And the update one now :
Hello, 38 and *touches wood* doing ok today, 2 and a half years after diagnosis
I am writing this to update my mind, to explain to myself where I am up to now, where I was and what I hope the future holds.
My breast cancer diagnosis was over two and a half years ago now and, other than tamoxifen, my planned treatment ended in October 2010. It has taken a long time to feel like myself again, both physically and emotionally. I didn’t realise just how much the treatment and shock had taken out of me, and it’s taken me a good couple of years to convalesce. It’s only when I’ve felt better that I realised how poorly and weak and vulnerable I felt.
I’m cautious about writing this update as it seems like I am tempting fate, asking for my cancer to come back by staring it in the face. It’s like I am challenging it in a funny way, and I really really really really don’t want it to win this face-off.
So, on that basis, let me just say that I am only commenting on how I feel now. I am marking a point in time. I’m not saying what might, or might not, happen in the future. I am simply updating my story to the present day, and dragging it on from the March 2010 horror.
So, in the last 2 and a half years, I have faced many things. Shock and horror at facing my mortality, eye to eye. Shock , because who would expect to do that at age 36. I have been through pretty nasty treatments, and been physically at a very very low point. You really don’t know how good it is to feel well until you simply don’t feel well, and can’t guarantee that you’ll ever feel well again. That was hard, not knowing if I was always going to feel this ill for the rest of my life. If I wouldn’t be able to look after my little boys anymore, if I was always going to be on the sidelines watching other people care for them and screaming inside that it wasn’t fair. I wanted to do it. They are my babies. How could this possibly happen?
Jealousy was another unwelcome visitor. Feeling core envy because your friends and family are perfectly well is a horrible feeling, because you love them so much. But part of you wants this to be happening to someone else, and for other people to have even a smidgeon of an idea of what you are going through. It’s so hard, because you can’t run away from it. You can’t make a decision to do a runner, as it will come with you, because it’s inside you. But you know that everyone else around you could walk away from it if it got too much. You hope they wouldn’t, you think you know they wouldn’t, but at your lowest physical ebb, as your husband is putting toothpaste on your toothbrush and cleaning your teeth for you because you are too exhausted to manage, you think “is this really what he bought into when he married me?”. And you grieve for the young, carefree girl you were, the one who could go to the cinema without worrying about other people’s germs infecting you in your chemo infection zone. The one who looked pretty and young in the mirror, not old, knackered, tired, bloated, sad, bald, and frail.
Anyway, I digress. Because the point of this is to update my mind, to make it realise where I am up to today, as it keeps flitting back to march 2010, like breast cancer ground hog day.
So what and who am I today? Well, I am changed from the girl I was in on my 36th birthday in February 2010. That girl was happy, even though she didn’t know she was happy. She also didn’t know she had a lump of breast cancer nestling in her chest, and the smiley happy carefree birthday pictures of her, her husband and her two little boys in the pool at centre parcs attest to this. But, all in good time, because two weeks later she did a breast exam on a Saturday night in bed, whilst her husband was downstairs watching Match of the Day, and she found a lump. And it was breast cancer. And that was when a line was drawn through her life, when there became a before and after.
So back again to the question, who am I now? I am a woman. The girl went, there’s no girlishness left now, I am older, I am wiser, I am less trustful and less naive. But I am also strong. This experience left me absolutely floored, empty, turned inside out. But I have carefully put the pieces back together, with help from family, friends but also the medical profession. I have had therapy to help me make sense of what happened to me. This has made me accept that I have not let my children down by allowing myself to get breast cancer. My main role in life was being a mum and wife and daughter, but mainly a mum. Mums protect their children, yet I was the bomb that went off in their midst. I am the person most likely to bring turmoil and grief into their happy little boy lives. And that sucks. It really and truly and totally sucks. But, and this is the important bit that I now accept, IT IS NOT MY FAULT!
The reality is that this thing happened TO me, I did not cause it. And in the circumstances with which I was faced, which I repeat were not of my own making, I did my very best, and it was pretty darn good if I say so myself. Yes, I felt rubbish, I looked rubbish and I talked rubbish, but my children came out the other end as lovely happy little boys, just as they were at centre parcs before the sh-t hit the fan. I looked after them myself or arranged for close family and friends to do so. They still got their favourite teas, still went to school and play school on time and looking as smart and presentable as they ever did (which wasn’t very…), their mummy still played with them and either picked them up from school herself on good days or was waiting at home to chat with them on bad days. We had days out to the seaside, to the park, for walks in the country, to Thomasland, stayed in hotels and ate McDonalds. I went to sports day,albeit in a wig. I went to the school summer BBQ, and we all had fun. I rearranged their birthday parties for "well"days and still made them homemade birthday cakes. I didn’t do their reading books as it was too hard, as my eldest son didn’t want to do them and I had no energy or inclination to fall out with him over it. It didn’t matter in the long run, he’s doing great at school now and reads really well.
I am terrified at the thought that this cancer might come back. In fact, I still find it impossible to believe that I , yes I, was diagnosed with cancer. That thought is just too big for my mind to process. And I don’t understand how I got it and why I got it, but I am gradually accepting that there are things we don’t have answers for, and it is wasted time to go over and over and over it in my mind.
I don’t want to waste time now. I half want to ignore that cancer ever happened, and not make my future life all about cancer if I can help it. But the other half of me really needs to accept that cancer did come to my door, and that I tried my very best to forcibly evict it. The signs are positive that this interloper has been ejected for good, but it’s a sneaky little bar-steward and you have to keep your eyes out in case it’s snuck past you, in a sneaky-ass way.
But the upshot of how I am now, at this precise point in time, *touching wood* and not tempting fate, is…happy, sometimes anxious, but happy, sometimes annoyed, but happy, sometimes sad, but happy, often proud of myself and my family, and happy. I really truly hope I can stay happy and keep these other emotions in check. I am functioning well as a mum and wife again, I am building myself up to return to work next year, I am planning my imminent house move, I am setting up a younger women’s support group, I am raising awareness and support for younger women with breast cancer, I am raising funds for my sons school and for the local breast care unit. And I am happy.
