So I’ve had a bit of a hiatus. Four months of a hiatus to be precise.
My mum died.
It was totally unexpected, one minute she was alive, well and living the sprightly life of a 76 year old, the next, dead. And guess what? It was cancer.
People have asked me if I had any clue – because the medics certainly didn’t – and I have the rather unpleasant feeling that yes, I think I did. Not because I’m party to any sort of special insight because I’m in the Cancer Club, no, it was just a feeling based on the several years of stomach pain she’d suffered and the inability of any medicine given to her to make things better. You know what it’s like; antibiotics will help a water infection, a hot toddy will calm a cold, Deep Heat will soothe a muscle strain, but nothing was helping her. Despite the copious amounts of peppermint oil, Wind-Eze and Gaviscon (to name but a few) she was downing every day, she was in pain, terrible pain, and she smiled her way through it, just like any good cancer patient. Except she didn’t even know she was one.
It was cancer of the colon, so not my pink fluffy booby variety (#BreastCancerRealityCheck), it was vile and nasty and ate her up from deep inside while no one was looking. In the end it took her so swiftly and violently that I am still in shock. I tried to put pen to paper but couldn’t. The tears would overtake before I could write the first word. I couldn’t spend time specifically thinking about her without dissolving – it’s still tricky that one.
Lots of people said how it was a good thing she was spared the horror of treatment, the horror of having cancer, that she would’ve hated to have a colostomy bag and lose her hair, that she might not have been strong enough to live through it anyway. Then I imagine those times she sat with me in the chemo ward talking me through my own hours of poisoning. I think of the things she got me, girly stuff like hand cream and nail varnish, to make me feel better about my deathly pallor and flaking skin. I reflect on her joking that one must always make the best of oneself even if one was bald all over with a bottom the size of a small country. I remember she was with me every step of the way throughout my illness and treatment when in fact the cancer was growing in her too. We had cancer at the same time. But only I lived.
Of course there’s a peculiar irony to it all; it’s just not very funny.
Soon after my diagnosis I blogged about the deal making process regarding my cancer, http://baldybitesback.weebly.com/baldy-bites-back/the-black-dog-gets-it and I’ve just re-read it. I am fearful that somehow I made a deal without realising it, that somehow, because I didn’t have all the facts to hand, cancer still took someone instead of me.
Cancer took my mum instead of me.
Survivor Guilt is alive and well in the land of pink death and it’s not a pretty thing.
This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and it causes some controversy; you might have come upon some memes about it on social media. I was going to copy and paste some of them here but when it came down to it I simply couldn’t bring myself to reproduce them, they’re so awful. For example, a picture of Angelina Jolie with the caption ‘Scared of breast cancer. Remove Boobs’, and the photo of a topless woman with the words ‘Support Breast Cancer, set the tatas free, No Bra Day’ and my most favourite, ‘Don’t let cancer steal second base’.
So what we’ve got is the belittling of one woman’s very real risk and worry, the suggestion that going without a bra for a day will erase breast cancer entirely and – finally – the sexualisation of the disease itself. These took me no more than two minutes to find online and as a Survivor I find them abhorrent. The thing is though, no one really does want to see the reality of Breast Cancer. No one really wants to see our scars and lumps and bruises or listen to our fears or worries or even see our baldy heads under our cancer hats because it’s just too damn real.
There is a strong movement on Twitter – and I imagine Facebook too but I’m not on there – with the hashtag #BreastCancerRealityCheck. It’s bringing together all sorts of women from all walks of life who want to say how Breast Cancer has affected them. It’s not all about pink t-shirts, glittery fairy wings, telling people what colour underwear you have on or where you put your handbag. It’s not ‘going pink’ for the day then not bothering to make a donation, it’s not an ice bucket over your head or a cream pie in your face. It’s painful, true and sincere.
My #BreastCancerRealityCheck? Easy. The guilt I feel that my mum died and I didn’t.
So when you get faced with the next meme or comment about Breast Cancer being ‘one of the better’ cancers, or if someone asks you to send on a chainmail message ‘for Breast Cancer Awareness’ or if during your next breast check you find a worrying lump, look up the hashtag, look at the people – men too – who are affected daily by a disease which takes no prisoners, not even if they’re dressed in pink.
https://twitter.com/Baldybitesback
https://www.standuptocancer.org.uk
My mum died.
It was totally unexpected, one minute she was alive, well and living the sprightly life of a 76 year old, the next, dead. And guess what? It was cancer.
People have asked me if I had any clue – because the medics certainly didn’t – and I have the rather unpleasant feeling that yes, I think I did. Not because I’m party to any sort of special insight because I’m in the Cancer Club, no, it was just a feeling based on the several years of stomach pain she’d suffered and the inability of any medicine given to her to make things better. You know what it’s like; antibiotics will help a water infection, a hot toddy will calm a cold, Deep Heat will soothe a muscle strain, but nothing was helping her. Despite the copious amounts of peppermint oil, Wind-Eze and Gaviscon (to name but a few) she was downing every day, she was in pain, terrible pain, and she smiled her way through it, just like any good cancer patient. Except she didn’t even know she was one.
It was cancer of the colon, so not my pink fluffy booby variety (#BreastCancerRealityCheck), it was vile and nasty and ate her up from deep inside while no one was looking. In the end it took her so swiftly and violently that I am still in shock. I tried to put pen to paper but couldn’t. The tears would overtake before I could write the first word. I couldn’t spend time specifically thinking about her without dissolving – it’s still tricky that one.
Lots of people said how it was a good thing she was spared the horror of treatment, the horror of having cancer, that she would’ve hated to have a colostomy bag and lose her hair, that she might not have been strong enough to live through it anyway. Then I imagine those times she sat with me in the chemo ward talking me through my own hours of poisoning. I think of the things she got me, girly stuff like hand cream and nail varnish, to make me feel better about my deathly pallor and flaking skin. I reflect on her joking that one must always make the best of oneself even if one was bald all over with a bottom the size of a small country. I remember she was with me every step of the way throughout my illness and treatment when in fact the cancer was growing in her too. We had cancer at the same time. But only I lived.
Of course there’s a peculiar irony to it all; it’s just not very funny.
Soon after my diagnosis I blogged about the deal making process regarding my cancer, http://baldybitesback.weebly.com/baldy-bites-back/the-black-dog-gets-it and I’ve just re-read it. I am fearful that somehow I made a deal without realising it, that somehow, because I didn’t have all the facts to hand, cancer still took someone instead of me.
Cancer took my mum instead of me.
Survivor Guilt is alive and well in the land of pink death and it’s not a pretty thing.
This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and it causes some controversy; you might have come upon some memes about it on social media. I was going to copy and paste some of them here but when it came down to it I simply couldn’t bring myself to reproduce them, they’re so awful. For example, a picture of Angelina Jolie with the caption ‘Scared of breast cancer. Remove Boobs’, and the photo of a topless woman with the words ‘Support Breast Cancer, set the tatas free, No Bra Day’ and my most favourite, ‘Don’t let cancer steal second base’.
So what we’ve got is the belittling of one woman’s very real risk and worry, the suggestion that going without a bra for a day will erase breast cancer entirely and – finally – the sexualisation of the disease itself. These took me no more than two minutes to find online and as a Survivor I find them abhorrent. The thing is though, no one really does want to see the reality of Breast Cancer. No one really wants to see our scars and lumps and bruises or listen to our fears or worries or even see our baldy heads under our cancer hats because it’s just too damn real.
There is a strong movement on Twitter – and I imagine Facebook too but I’m not on there – with the hashtag #BreastCancerRealityCheck. It’s bringing together all sorts of women from all walks of life who want to say how Breast Cancer has affected them. It’s not all about pink t-shirts, glittery fairy wings, telling people what colour underwear you have on or where you put your handbag. It’s not ‘going pink’ for the day then not bothering to make a donation, it’s not an ice bucket over your head or a cream pie in your face. It’s painful, true and sincere.
My #BreastCancerRealityCheck? Easy. The guilt I feel that my mum died and I didn’t.
So when you get faced with the next meme or comment about Breast Cancer being ‘one of the better’ cancers, or if someone asks you to send on a chainmail message ‘for Breast Cancer Awareness’ or if during your next breast check you find a worrying lump, look up the hashtag, look at the people – men too – who are affected daily by a disease which takes no prisoners, not even if they’re dressed in pink.
https://twitter.com/Baldybitesback
https://www.standuptocancer.org.uk