CHENNAI: For a singer, for whom the voice is equal to breathing, losing it might make one feel dead. So was Hannah Jachene’s case who lost her voice after she suffered from Oesophagus Cancer last year. Speaking at the Cancer Survivor’s Day at the Government General Hospital, Hannah who had recovered from the serious illness, said how this is a second life for her, thanks to a wonderful medical fraternity.Forty-five-year old Hannah from Chennai, a devotional singer, felt like she was crippled by the depressing diagnosis of Oesophagus Cancer, as the recurring benign growths in her voice box, made it nearly impossible for her to sing and speak.Hannah, who has been singing devotional songs since she was eight, that was her everything. “Singing for me was spiritual and it defined me as a person,” she said. “This was so unexpected.I first came to know about it, when my voice was changing and my listeners noted a change in my voice, it was turning coarse. I got worried that I might have to undergo a voice training again. I tried that, but it did not help. One night, I woke up all of a sudden from my sleep, and blood was oozing out of certain patches in my face. Horrified and terribly scared, I rushed to the doctors, who diagnosed it as Cancer and apart from that there was a 4.5kg tumour in my stomach,” said Hannah.Her first reaction, understandably, was disbelief and shock. “I cannot just acquire this disease. I have been singing since I was a kid and, that too devotional songs. God cannot do this to me. Slowly I lost my speech and nobody could understand what I was talking.For a singer, being cut off from the world of speech and music all of a sudden can be depressing,” said Hannah and added that her voice was her strength.Soon, she underwent chemotherapy and the side effects of the radiation were huge — from sagging skin, loss of taste buds, teeth discolouration, hair loss, etc. “I was changing as a person, my skin colour was changing and I was not able to talk at all. I thought that the doctors are using me as an experimental specimen for their treatment. I was infuriated and had severe mood swings. My mother refused to live with me because, my father too had cancer and she wanted to be with him to help him battle it. I was depressed,” she rues.But then there is always the support from the spouse and from the medical fraternity, which are key to fighting cancer, says Hannah, whose husband supported her throughout the journey. “We don’t have kids, and there were random remarks by people that he will leave me, since I had lost my beauty too. But with support from the family, anybody can fight cancer,” she says.Today, after months of rigorous treatment and constant counselling by the medical fraternity at the Government General Hospital, Hannah is singing again. “The nurses at hospital were encouraging and they were my big support system. A positive attitude and the will to recover, and most importantly faith on the medical fraternity is very important,” says Hannah.“Most importantly, I am back to singing now.”
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