Having cancer can easily be a full-time job. Of course, you have it all the time, it’s not like a shift rota where you can get every other Friday off, but it really can be more than just passively having the disease. Or at least that’s how I’ve found it.
What I mean is that there is so much to do, take in, know, understand and deal with; there is scarcely time for anything else.
In the beginning, when you are in the first throes of diagnosis you find yourself caught up in a whirlwind where you are no more in control than a leaf tumbling over a waterfall.
In my case, I woke up one morning in February and felt a pain around my right pectoral muscle and thought that I must have slept oddly; perhaps with one arm above my head fending off one, or both, of the cats who cheekily like to sneak in onto our pillows whilst we are asleep and assume the mantle of a feline deerstalker. Rubbing around the area that hurt I felt something that has irrevocably changed me and my life. A lump. A large, solid lump at that.
Feeling utterly scared and doing what we all know is stupid, I tried to ignore it for the day but by the afternoon it was the only thing in my head and eventually I had to ask MOTH for a second opinion. Yes, he agreed, there was definitely something there.
Unfortunately, it was on a Saturday this happened and so I had to wait until Monday to call the doctor. There were no appointments available but when I explained to them why I was calling they fitted me in that morning. God Bless the NHS and all who work in her! The doctor referred me straight away and the next morning I got a call from the hospital with a date to see the specialist – in two weeks’ time. I’m not really complaining, two weeks is nothing compared to how long some people wait, but for me, at that time, it felt like two years.
I saw the consultant surgeon on a Monday; on the same day, she sent me for ultra sound and a mammogram and did a biopsy. On the Friday, we were back for the results. NOTHING will ever prepare you for being told that you have cancer. I heard the consultant’s words, took all the paperwork, even asked some questions – but I don’t know how – the world had turned to slow-motion fog. Back in the car I swore liberally, fully and for some time, then cried all the way home. Almost as bad as hearing the news – I now had to tell my family.
What followed was a full-on, high-paced assault course of appointments: CT scans, bone scans, mammograms, ultra sound, blood tests, consultant appointments injections and eventually beginning chemotherapy and this intense packed ballet continues as my treatment does.
As well as the physical appointments, there is keeping on top of what medications to take and when and what to then take and do to combat the side effects from those. (Side effects will be a whole different blog, or two or five!) I have a bag and a notebook that I keep my medications in otherwise I dare say I wouldn’t have a clue what was meant to be happening.
Then there is just getting through the treatment. My first three rounds of chemotherapy were with the drug known colloquially as TAX (I shan’t go into technicalities here.) Although there were some pretty horrible side effects I found that I only had two days in each cycle that put me to bed. But, last week I was changed to a different drug FEC (well, it’s three in one really, one of which being a derivative of mustard gas!) and I have found this one much harder to deal with. Sick, sick and sick would describe it only by adding a further; sick. On these days, the full-time job really was just to get through each minute, hour and day.
But there is so much more that can be explored to help you get through what is essentially a deliberate poisoning of your body: herbal help, diet, exercise, meditation. I have been compiling mountains of information on the such and my head buzzes with all there is to know and find out. There are not enough hours in the day!
There must be balance though and when you have cancer – life outside the disease still exists. I try and get bits of work done when I can, I do the shopping and cooking when not having a bad day, I see my darling family and friends when it is possible. I have often said that if it weren’t so horrible to go through, the process, from an outside point of view, would be fascinating. The idea that we have chemotherapy to essentially turn off cells (yes, ‘have you tried turning her off and on again,’ applies to humans as well as IT systems) and then they turn back on without the cancer cells doing so is an amazing, albeit scary, process.
I feel that when my treatment is done and I am on the road to full recovery, I will still be learning about all this and I hope that in some way, I will be able to do something to help other’s going through it.
In the meantime, I would like to ask you all to do something: please regularly check yourself. It’s hard to know what you’re looking for, I know; all I can say is, I, and others I have spoken to who have had cancer, all say, when you find it – you just know. So please, check. If you find something, don’t ignore it. Go and get it looked at. I know it is scary but trust me, life really is too precious to not do this for you and your family. A few seconds check in the shower could save you all of the rest of the years of your life – bit of a no-brainer really, isn’t it?
*MOTH Man Of The House