Making her miracle work - Mitera finds Purpose in Cancer Fight

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Joshua Seemungal

25/10/2022

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Mitera Balkaran is making her miracle work. Her miracle is life.

In July 2021, the Belgian-based, Trinidadian engineer’s life was forever changed by something a few centimetres in size.

One Friday, after exercising, Mitera noticed a strange lump on her leg, so she booked an appointment with a doctor on the Monday. Upon examining, the doctor assured her that there was nothing to worry about. The lump was likely an allergic reaction or as the result of work stress, he insisted. Taking his word, Mitera continued with life as normal; until she couldn’t.

“I saw it grow. And then like the area around it was really warm. Like the lump was really hot. I also started getting strange sensations at night, but only at night. And I read up on it, it is like a delayed fatigue system that’s going on. That’s when you do all these activities during the day, but at night, you pay for it. On top of that, I was feeling like burning sensations in my leg - like a knife edge was running up and down,” She recalled.

“I knew something was wrong. ”Following her instinct, Mitera booked another appointment. This time with a different doctor. The doctor recommended an ultrasound, as soon as possible. An appointment was booked for later that day.

“I was thinking that it’s a ball of fluid in my leg that needs to drain or something. I was never thinking tumor. That was never in my brain,” Mitera recalled during our phone interview. “When I finally got the ultrasound that evening, the doctor who did it, she was like - this is definitely a tumor. She said that I need to do an MRI to rule out if it was cancer.”

She returned the following day for the MRI.

“I was like what’s the worst case scenario in this, and what’s the best case scenario? She’s like the worst case is cancer, some kind of sarcoma. And the best case is that the tumor is benign,” Mitera remembered of the appointment.

It was the worst case scenario. A biopsy, weeks later, would confirm that it was cancer.

“What they narrowed it down to was a differentiated pleomorphic (SP) high grade sarcoma, and then in brackets N O S, which means not otherwise specified…High grade means that the cells itself were rapidly divided and really aggressive,” she said.

“It was, we do surgery. We take out the tumor, and we take it out with margin…And then they will decide with a team of doctors, whether I’m a candidate for radiation, because the cancer was nowhere else in my body…It was stage two.”

Due to the aggressive nature of the cancer, the doctors scheduled emergency surgery two weeks later - in late August. Mitera, recently engaged, underwent what appeared to be, by all accounts, a successful surgery.

“I felt okay. I felt like, okay, the cancer is out of my body, And I was surprised because they did scans on my abdomen - because that’s usually where cancer would spread to - and there was nothing. So, I felt some relief. And then I was excited to start radiation because I thought, okay, this is now going to kill whatever cancer is left in that spot,” she said.

“It was a really high dose of radiation. In the end, it really burned my leg, and that’s when the new problems started. I had a gaping wound in my leg, so I started seeing the wound opening up, around December….Everybody thought that it would close but I would look and it looked like it kept opening. It looked like it wanted to pull apart.”

Despite the excruciating pain of the surgery wound, Mitera found comfort in the tumor’s absence. With the fresh lease on life, Mitera and her German fiance, Constantine, returned home, to Trinidad, for a well-deserved vacation. It had been two years since she last saw her family. Mitera’s mother, in particular, was worried sick by her cancer diagnosis.

“I came home for ten days because I wanted to see my family. Travel had finally opened back up for people to travel to Trinidad. We were also planning our weeding, so we wanted to see the venue and these things. And then you know, I was looking a lot at the wound like, I hope this goes away in time because we had trips planned later i the year,” Mitera said.

“FIrst week in March, just when I came back from Trinidad, I did my scan, and they said, all clear, but there was something growing on my knee…I could see. I could feel something. I was getting similar feeligns as I was last time…The nurse said it’s not a tumor, it’s just likely a nerve issue from surgery.”

Convinced that there was something more to it, she pushed for an ultrasound.The results were revealed to her a few days later.

“I could see that the nurses eyes looked very, you know, as if someone was crying and wiped their tears, and then I wondered why her eyes looked like this. Then she sat down and showed us a scan, and then said the cancerous lump has spread to your lungs.” It was stage 4 cancer.

“I’m a person who doesn’t show their emotions infront of people. When I’m in my private space, you know, I’ll cry. In that office, I cried and just kept crying. I was crying and then she stopped talking because I was obviously not absorbing anything she said,” Mitera said as she fought back tears.

“She went back to the scans from March and she showed us - she said I guess we didn’t see it because it was so tiny. It looked like a tiny speck. But it was there since March. They said I needed to start chemotherapy immediately. I look at her, because I built up trust with her as she’s very empathetic. I asked her, what do you think? Should I do the chemo? And she looked at me dead in my eyes and said, yes. She said you must save your life.”

In preparation to begin chemotherapy, Mitera was assigned to an oncologist. Oncologists specialise in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Her first consultation sprung another surprise; and it was another unpleasant one.

“He said, do you mind if I look at you? He began looking at my leg wound and then he sat down. Then he said, right, I think amputation will be the best option for you. He showed using his leg where they would cut from, and said, we will start you on an aggressive six week cycle chemotherapy. Very aggressive, and this will be our only hope for a cure,” MItera recalled.

“Your chance of a cure is between 10% and 20%.” Mitera’s mind went blank. Right there, she began grieving the death of her old self.

“I thought to myself I have no life. My whole life is going to change. There’ll be so many things that I’ll never be able to do again. And then I zoned back in and the doctor was talking about the different options. He said if I kept my leg, but did plastic surgery, the would would take months to heal and simultaneously the cancer will advance and spread over my body. He said I would be dead within six to eight weeks,” Mitera said.

“I felt so betrayed. I really thought I had beat the cancer. I really thought I went through enough pain to get out of this experience. And then in the end, it came out and came out worse…I just felt like I was on my deathbed,” she said with audible scars.

Words of guidance from her mother and then, her doctor made her decision. She decided to fight.

“Growing up my mother always used to say God only helps those who help themselves. And she would say you must do all you can do in your human capacity, and then ask God to do the rest. Then, the oncologist said something similar that stuck with me. It was the same message. He said that miracles only happen when you work at it,” she said.

“That became my mantra, you know, that I’m working on my miracle.” A few days later, on June 29th, 2022, Mitera’s leg was amputated from above the knee.

“I was a dancer growing up. I did Indian classical dance. I cried so much. It was like I was mourning and grieving a life that I will never get back. I thought I’d never be able to dance like that again,” Mitera said, crying as she remembered the day she lost her leg.

“When they were putting me to sleep in the operating theatre, there were tears rolling down my eyes.” Within ten days, the wound was healed. But Mitera’s mental wounds were never going to recover quickly. Regardless of her physical and emotional readiness, she would only have a couple of weeks to process the amputation. Her chemo had to begin immediately. Today, Mitera’s completed four cycles of chemo and will begin her fifth cycle on October 21st.

“I am there in the hospital for about five days, and for four of those days chemo is dosed continiously - morning and night for four days straight. On the fourth day, it stops. Then they start flushing me with fluids because the chemo can really affect your kidneys and bladder. They flush me for 12 hours,” Mitera said of her treatment routine.

Somehow between the chemotherapy sessions and recovery, Mitera finds the time and energy to share her story with others.

She wants to make sure women get screened, and that those with cancer, like herself, know they are not alone. She said, after all, she’s lost many friends since diagnosis. Following advice from a close friend - an Instagram influencer - she started a Tik Tok account. Her account documents her life as an amputee and stage four cancer patient.

“I started doing it for awareness, and then for education too. There are a lot of myths out there about cancer that are not true. And a lot of people in Trinidad don’t like to go to the doctor when they feel like something is wrong. People in Trinidad need to stop asking the neighbour or a friend for medical advice. They need to go to a real doctor and get medical advice,” she said.

“There are some people who comment on my Tik Tok account and say, I feel very sorry for you. Or say, if I were you, I would have never cut my leg off. I made the best decision give the circumstances I was in. So, I told people don’t feel sorry for me I don’t even feel sorry for myself. This is just a new challenge.”

While other may understandably shy away from the public’s view in such a circumstance, Mitera continues to grow in the confidence of her purpose. The chemotherapy has caused her hair to drop out, but she wears her wigs proudly. The chemotherapy leaves her physically and mentally exhausted, but she’s full of an energy.

Mitera has every reason to give up and surrender, but she keeps going; working for her miracle. Come March, if the chemotherapy treatment is successful, Mitera will walk down the aisle hand-in-hand with her fiance Constantine - who has stood by her side throughout the entire ordeal.

“I won’t have my prosthetic leg yet, so I’ll have to do the ceremony in my crutches. It will not be easy to dance at my wedding, but I still want to do it. It’s something that is pulling me through all of this, that wedding,” she said.

“And yes, I want to have a child. That would have to be in the future, maybe a few years, because I have to make sure I’m cancer free. I want to have a child one day, but it might be through alternative methods - like using my frozen eggs.”

Follow Mitera’s journey on Tik Tok @mity_89.