Nairobi, April 23 -- In 2014, two years before the diagnosis, Mildred Odhiambo began fading from her own life. Not dramatically - quietly. The school committee went first. Then church activities and chamas, followed by social obligations she had carried for years.

By 2016, her life had thinned down to work and sleep. A great fog of fatigue had settled into her bones that no length of leave could shift. She would take two weeks off, rest completely, return to her desk, and within days feel as though she had never left.

"I was tired of the fatigue," she says. "I wanted something very disruptive to happen in my life, because I felt I was not living a normal life." Then, in December 2016, she felt a lump in her breast. The cancer, in its te...