"VIRGO has a tendency to look young!" she exclaims with a hearty laugh. Her face lights up when I ask Jacqueline Caroline Sammy her star sign. She's a Virgo. Adding, she enthuses: "I'm a true Virgo. A true Virgo is someone who likes to help people and thinks that if someone helps them… it's wrong!"
Virgos find it hard to accept help, she admits, but helping people is in their nature. It's in hers, anyway. "You're nice to me or not nice to me, it doesn't matter. I like to help where I can. Helping people gives you the chance to learn about the bigger world out there, and not just your own little bubble."
Life is all about learning and discovering yourself, she muses. "You should learn, whether you like it or not." She goes on to add blithely: "Until you're six feet under, you should keep on learning. Continue learning about anything and everything you find interesting. That you should learn, whether you like it or not!"
Sparkling eyes behind her spectacles, she laughs easily and talks readily. There's a slight droop on one side of her face, a result of Bell's Palsy that struck when she was in her thirties. But that's not the first thing you'd notice about Jacqueline. The 55-year-old has a certain joie de vivre about her that's infectious.
As the coronavirus pandemic spreads, the normal touchstones of everyday life have vanished without so much as a warning. In their place are terrifying thoughts about the future, about loss and about mortality. Yet for Jacqueline, there can be silver linings in dark clouds.
The finalist of PropertyGuru's Home Giveaway Campaign, Jacqueline is in the running for owning a brand new, fully furnished home at Tropicana Metropark, Subang Jaya.
"Never in my wildest dreams would I have had the chance to own a home of my own. I'm extremely excited," she enthuses, smiling widely.
She's well-acquainted with the dark parts of life and facing her own mortality. The cancer survivor has had several curveballs thrown in her direction through the years. "Illness does weasel its way into every aspect of your life and every relationship, no matter how good it is," she admits. "But there's always something to live for."
Jacqueline is sticking by her motto, although she's a touch less sanguine. On top of the nationwide lockdown, she — by dint of her age, if not her moxie, and like millions of others in this country — has embarked on an even longer stretch of imposed self-isolation. "I'm sure I feel like everyone else. Such unprecedented times are quite hard to comprehend," she explains from her home she shares with her mother and sister.
Her panic is for people who don't have what she has. "What's a good thing is that it has made people be aware of the predicament of others who are completely alone," she says, thoughtfully. "If a great deal of kindness comes out of this, then that will be a plus."
FIGHTING DEPRESSION
She's well-acquainted with the sense of "alone-ness". "For a good part of my life, I felt really alone," she says softly, confiding that she'd spent decades slipping in and out of depression, "… but thanks to the right medicine and loving people, I'm back to being me again."
It's often said that depression isn't about feeling sad. It's part of it, of course, but to compare the life-sapping melancholy of depression to normal sadness is like comparing a paper cut to an amputation.
While sadness is a healthy part of life, depression progressively eats away at your whole being from the inside. It's with you when you wake up in the morning, telling you there's nothing or anyone to get up for. It's with you when the phone rings and you're too frightened to answer it.
"I didn't know then that I was trying to find myself," she explains. "All I knew was that I felt lost and alone."
What triggered her depression? "The simple answer? I don't know. There was no single factor or trigger that plunged me into it. I've turned over many possibilities in my mind. But the best I can conclude is that depression can happen to anyone," she replies, brows furrowing.
Her depression started for no discernible reason, but it left a growing trail of problems in its wake. She couldn't hold on to any job for a long period, and she couldn't take on bigger responsibilities. "I never sought to advance myself in my career. I went from job to job trying to earn some money. I felt scared to hold any high positions. I just couldn't deal with it," she reveals.
All throughout her working career, Jacqueline's depression grew progressively worse. "I felt this huge void in my life. I didn't have many friends. I didn't have any sense of belonging to anything or anyone. You know like the TV series Cheers, you want to be somewhere where everybody knows your name!" she muses, chuckling wryly.
To exacerbate her pain, her parents' marriage broke down when Jacqueline was in her early 20s. "That compounded my feelings of loss. Depression is such a hidden disease. People often think that depression is used as an excuse to get away from doing things. But that's not true. It's real. You feel such a physical pain and you cannot continue to progress in your life because you feel so many things are weighing you down. You just can't seem to get rid of this heavy weight! Where can I go? What can I do?" she shares, eyes glistening.
It's a sadness that no one seems to want to talk about in public, at cocktail party sorts of places, not even in this Age of Indiscretion. Nor is the private realm particularly conducive to airing this kind of implacably despondent feeling, no matter how willing your friends or family are to listen.
Depression, truth be told, is both boring and threatening as a subject of conversation. In the end there's no one to intervene on your behalf when you disappear again into what feels like a psychological dungeon.
Her family knew of her bouts of depression but couldn't understand what was happening. "My mum tried to get me help by taking me to a psychiatrist but that didn't help much. Back in my 20s, I didn't think to seek help for my depression. I thought I was the one who deserved it. It was only later when I started having other physical problems that I managed to seek the help I needed."
Asked how she dealt with it, Jacqueline replies: "Depression doesn't magically disappear. The real help came after my cancer diagnosis. Also, I do think that sometimes a depressed person needs to find something in life that he or she really has passion for. To find a real purpose in living."
STORMY DAYS AHEAD
Life didn't get any easier for Jacqueline as she ventured into her 30s. She had high fever for a few days and her ears were hurting. "Over a couple of days, there was a noticeable droop on one side of my face," she recalls. She went to her GP who prescribed steroids and told her the droop would wear off eventually.
Bell's palsy occurs when the seventh cranial nerve becomes swollen or compressed, resulting in facial weakness or paralysis. The exact cause of this damage is unknown, but many medical researchers believe it's most likely triggered by a viral infection.
In most cases, Bell's palsy is temporary and symptoms usually go away after a few weeks. In Jacqueline's case however, the droop became a permanent feature. "It was supposed to heal," she says, sighing. "It hurt to see myself in the mirror every day. I was quite a pleasant-looking girl before. Pictures never lie so I try to avoid taking photographs."
This destroyed her self-confidence. "I was already battling depression and this pulled me down further," she admits. Life was already challenging and for Jacqueline, it became even harder to navigate through the depressive maze. "I was still struggling to find meaning to my life," she says softly.
Another blow hit Jacqueline as she ventured into her early 40s. She discovered her breasts were bleeding, and it frightened her. She recounts: "It was painful and embarrassing. I was bleeding profusely through my bra, and I sought help for it. My initial check-ups showed that everything was benign. I thought it was stress-related because of my depression. But there was something else growing that I overlooked — a lump under my armpit."
Eventually, more lumps were found on both sides of her breasts. The prognosis was grim. Jacqueline had stage two neuroendocrine breast cancer. "Please tell your friends to get their yearly mammogram done!" she blurts out suddenly.
She went on to get a lumpectomy done, coupled with rounds of chemotherapy. "Chemo gave me acute diarrhoea and robbed me of my sleep. It was a huge struggle to complete the rounds of chemo. I almost wanted to give up," she shares candidly.
TURNING POINT
Dark times came with silver linings. Jacqueline was sent to an onco-psychologist who deals with the aspects of the patient's experience with cancer beyond medical treatment and across the cancer trajectory, including at diagnosis, during treatment, transitioning to and throughout survivorship.
For the first time in decades, she was finally prescribed with proper medication dealing with her depression. "It was a turning point. The right medication gave me objectivity about my illness, made me view it for what it was. This was when I realised I'd been going through cycles of depression for years," she explains.
After the rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, she received a call from the hospital. "I remember that day vividly," she tells me, chuckling. "This young girl from University Hospital told me that they wanted to invite women who were diagnosed with stage one and stage two cancer to join an exercise programme. I don't know if you like exercise but I certainly didn't!" She went anyway.
It was a Zumba class that combined both music and dance. Jacqueline found herself enjoying the class and the camaraderie with the other ladies who showed up. "I'll teach you how to dance the Macarena!" the lady who managed the class told her gaily.
"I always loved dancing since I was a little girl," she enthuses. "Somehow that class awoke something in me. The movements, the music… oh! I almost forgot the feeling of how wonderful it was to dance! It was freeing and it felt wonderful!"
The first group of attendees eventually evolved to become a support group and gave the bubbly woman a reason to rally through her diagnosis. "Not all of us in the group are free of cancer. But because of each other, we pull ourselves up and tell each other that we're in this together. It makes a lot of difference. That's why at this point in my life — at the age of 55 — I finally have my community and we have each other."
So you finally found a sense of belonging after all these years, I state. "Exactly," she replies, smiling. "I always wanted this. I've always asked myself why was I born? What was the purpose of my life? I struggled with those questions in the past but now I've finally found it."
Over the years, they were taught how to dance and have since performed at cancer rallies to raise awareness for the disease. The dance group "Candy Girls" was born. "We practised and practised. We performed on stage. We were on one mission to help others through our dance and other activities. More importantly, they became my friends. To be honest, it's like being in a club for lousy reasons — but the women in it are grand."
Concluding, Jacqueline says: "Whether you have cancer or other illnesses, you can rise above all this. Do something you enjoy, be proud of your achievements and do your best. Cancer may sound like a death sentence, but it has given me a new lease of life and meaning to the questions I've asked as a young woman."
Silver linings gleam brightest in the dark — and Jacqueline is ready to face what's ahead with a smile and a little dance in her step.
PropertyGuru, Malaysia's No. 1 property website, today announced the five finalists that have been nominated from all over the country for its "Home Giveaway" campaign.
As part of PropertyGuru's commitment to help people own a home, the campaign aims to offer one deserving Malaysian a brand-new, fully furnished home at Tropicana Metropark, Subang Jaya, worth over RM600,000.
Malaysians at large can be a part of this journey in supporting someone's home ownership aspiration by voting for them on https://homegiveaway.propertyguru.com.my/ from today until May 31.