Frontline Health Workers Care for Hope

By:  Catherine D'Souza, Pallliative Care Coordinator,
Integrated Hospice Unit Cameroon Baptist Convention

This is the story of Hope, a cancer patient cared for by the palliative care team of Integrated Hospice Program Cameroon Baptist Convention in Bui Division, Cameroon. Through FHSSA’s Partnership Program, which connects hospice programs in the U.S. with hospice and palliative care programs in Africa to offer financial, educational and clinical support, this program is partnered with Vitas Innovative Hospice Care of Milwaukee. Catherine D'Souza, a frontline health worker shared her experience caring for Hope.

Hope was in a darkened room in the house when I first met her. We knew she was there as we could hear her groaning. Her husband led us carefully through the shadowy house and we stumbled on the uneven mud floor. He removed a single light bulb from the living area and fixed it into the bedroom socket as we went through.

The light flickered and swung as our eyes slowly became accustomed to the gloom and we finally saw what I thought was a pile of blankets. There was Hope. She was sweating and crying as she tried to turn in bed to see us, her face twisted with pain. When she saw our small group standing there she smiled, and lit up the room. ‘Praise God’ she exclaimed.

Hope had been bed bound for one year before we met, and for three years before that she had been seriously ill. She had been to hospital when a small ulcer got bigger and had not gone away. After she was told she had cancer her husband sold all his livestock and possessions for radiotherapy and surgery but she had not improved.

The family had given their goats and chickens as she was promised by one traditional healer after another that they could heal her. Eventually the family couldn’t support her anymore and her husband didn’t have anything left to sell. The local nuns tried their best with soothing poultices as her pain worsened. Although she loved their kind words and prayers, they couldn’t relieve the agony.

Hope was true to her name and didn’t give up her spirit as the months of pain dragged by. I remember the first time I examined her wound. She was really scared, our driver soothed her with calm words and she was amazed that the medicine we had given her had taken the pain away so much that I could examine her without hurting. Hope can now walk around her compound, prepare vegetables, mend clothes and laugh with her neighbours. Her children have their mother back and her husbands’ face does not hold the lines of worry as it did before.

Hope calls her time before she met the palliative care team her ‘dark time.’ We cannot cure Hope’s cancer but we can let her live her life to the full for whatever time she has left.