Dear cancer

Dear cancer

This day, one year ago, you came crashing uninvited into my life. Of course, you’d been silently and rapidly dividing inside me for some months previously – I just hadn’t known.

I can perfectly remember the moment that I was told of your presence. It was 2.20 on a Wednesday afternoon. The 13th of January 2021. We were locked down again, working from home, the kids home schooling. The house was full. I was expecting the call – though somehow not the news - and had been sure to clear my work diary for the afternoon. Just in case. I was fully anticipating being back at work within the hour though.

I chose to take the call alone in my study. I didn’t want Rob to waste his afternoon sitting looking expectantly at my phone with me. I remember tidying my desk and clearing away all papers while I waited. A subconscious understanding that something seismic might be about to happen. The sense of a potential, lurking catastrophe. A catastrophe which would instantly render my work’s clutter irrelevant and demand a clear mind and a clear desk.

The call, when it finally came, took only 5 minutes. The news delivered swiftly, coldly and somewhat clumsily – like the fall of a blunt butcher’s cleaver, severing flesh before hitting the block. A breaking knife, cleaving my life into two. A list of your still meaningless markers, a predicted treatment protocol – mastectomy with full lymph node removal, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, targeted therapy – a year of treatment, ‘we’ll throw the book at it’ she said…

But I’d stopped breathing at ‘you have cancer’.

The walk down the staircase, to Rob silently waiting at the bottom, his nervous face looking up at me, is etched in my memory. It lasted forever. And yet, not long enough. Each tentative step brought me closer to having to speak the news out loud and in doing so, make it true. Like gradually stepping down into a reality I did not want to be mine, or ours. A reality in which I had cancer. In which Rob’s life partner had cancer. In which our kids’ mum had cancer.

I felt acutely aware of the soundtrack of lockdown family life around me – the kids laughing in their rooms, the dull thud of a too-loud bass from the top floor, the clack of the dogs nails as she ambled carelessly across the cold hall tiles. The sounds of life, our mudane and precious family life, turned up to max and yet simultaneously receding into the distance. The sounds of the mundane and precious family life I was about to rupture.

I could almost smell the presence of death walking by my side.

You changed my life immeasurably and instantaneously. It’s true what they say – a split second is all it takes. And in that split second you halted me in my tracks and stole so many things from me - my plans, my health, my complacency.

It is hard to believe that was a year ago.

It seems to me that these last 12 months, you have bent time out of shape. The year has lasted for ever, and yet I don’t know where it has gone. I have achieved nothing, and yet I feel I have achieved everything – I have stayed alive. It has been the worst of times, and yet in moments, the best of times. I have felt an immense sense of loss, and yet I am feeling truly grateful for everything that I have gained.

You have taught me so much - about cancer, yes (ok, so I would have preferred not to be on that particular learning curve), but also about myself, about other people, about life.

In no particular order, here are is a stream of consciousness selection of just some of the invaluable things you have shown me or reminded me of this past year:

• I have a partner who loves me deeply – even when I am impossible to live with.

• I have three wonderful teenagers who love me deeply – even though they sometimes tell me otherwise.

• I count my blessings that I have not to be facing this by myself, with young kids, in vulnerable housing or without a job.

• I have many incredible friends - near and far, old and new - who have rallied around me, and have nurtured me practically and emotionally. I can not thank them enough.

• I am truly blessed with a wonderful family and family-in-law who have really had my back this year. Thank you all.

• There is a real comfort in resuming easy contact with precious, old friends who had slipped away over the years.

• When you are going through something long term (illness, depression, grief...), being asked 'how are you?' can be really difficult to answer. In contrast, being asked 'how are you today' (or if things are acutely bad even 'how are you right now') can feel like an invitation to share authentically.

• I have a crazy, mad dog with the softest ears, who brightens my days and brings me joy. Dogs know. They just do.

• I am not in battle with you. I am not a warrior. I am not fighting you. I am just doing whatever I can, day by day, to give my body the best chance.

• I am supremely grateful to live in a country where health care is free. Thank you NHS.

• I was fundamentally strong and healthy before treatment and that has served me well in coping with an aggressive treatment protocol.

• Chemotherapy truly sucks. It is a brutal treatment. But, for me at least, it was not as bad as I had feared.

• I have an understanding employer who has done right by me.

• I have too long neglected my drive to express myself creatively – this year I have found deep joy in printing beautiful fabric, creating healing sounds on my cello, and exploring my feelings through words.

• I can write.

• Positivity - and the demand that someone should maintain it - can be toxic, damaging and isolating. Dark feelings, fear and grief are an inevitable part of the cancer journey. Feeling them at times is entirely appropriate.

• Good friends are not afraid to sit by you when you feel these feelings. They don't run from the darkness.

• Yoga is always my best self-healer, mind and body.

• Living with or looking after someone going through cancer treatment is really hard and often thankless. Family and carers need support too.

• People who are ill still want to hear about your life. Having a diagnosis can be very isolating. If you stop telling them about your life, you isolate them even more.

• I have been forced to take a day at a time as I have gone through my treatment, sometimes an hour at a time. There is a deep freedom and peace to be found in not wishing life away by dwelling on the past or waiting for the future, but instead living in the present.

• Life is about savouring precious time with loved ones, finding the joy in small moments. I am trying to learn that less can be more.

• Guilt and regret are seriously damaging emotions. Choosing to put down these millstones is truly liberating.

• I am learning how to be kinder and gentler with myself – not making myself wrong for putting my needs first, even if it means letting others down sometimes.

• It's more than ok to say no, without having to justify yourself.

• I am slowly learning to sit with fear.

• Grief is a reaction to loss. It does not only happen to us when someone dies. It happens to us when things in our lives change. In every change there is an opportunity, but there is also a loss. It is ok to feel grief. It is part of being alive.

• And most of all, I have finally understood – at a deep level - that nothing in life, nothing at all, is permanent.

And so, Cancer, while I would rather not have made acquaintance with you, and wish that you had not found me, you have brought with you some important life lessons. For those, I can only thank you.

As I look forward to the coming year, I am choosing to dare to feel hopeful. My treatment finally comes to an end in March. I have managed it well, I am regaining my strength, and I am putting in place a protocol of self care to take me forward once treatment stops. I have everything to live for.

And yet I am secretly terrified of you. I am terrified to think that inspite of the treatments I have received, remnants of you potentially still lie lurking within my body. Cancer stem cells primed and waiting to spring back with a vengeance in the coming months and years. I know the chances of that happening are significant. I know that because of your particular nature, my red hot survival danger zone is 5 years. Today it feels damn good to have got one of these safely under my belt. But I know too that if you do come back I will be looking at stage 4, so-called ‘incurable’ cancer. That feels like a very different proposition from what I have faced this year. With stage 3 cancer, there has been a version of my future where you do not kill me. With stage 4 cancer, that version drops away, and that feels truly terrifying.

But all I can do is to meet my fear by trying to stay in the moment. I cannot know what my future holds. Not can any of us. All we can do is to meet the road that rises infront of us.

People try to encourage me that I will be 'back to my old life soon'. No, much as they may wish it for me, I will not be going 'back to my old life' any time soon, if ever. Life as I knew it has been transformed by the 365 days that I have just lived through.

But live through them I have and for that, on this gloriously sunny day, I am supremely grateful.

x