"Knitting was a childhood hobby of Mary Mwangi, a tall and talkative woman who runs a tailoring shop in Thika town in Kenya's Kiambu County. But it was only in 2017, when she was bedridden for 11 months after having cancer treatment, that she picked it up again. The first time Mwangi was diagnosed, it was with spine cancer. Housebound and wanting to pass the time, she decided to knit hats, which she ended up donating to cancer patients at Kenyatta National Hospital."
"I felt like it was the end of me when the diagnosis came out, said the 52-year-old mother of three, who recalls being terrified at the news. She isolated herself from friends and family and even turned off her phone. I told my husband that I don't want to interact with anyone; the world felt so violent. Mwangi had to undergo a mastectomy a surgical removal of part or all of a breast and 33 sessions of radiotherapy."
Mary Mwangi runs a tailoring shop in Thika, Kiambu County, and resumed knitting while bedridden for 11 months during cancer treatment in 2017. Her first diagnosis was spine cancer, and she knitted hats donated to cancer patients at Kenyatta National Hospital. In 2018 she was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy and 33 radiotherapy sessions, with four years of treatment that included hair loss and financial ruin after a 1.3-million-Kenyan-shilling loan. Community stigma followed, with people referring to her as the woman whose breasts were cut and other women hiding chests under scarves and baggy clothes. She was declared cancer-free in 2020.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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