tanzania Malawi all the way to Zambia. In our case we have seen quite a high clustering of cases particularly in the Rift region and the South Rift, with the likes of Bomet and Kericho,” Karagu says.
He says there have also been clusters of oesophageal cancers in the northern parts of Kenya, such as Garissa, Marsabit and the Upper Eastern.
(edited by Amol Awuor)
