Precisely two years ago I wrote my first blog. I had been for a long walk, I had kept my condition quiet, and I was half the woman I had been only months before. I was 43 and I had diagnosed with breast cancer. It turned out to be worse than the medics had first thought; it didn’t end up only being a tidy mastectomy and a pretty reconstruction – or a boob job on the NHS as we are so often led to believe by the idiots who think breast cancer is a good cancer – chemotherapy and radiotherapy came thick and fast because my cancer wasn’t contained. My cancer, the bastard, had spread.
I started blogging as a way of keeping people informed so that I didn’t have to keep on having the same old bloody conversation. How are you? People would ask, with the emphasis on are as if you’ve already been given the death sentence. I swear some people were even quite gleeful in the wait for my answer; how long has she actually got? Those poor children, losing their mother so young.
As it became clear that I wasn’t going to die – at least not imminently – people became somewhat dismissive of my condition. It’s not real cancer, then? My friend/mum/dad/dog/sister/brother/uncle/aunt (delete as appropriate) had it much worse than you. They died. Thanks for that. Thanks a lot.
You see, when we have World Cancer Day, as we have today, all this stuff is brought to our attention. We all know so damn much about cancer; that one in every two of us will get it at some point, that we all know someone who has died from it, that not nearly enough is known about how to stop it, that sugar causes it, that cannabis cures it, that lung cancer is the bad one, that breast cancer is the good one, that sunshine, bacon, wine, burnt toast and cheese will, eventually, kill you.
Show us the pictures of the bald headed kids, puffy and fat and going through chemo to try to make a difference to the death sentence their leukaemia has presented them with. Show us the tear stained faces of the mothers who have buried their children, the fathers who won’t see next Christmas and the widow who has lost her soul mate.
It’s uncomfortable, I know. It goes against our nature as humans to be unhappy (unless we’re having a suicidal moment, see last post) and we don’t want to see any of this misery. We want to pretend none of this is real; that it’s just an advert you avoid watching or a poster you try to blank out. But I tell you what, try sitting in the chemo ward sometime, see how uncomfortable that makes you feel.
We have to talk about this, we have to get the horror out there. I like the theme this year - #ActofUnity – it’s got some substance about it. And I really think we should be considering this more carefully. I’ll give you an example.
When I was diagnosed a friend of mine came to my house that very same evening, sat at my kitchen table and tried to persuade me not to have surgery but to use cannabis to cure my cancer. In the end I chose to take the conventional route – there was never any real chance I wouldn’t – but this doesn’t mean I don’t respect that friend and those views. Indeed, the atmosphere created by the incredibly modern smoking apparatus (gone are the days of the well loved bong or a pipe in the shape of an elephant made out of soapstone) certainly relaxed me! But the reason for me telling you this is that you never know, there could be something in it. Just like sugar could be the enemy or the cannabis could have some benefits.
The problem at the moment though is that no one is working together on this. There are pockets of charities and organisations all finding out bits and pieces but there is no cohesive method of attack. And there needs to be.
So to me #ActofUnity stands for much more than us remembering the people we have lost by writing their names on our hands or becoming angry about the cancer we have experienced. #ActofUnity is about these organisations, groups, academics, intellectuals, practitioners and researchers actually getting together in one unified body to begin to make a real difference to what’s going on in cancer world. By the end of today more than 450 people will have died of cancer in the UK[1]. 450! In one day! There needs to be no division of the support, no hierarchy of cancers, and much more listening to each other. I know, cloud cuckoo land.
But my reality is this; One woman in every eight will be diagnosed with breast cancer. I’ve counted my friends and I have more than eight, which one of them will be unlucky number 9?
Uncomfortable to read? Yes. But I make no apology. Only by facing this head on will anything ever change.
#ActofUnity
Find me on Twitter @Baldybitesback
[1] http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics#heading-One
I started blogging as a way of keeping people informed so that I didn’t have to keep on having the same old bloody conversation. How are you? People would ask, with the emphasis on are as if you’ve already been given the death sentence. I swear some people were even quite gleeful in the wait for my answer; how long has she actually got? Those poor children, losing their mother so young.
As it became clear that I wasn’t going to die – at least not imminently – people became somewhat dismissive of my condition. It’s not real cancer, then? My friend/mum/dad/dog/sister/brother/uncle/aunt (delete as appropriate) had it much worse than you. They died. Thanks for that. Thanks a lot.
You see, when we have World Cancer Day, as we have today, all this stuff is brought to our attention. We all know so damn much about cancer; that one in every two of us will get it at some point, that we all know someone who has died from it, that not nearly enough is known about how to stop it, that sugar causes it, that cannabis cures it, that lung cancer is the bad one, that breast cancer is the good one, that sunshine, bacon, wine, burnt toast and cheese will, eventually, kill you.
Show us the pictures of the bald headed kids, puffy and fat and going through chemo to try to make a difference to the death sentence their leukaemia has presented them with. Show us the tear stained faces of the mothers who have buried their children, the fathers who won’t see next Christmas and the widow who has lost her soul mate.
It’s uncomfortable, I know. It goes against our nature as humans to be unhappy (unless we’re having a suicidal moment, see last post) and we don’t want to see any of this misery. We want to pretend none of this is real; that it’s just an advert you avoid watching or a poster you try to blank out. But I tell you what, try sitting in the chemo ward sometime, see how uncomfortable that makes you feel.
We have to talk about this, we have to get the horror out there. I like the theme this year - #ActofUnity – it’s got some substance about it. And I really think we should be considering this more carefully. I’ll give you an example.
When I was diagnosed a friend of mine came to my house that very same evening, sat at my kitchen table and tried to persuade me not to have surgery but to use cannabis to cure my cancer. In the end I chose to take the conventional route – there was never any real chance I wouldn’t – but this doesn’t mean I don’t respect that friend and those views. Indeed, the atmosphere created by the incredibly modern smoking apparatus (gone are the days of the well loved bong or a pipe in the shape of an elephant made out of soapstone) certainly relaxed me! But the reason for me telling you this is that you never know, there could be something in it. Just like sugar could be the enemy or the cannabis could have some benefits.
The problem at the moment though is that no one is working together on this. There are pockets of charities and organisations all finding out bits and pieces but there is no cohesive method of attack. And there needs to be.
So to me #ActofUnity stands for much more than us remembering the people we have lost by writing their names on our hands or becoming angry about the cancer we have experienced. #ActofUnity is about these organisations, groups, academics, intellectuals, practitioners and researchers actually getting together in one unified body to begin to make a real difference to what’s going on in cancer world. By the end of today more than 450 people will have died of cancer in the UK[1]. 450! In one day! There needs to be no division of the support, no hierarchy of cancers, and much more listening to each other. I know, cloud cuckoo land.
But my reality is this; One woman in every eight will be diagnosed with breast cancer. I’ve counted my friends and I have more than eight, which one of them will be unlucky number 9?
Uncomfortable to read? Yes. But I make no apology. Only by facing this head on will anything ever change.
#ActofUnity
Find me on Twitter @Baldybitesback
[1] http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/cancer-statistics#heading-One