‘Show up. Breathe. Trust’ – this was my mantra the morning of my mastectomy.
Threatened by the potential for spiralling fears on the eve of an operation to remove my left breast and all of my lymph nodes in my left armpit, this clutch of clear ambitions provided me with a set of seemingly simple, manageable instructions for this first, massive step into the unknown. They were, quite simply, all I had to do. I could do this.
I told everyone that I met that this was my mantra for the day – the nurses, my anaesthetist, (who slightly threw me by responding that he would infact be taking the job of breathing away from me), my surgeon.
A plucky way of making small talk?
Perhaps.
A vehicle for self-soothing and reassuring myself that everything was as it should be? Absolutely.
Three weeks earlier my life-experience was cleaved in two by a diagnosis of breast cancer. A four-minute call (rather than a face-to-face appointment courtesy of Covid) when I was hit by a rapid-fire succession of belly blows:
- the biopsies that had been taken a week earlier showed I had breast cancer in my left breast and it had travelled to my lymph nodes
- I would need a mastectomy and full axillary clearance
- this would be followed by six months of chemo
- I’d possibly need radiotherapy beyond that
Nothing can prepare you for such a diagnosis. I had gone into the call feeling fairly confident that I would be ok. After all, I felt fit, strong, healthy and am somewhere on the menopausal spectrum - lumps and bumps are seen to be part of that particular package. I had not been especially nervous in advance, having told myself there was no point in worrying about something until you know it’s a reality.
But even when I knew it was a reality, it didn’t feel real. I still felt fit, strong and healthy. Nothing had changed.
And yet everything had changed.
Arriving at hospital at 7am on the morning of the operation and everything suddenly felt very real – albeit against the very surreal backdrop of facemasks, temperature checks and no visitors, again, courtesy of Covid.
Fear loomed large in the shadows, but my mantra held it at arms-length:
Show up – after all, nothing could happen if I didn’t show up…
Breathe – yoga has taught me the power of deep breathing to soothe my nervous system, and to be able face the here and now from a place of calm
Trust – this was not a situation where anything was expected of me. There was nothing for me to ‘do’. Instead, I needed to relinquish control to the team of specialists caring for me, placing my trust in their expertise and experience to do what is best for me.
Almost three weeks after surgery, and my mantra is, unexpectedly, still with me every day, developing a deeper resonance than a one-day valiant recitation. After all, the operation was just the launch pad for this particular odyssey, not the end point.
I have entered a new world, where nothing feels quite the same as it did. Nothing looks familiar. Everything feels uncertain and shadowy, most of all the future.
I am just at the start. I have no idea what to expect, other than the unexpected.
But I do know that I am going to need to accept the path that I am on.
I need to meet it face to face. Eyeball to eyeball.
And how to do that?
Show up. Breathe. Trust.
We’ve got this.
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