My grandmother struggled with cancer for more than five years. She had hospital treatment, underwent several courses of chemotherapy, went to church, visited witchdoctors, and used folk remedies. She tried everything and believed that she would recover.
But then came the moment when she stopped believing. She sewed herself a dress that she wanted to be buried in.
Doctors started to ignore her illness more and more often. They would send her from one hospital to another, and most of them told her her illness was purely down to old age, ignoring the fact that some symptoms had appeared just a week or a month previously. When they discovered that my grandmother had cancer, they refused to treat her. They refused to see her at all — they made all kinds of excuses.
She visited plenty of hospitals — she almost lived in them — but no one wanted to help her. She spent a whole week in the last hospital she visited. At that point she couldn’t walk at all.
My grandmother was discharged from hospital and died two hours later at home, surrounded by relatives. She didn’t look like herself in her burial dress. She had never worn dark green flowery clothes before.