'I felt her pain,' says mom of cancer survivor
Published:Monday | January 6, 2014 | 12:00 AM
Launtia Cuff, Gleaner Writer
SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth: Twenty five years ago, Donette Wilson saw tears in the eyes of a doctor as she prepared to report that her five-year-old daughter had a tumour near her heart and in the left kidney. Doctors recommended chemotherapy and soon began treatment.
Still, the little girl would writhe in pain each day, and doctors would only tell her mother that they were trying to make her comfortable as nature would have to take its course.
“It was as if I was feeling all her pain,” Wilson relayed.
That little girl was Calnette Williams, now an anaesthesiologist at the Kingston Public Hospital.
“From that age I became more service oriented because I would see other children around me with the same disease so I always wanted to help to make them happy,” Williams (nee Wilson) told The Gleaner.
According to her mother, Williams was diagnosed with a type of cancer called nephroblastoma.
At the time the cancer was diagnosed, it had metastasized (spread) to the liver and other parts of the body.
Years later, the family narrates Williams’ recovery as a miracle worth proclaiming.
Wilson recalled that during a family worship one night, the testimony was read of a woman who had been healed of cancer. The worshippers also read a Bible verse which spoke of elders anointing the sick.
Inspired, they made arrangements for the same to be done for little Calnette who, at the time, was lying in pain in a hospital bed. Wilson said the anointing service took place one Saturday and the following Monday when doctors examined little Calnette, they were unable to locate a previously obvious mass.
Wilson said when one doctor enquired what had happened, she told him: “I don’t think you need to do anything else for her because God has already done it.” Wilson said the doctors insisted that they would have to do a surgical operation to ensure that the mass had, in fact disappeared but she and her husband, Calverton, refused, saying the child was healed.
They would however relent and after the doctors completed the operation, they reported that the cancer had disappeared. “I remember the doctor came back to the ward and… he said… there was nothing,” Wilson said.
Meanwhile, Williams said although she does not remember all the details of the encounter, knowing about it has helped her to be better able to encourage the many critically ill patients she meets each day.
“It gives me an opportunity to give other patients hope, [to] tell them don’t give up,” Williams said. I tend to be exposed to a lot of critically ill patients, patients who are pretty much on the verge of death,” she added.
Williams also said the events have strengthened her spiritual relationship.
“Because of that experience I know that God can work something out in whatever situation I am in,” she said.