IN JAMAICA (ONCE WAS BLIND - INSPIRING & TOUCHING) : Breast cancer survivor regains sight, tells awe-inspiring story....A 32-year-old woman, Latoya Jones who regained her sight after six months of total blindness due to a cancerous tumour in her brain.... 'Mommy, you can see me?' And when I said 'yes', and proved that I could see him, he threw himself on the floor and cried," she said.

BY KIMBERLEY HIBBERT Observer staff reporter hibbertk@jamaicaobserver.com  Friday, October 09, 2015    

A 32-year-old woman who regained her sight after six months of total blindness due to a cancerous tumour in her brain, on Tuesday stunned guests at the launch of Breast Cancer Awareness Month with her story of triumph despite a slew of health problems.

Latoya Jones tells her story Tuesday during the launch of Breast
Cancer Awareness Month at the Jamaica Cancer Society in
St Andrew. (PHOTO: GARFIELD ROBINSON) 

Latoya Jones thought she had been dealt a bad hand when she was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 19.

"I was born with a huge navel and I would suck my finger and feel up my breasts, and I knew there was a lump there," she told the launch at the Jamaica Cancer Society on Lady Musgrave Road in St Andrew.

"My foster parents knew it was there, and one night the nipple of the breast got swollen and was extremely red and painful. I remember telling my neighbour and she said 'No, Latoya, go to the doctor, as it could be cancer'," Jones said.

Struck by the neighbour's comment, Jones said she recalled saying to her: "Cancer, wah? Yuh mad, gyal?"

Nonetheless, she decided to visit a doctor, and after a biopsy and mammogram were done it was confirmed that she indeed had breast cancer.

The news hit her hard, and Jones cried, as she thought the world had come to a stop because, for her, young people did not get cancer.

"I thought it was an old person's thing. I remember being angry, and I thought, 'Why God so wicked? No mother, no father, and now cancer," she said, while explaining that she did not know her biological parents at the time.

Her situation worsened when Jones experienced metastasis as the cancer quickly spread to her lungs, causing one to be removed.

And just when she thought things couldn't get any worse, the cancer spread to her brain and caused her to lose her sight.

"I lost my sight two years ago," she said, explaining that the tumour in her brain had caused compression within the optic nerve.

"When I lost my sight I was in church. The doctor had told me that my eyes were going, and I remember seeing things go blurry. Then I went totally blind and I said to my husband that I was blind and in total darkness," she said as the guests at the launch listened wide-eyed and O-mouthed. more