You would think that having lost a leg to cancer when she was just three years old, Rusheka Goodhall would be disconsolate.
Quite the opposite.
She moves around the Jamaica Observer boardroom as most children would, and elicits laughter with her unsolicited interjections during a discussion at last week’s Observer Monday Exchange.
For instance, when her mother, Shecker Anderson, began explaining how Rusheka’s leg started swelling after she hit it while playing at home two years ago, the now five-year-old cancer survivor held both arms apart, obviously exaggerating the size of the swelling, and looked around the room of adults with a broad grin.
“It started to swell, she started to walk with a limp, so I took her to the doctor the next day,” the mother explained. “When she went to the doctor, she did an X-ray and it showed a fracture and they put on a cast. When the cast came off, it was swollen and they ordered her to do an MRI. She did a biopsy, a lot of things,” Anderson said, then broke down in tears.
Rusheka, seeing her mother’s pain, leaned over and hugged her. A touching moment.
It was that blow to the leg that led to Rusheka being diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare cancer of the muscle, in which a tumour attaches itself to the bone, either in the head, neck, urogenital track, arms, or legs.
The tests revealed that little Rusheka had stage 3 cancer, meaning it had spread to an organ.
“At the time when her cancer was discovered she also had some evidence that it had just spread to the abdomen,” Dr Michelle Reece Mills, paediatric oncologist at the University Hospital of the West Indies, told the Monday Exchange.
The discussion was focused on cancer in children, given that Rusheka and other children across the island afflicted with the disease, as well as the Black River Hospital Paediatric Unit and the Jamaica Cancer Society will be the beneficiaries of this year’s Sigma Run.
Sagicor, organisers of the annual 5K scheduled for February 21 in Kingston, hope to raise $50 million to contribute to the three causes. The effort was praised by Dr Reece Mills and Jamaica Cancer Society Executive Director Yulit Gordon.
Dr Reece Mills was particularly thankful, having treated other children with cancer and witnessing first-hand the toll it takes on parents.
For instance, the doctor recalled how difficult it was for Rusheka’s mother when amputation was recommended to aggressively fight the cancer and limit its spread.
“One of the important things for some cancers is what we call local control, so in order to prevent the risk of it actually coming back, her local control was amputation. In some other instances you can do radiation to the area,” Dr Reece Mills explained.
But while Anderson was worried about the procedure, Rusheka, the mother explained, was more amused by the thought of having only one leg when she was told of the amputation.
“To me, she was excited, and when she heard that the limb was going to be cut off she started to jump on one leg and say ‘this is how I’m going to walk’,” Anderson said.
The comment elicited giggles from Rusheka.
“When everybody around her a worry, she act as if it was nothing,” Anderson continued.
Further treatment included a year of chemotherapy, which was completed recently.
“She’s actually just now off treatment,” Dr Reece Mills explained. “She just got her last treatment two weeks ago. So right now it’s just about surveillance, just about looking for where the cancer might come back. So doing MRIs of the abdomen, her chest, looking at the other limb to ensure there is not another lump and basically her monitoring.”
When Anderson was asked the cost for treatment thus far, Rusheka , “Whole heap!”
As the laughter in the room subsided, Anderson said she receives a lot of donations to offset the expenses.
According to Dr Reece Mills, treatment can be burdensome and costly. “An MRI would be like around $40,000, and she (Rusheka) had to have a CT [scan], which was about $15,000. Each chemotherapy treatment is every three weeks, so the family would have to find the cost for that… especially, you know, the injections help the bone marrow to recover; that again is another one that tends to be very expensive,” Dr Reece Mills said.
In addition to the expense, children afflicted with cancer most times miss a lot of days in school.
Rusheka, for instance, was absent from school for just over two terms. However, according to her mother, the lost time hasn’t had a negative effect on Rusheka.
“To me, she doesn’t seem to be behind at all, even though she stop from school,” Anderson said. “The teacher said she’s doing okay. She’s that good.”
Having completed treatment two weeks ago, Rusheka has returned to the life she once enjoyed and is back in school.
She uses crutches to move around, but her physician is trying to get her fitted with a prosthetic limb.
“We have been trying to get prosthetics for her. We haven’t really had much success because we were going through Mona Rehab, and I know there is an issue in terms of not seeing children of Rusheka’s age,” Dr Reece Mills said.
“Right now I’m in dialogue with an orthopaedic surgeon to see if there is a way to actually get her just fitted, you know, to improve her mobility. So that’s another project that is to be done,” she continued.
Scientists have said that cancer is the leading cause of non-traumatic deaths in children. According to Dr Reece Mills, there are approximately 50 to 60 children dying from cancer across Jamaica. She said the cancer is usually related to chromosomal or DNA changes and urged parents to observe changes in their children.
The doctor explained that screening is not generally done among children, as they are not normally engaged in social habits such as smoking and drinking.
“So parents being more observant would help to see if there’s a lump, or will notice that a child is looking pale,” Dr Reece Mills stated. “So we need to act on what we see right away.”
With the Exchange drawing to a close, Rusheka, of course, was offered the last word by the moderator, who asked whether she wanted to say anything.
After a few seconds of pretending to be shy, she said: “Okay, my birthday is February 26.”
