So how did it go? It’s all been fine, more fine than I could have hoped for actually. My colleagues are the best, the kids are fab and I’m glad to say I’ve properly enjoyed being back. I particularly enjoy being part time and leaving at 1pm which gives me a couple of hours to do whatsoever I please, which I have to say has mostly been being exhausted. I’m totally bloody knackered. But mostly it’s all good.
Yet I am melancholy in mood today. Tomorrow I have not one but two appointments at the hospital. What joy.
I don’t really know what the appointments are for, which is odd because normally I know exactly why I’m attending the place I came to love and fear all at once. I’ve got one with the breast unit and one with oncology and I don’t know what they’re going to do. Will I be scanned? Mammogrammed? Blood tested? Or even more scarily, will I be dismissed?
That day of my last radiotherapy – when I skipped down the corridor and sped out of the car park before they caught me and told me to come back – that day was seminal. I had left the hospital, I had left the invasive treatment, I had left the needles, the poison and the pain (mostly) behind. I had left the dreaded A12, that place peopled by the sick, the sad and the desperate. That day, and for the last couple of months, I wasn’t one of those people, I was better, because I was healed.
But also that day I learned a new fear; the fear of what happens to my body while it’s not being treated.
As long as I was having the chemo and the radio I knew the cancer was being kept at bay. Once that treatment stopped, well, couldn’t those tiny little cells start having their fun again? How did the medics know I wasn’t walking out of the hospital only to play host once again to a load more of the indiscriminate little buggers looking for someone’s life to cock up? My last scan was before my surgery and I understand that I wasn’t scanned again because as far as they were concerned all the lumps had been got rid of, the treatment was just to mop up any stray cells which of course didn’t actually exist but, you know, just in case.
I’ve never been given an all clear. I don’t think I ever will be. Breast cancer isn’t as simple as that. Not many cancers are. They got the lumps, yes, but the cancer had already made one jump, who’s to say it didn’t lay low during treatment ready to ambush when the coast was clear? No one can answer that.
I’d like to have a mammogram tomorrow. I want someone to look inside my boobs – the old one and the new one – and see if there are any unwanted guests there. If I don’t have one tomorrow, when will I? Will it be another year before I’m invited? I don’t know – my head is full of questions – none of which I’m likely to remember when I’m in the thick of it all tomorrow. I want to ask about the pains I get, the itching sensations, the pros and cons of bras and do underwires really cause cancer? What about if I suddenly develop a cell that isn’t oestrogen responsive so the Tamoxifen doesn’t have an effect on it? What if it spreads? How will they know? How will they keep me safe?
The fear of cancer returning is something I’ve talked about before but this fear is slightly different. This fear focuses on me being in treatment – or not. It’s feels a little bit morbid but I think you’ll probably get it. While I’m under the watchful eye of the medics surely nothing can go wrong? Of course, this isn’t strictly true.
I lost a friend in the summer; she was a new friend. She was my age, funny, bright, creative, lovely. I met her in the chemo ward while we both had the poison injected and we used to laugh at ourselves, our lack of hair, our silly moods, our food cravings. We didn’t talk much about the dark side, we were too busy being hilarious and sticking two fingers up to chemo. I was looking forward to her becoming my proper friend, a long term friend, a survivor friend who I could grow old with and we could look back at these awful times and hold each other’s hands and say ‘Shit, that really was awful wasn’t it? But look at us now! Aren’t we lucky?’
But she wasn’t lucky. One time I went for my chemo and she wasn’t there. A few weeks later I was told the cancer had got the better of her and she’d died. She left behind a little girl and a husband who loved her more than anything else in the world. And, from what I gathered, more friends than could fit in the building at her funeral. We won’t be growing old together now.
So even the treatment doesn’t keep you safe. I don’t know if there’s anything that does.
Sorry, I’ve not made a lot of jokes today; I might have picked the wrong time to write. I might have been putting off thinking about this stuff and now spewed it out here it for all of you lucky things to enjoy. I might have shed a tear while writing this, for my friend, for my loved ones, for other friends, for strangers and for myself. I might be ‘better’, but I’ll always carry this.
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Raise funds and cheer yourself up by watching the silly 20 second clip below.
Move a mile however you can - run, swim, cycle or even use a rowing machine. Film a short clip of yourself, and when you’re done nominate 3 friends to do the same by sharing your video and texting MILE to 70200 to donate £3 to Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life.
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