Debbie Arneaud: A prayer and a smile that fought cancer

By Denise Scott

If you are from the Gran Couva Tabaquite parish, you must know the wonderful Debbie Arneaud. She is like salt. Debbie is a Eucharistic minister, a catechist and a lector in her parish community but she is also involved in St Vincent De Paul, Youth Ministry and is an active member of the Police Youth Club in the area. Apart from her many hats, Debbie is a wife and the mother of three sons aged 32, 24 and 10. But what many don’t know is that she is also a cancer survivor.

When Debbie looks back on her journey she says, “Girl, it started with my mother telling me about a lady in the village whose breasts were hurting and by the time she got to the hospital she discovered she had breast cancer and they had to have emergency surgery. That story stuck at the back of her head and probably had her on high alert.

“I used to always self-exam, ” she said, but “first I started to get a little pain and I felt a swelling under my arm so I decided to go to the Couva health facility. The doctor said it was the lymph nodes just fighting an infection.” She also told the doctor about the lump in her breast but he just ignored it.

“A few weeks later, I woke up with my breasts swollen and in tremendous pain, and my husband rushed me to the Couva Health facility”. This time Debbie saw a different doctor and he said, “It looks like breast cancer”. What happened next was a rapid slope for the jolly and always smiling Debbie Arneaud, one that has changed her life forever.

It was July 2018, and Debbie was getting a mammogram and a biopsy at the Couva hospital. Whilst Debbie was upstairs in the hospital, her father was downstairs dealing with renal failure. Her father died in September of that year and in December it was confirmed that she did in fact have breast cancer.

She remembers going to get the news from the doctor who said, “Oh my, you came alone!” She knew at that point that the results would not be positive. But she confesses that she took the news very calmly and in fact, when she got home and told her family, her mother thought it was a joke because she was so cool and calm about it.

“I joined the Oncology Clinic and was told that I needed 12 chemotherapy sessions before the surgery in order to shrink it” and so it was in January 2019 Debbie had her first chemotherapy session. “Gyal, I vomited out my liver! It was the worst! I told my husband I was never going back! But I did”.

Debbie does not sugarcoat her journey. She talks about the sleepless and painful nights, the numbness in her fingers and the dropping of her hair. “Girl, nobody wanted to cut off my hair for me, so I shaved it for myself.” She stops for a minute and confesses, “I was happy to rock my bald head, yes! I never hid from anyone that I had cancer”.

April 2019

Debbie did her mastectomy and removed her left breast. After the surgery, she was sent to do additional tests and the Doctor informed her that the cancer had spread. “Denise, I did not tell a soul!” She confesses that she never shared that news with her husband or her sons, she kept it to herself and focused on prayer.

Debbie fixed her eyes on God and said that her parish community gave her tremendous support. The most beautiful part of it was that she never felt pitied “Yuh remember Mrs Badal? She used to come to pray for me and give me communion.” . “I remember hearing a lady say that you could drink Holy Water so I used to drink that, too .” She said she also committed to eating well. “The doctor used to say I had to eat and so I ate anything and everything even though my mouth had no taste. I would be eating chicken and I didn’t even know I was eating chicken because everything tasted like cardboard to me”

She also spoke about her family, “I had a great support from my husband, and my children were amazing.” But there were days that she, in spite of her sickness, had to also go the extra mile. “I remember the day after chemotherapy having to get out of bed and take my youngest son to school because even though we live in Flanigan town he goes to school in Maraval and no one else was available.”

January 2020
After her 25th radiation session Debbie Arneaud returned to work. Later that month she went to get a full body scan and the doctors informed her that her body was cancer free.

What does Debbie think is responsible for her survival story” Her answer is simple. “You have to trust God and you have to listen to your doctors”. She also said, “I never spent a day saying why me…. I just spent my days praying and thanking God”. She also shared that two years prior to her breast cancer diagnosis, she had her gallbladder removed and two years prior to that she had surgery for fibroids but throughout all those trials she just trusted God.

Today, Debbie walks around cancer free and is not ashamed to have one breast or for people to hear her story because she believes telling your story can help save other lives. “Girl, I tell my sister, “People walk around with one hand and one foot so what wrong if I walk around with one breast” She burst out in a fit of laughter.

She remembers one night after chemo, the police youth club had a back-in-times party and in spite of what she felt, she stayed up whole night frying chicken in the party. “Girl, I just never let this keep me back.

Debbie Arneaud: survivor and woman of faith.