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Despite having had several relapses of the disease, surviving various surgeries to remove metastases, Z. Zamžickienė always rose from the ashes and became an active advocate for women with cancer, fighting for the availability of modern treatment for this sickness.
She herself survived nine years of a happy, active and very meaningful life due to cancer. His life was extinguished, according to the family, on March 16. The woman was 63 years old. She will be buried on Friday, March 19 at 1 pm in Kernavė.
A woman with a law degree, traveling alone during her life on the roller coasters that lifted her and threw her back into the disease, got all the ovarian cancer patients for whom it was suitable received biological treatment.
She herself tried the drug in clinical trials and felt the benefits: she felt completely healthy, able to travel, return to a full life and work. However, the clinical trial was completed and Lithuania did not confirm reimbursement for this drug. Officials lacked evidence of a positive impact.
But the woman did not give up. Your life creed – “hope is not cancerous”. Perhaps even that helped her obtain the medicine she was fighting for, give life to two children, marry, and a newborn granddaughter.
Cancer diagnosis has become a new beginning
“In the early days, I will not hide, I buried myself. I am already a representative of the older generation and did not even think about others. But the doctor scolded me for it and realized the need to hold on to life. Therefore, I did not agree with my diagnosis and I told myself that there is and will not be anything wrong with me.
Sure, it wasn’t that simple, but I cried a lot just once. When I found out I was in stage four, I walked away from my colleagues during an office lunch and screamed. It was the first and last cry. Afterwards, there were still tears, but it was different ”, the woman opened four years ago.
When he was diagnosed with cancer, Z. Zamžickienė was 54 years old. Then they gave her chemotherapy, a surgery that was difficult, she had to transfuse blood and three weeks later another long cycle of chemotherapy began, but the woman decided to focus not on difficult physical health, but on a healthy and alive spirit.
She has always been convinced that medication is only one component of treatment. Another very important part of treatment is a positive attitude. If we sit idly by and wait for death, we will not help ourselves. And he really did it with the help of the doctors.
During all those years, Z.Zamžičkien did not miss the opportunity to thank Vilius Rudaitis, obstetrician at the Santara Clinics, and Skaiste Tulytė, chemotherapist. It was these doctors who accompanied her throughout her illness.
BLF / Photo by Vygintas Skaraitis / Zita Zamžickienė
Unfortunately, the cancer returned a few years later. “I was very angry. When they told me that I would need chemotherapy again, I cried and said I would not do it. However, the doctors patiently explained to me that it was necessary, and I realized for myself that if I wanted to live, I had to to be treated The scariest thing for women was when hair fell out and it was spring, summer was coming … But I bought nice silk scarves and I walked, I was beautiful to myself.
Clearly, once you are diagnosed with cancer, it is difficult to even describe the condition. Perhaps the scariest thing was telling his loved ones. I admit it, I kept them and did not tell the whole truth. They look at you with eyes full of hope and expect good news, and you can report one of the worst … I said that the stage only after the surgery, the doctors said it was better than they expected, “shared Z.Zamžickienė.
Although he had to leave his job in the civil service due to illness, he could not live without activity, as he said. Being physically fragile, a small woman, it was always necessary for her to have one goal, to constantly act on something majestic. Helped her survive. Few women diagnosed with cancer want to cook in the same pot at all times. She was one of those.
Throughout these nine years, it has held a series of round tables in which politicians, patient representatives and doctors participated. The aim of these events was to draw the attention of politicians and the public to the gaps in the treatment of cancer diseases, especially ovarian cancer. It seemed that this fragile woman, hiding her bare head under a scarf, could, if necessary, walk through the walls, enter any representative of the government and make herself heard.
Photo from personal archive / Zita Zamžickienė
Z.Zamžickienė’s thoughts on life
“I once dreamed that when I no longer have my responsibilities, I will go volunteer. So I used to be involved in global decision making, now I take care of the little things, I help specific people, but it changes their lives much more than those. global decisions. For example, we fight to make innovative medicines available to people, we advise them, we give them specific advice, we support them. Even if we can earn a few months, those few months mean a lot to them: the time they can still spend with your loved ones to do something else.
And sometimes miracles happen that those months turn into more than a year. I myself am a living example of this: I have successfully come out of fourth stage cancer and I am not only alive, but qualitatively alive.
When I heard the scenario, I read online that I had three weeks to live. I bowed my head but didn’t take it for cash. Therefore, I advise everyone else to help out on statistics. According to her, it was a great success to survive for five years. But if you live overtime, you have earned more. And the more positive words family and friends say to the patient, the easier it will be to hold on to life.
I am very grateful to my doctors that when I asked them if I already had a disability certificate handled, they surrounded me and took me to work. You can’t imagine what the incentive was for me. Fantasy, they did not see in me a mortal, but a man who could work, and not hard work.
The biggest problem is when people don’t know, can’t, or don’t even want to divert their thoughts from the disease elsewhere. You can read books, but what to do, just do not sit and do not think. I walk a lot myself and constantly advise others to do the same. After the operation, I could not bend the grass to uproot, so I weed on my knees because I thought that the environment nourished with herbs until now would not turn green from my disease. There is nothing to hope for, you need to keep living.
When I got sick, I repeated in my mind: Lord, why have I not judged until now that I am healthy, have I not been able to judge him? Today when I go to bed every night and wake up every morning, thank you for sleeping and being healthy. The disease taught the conscience to rejoice every day. These little feelings bring great joy. And I still don’t plan.
If, before the end of the day, they ask me what we will do tomorrow, I answer: let us rejoice in life today. Of course, there are things that inevitably need to be planned, but in the past I had endless plans for tomorrow, during which there was no time to enjoy this moment. “
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