Zoleka Mandela took to social media on Tuesday to inform her followers that she had been diagnosed with bone metastasis.
Zoleka Mandela opens up about her third cancer diagnosis
In April 2022, former president Nelson Mandela’s granddaughter defied odds and, despite repeated warnings from oncologists about the dangers that lurk alongside her prenatal journeys, welcomed her sixth child, Zingce Zobuhle Mandela.
The suffrage she endured bearing children while battling two breast cancer diagnoses is documented in her autobiography When Hope Whispers. However, on Tuesday, a new path was paved in her health journey.
Zoleka Mandela revealed that after experiencing discomfort in her lower back and excruciating pain in the left rib for more than a month, she consulted her GP and underwent a computerised tomography scan.
Turns out that the 42-year-old has “a pathological fracture and swelling caused by cancer.”
Based on the results of the x-ray scan, Zoleka Mandela developed bone metastasis, an event that occurs in a patient’s body when, according to Mayo Clinic, “cancer cells spread from their original site to a bone.”
What is the mortality rate of bone metastasis?
Mandela’s oncologist told her that “cancer in the bones cannot be eradicated nor can it be cured.”
Based on a Danish cohort research study on Survival after bone metastasis by primary cancer type conducted by Dr Elisabeth Svensson and others, the mortality of a patient diagnosed with bone metastasis largely depends on the type of cancer from which it originates.
The research study observed 17 251 patients with bone metastasis and found that “one of ten patients with bone metastasis from breast cancer survived [five] years.”
Barring external contributors that can’t be computed into the results of this study and that Mandela maintains a relatively healthy lifestyle in accordance with her oncologist’s guidance, there is a 51% chance she may survive for one year living with bone metastasis.
“I don’t even have the words to articulate my thoughts and feelings, the words to describe how scared I am right now. What do I tell my children? How do I tell them that this time around, I may not get to live my life as a survivor? How do I tell them everything will be okay when it’s not? I’m dying … I don’t want to die,” she wrote.