“And away we go!”
That’s what my year 8 chemistry teacher used to say as he launched into some kind of chemical explanation! Quite apt really, considering the cocktail of chemicals I’m receiving during this 48 hour period.
I’m coming towards the end of day one of my treatment for the invasive ductal carcinoma that I have been diagnosed with in my left breast and in one of my lymph nodes. Aged 38, fit, healthy and with none of the known risk factors for breast cancer, the events of the last month have been unexpected, to say the least.
The radiographer’s face was serious. She took a long time taking six biopsies, going to great lengths to ensure she’d got what she needed. After 20 years in nursing, I could tell she was being thorough – obviously to check it wasn’t cancer, I reassured myself.
I had been to the Nightingale Centre (breast cancer diagnosis and treatment centre at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester), six years earlier, to check out the same lump, in the same breast, and by lunchtime it had been confirmed as a fluid-filled cyst.
I didn’t worry about the process being different this time because I had already been told that single needle-biopsies and same-day analysis weren’t routine anymore.
Whether it was that wonderful NHS camaraderie that kicks in, when you attend hospital for treatment for yourself or a loved-one, or whether it was the fact that I seemed just “a bit too chipper”, the healthcare support worker, assisting with my biopsies, had compassion on me and asked me what I was thinking.
I said, “Well, obviously, I’m hoping it’s like last time.” She might as well have given me the diagnosis there and then.
“It’s not like last time.” She said. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to come back and have a horrible shock next week, but we’re worried”.
Life suddenly looked different. My eyes welled up and I got a lump in my throat, much like I had done 2 weeks earlier, the moment my hand brushed a hard lump in my armpit in the shower. I’d chosen to act, but not worry about it then, and in this pivotal moment, I knew I could choose again what my reaction would be.
I thanked her for telling me and as she left me alone for a few moments, I said to God: “Well Lord, so long as I know you’re with me, that’s OK.”
In that moment I chose to trust God, rather than get carried away with my own pre-conceived ideas about what “we’re worried” could mean, on all sorts of levels.
Since I was 21, I’ve had a strong Christian faith. My experience is that God is real. He cares and having Him in my life makes it better. Not necessarily easier, but definitely better.
One of the most valuable and life-giving things He’s taught me over the last 17 years is, that in most things, we have a choice. We encounter things in life and we can choose how we deal with them.
I think that is going to be what this blog explores. The choices I make on this journey. The fact is, none of us know how we will feel and what we will do until we are in a situation. I don’t know what’s coming. I don’t know what I will choose.
I’m not going to ramble on any more. Instead, for my own benefit, I’m going to summarise the choices I’ve made over the last month. I figure it might be a useful exercise.
- I choose daily, sometimes hourly and sometimes, intensely in the moment, to trust God. See above.
- I’ve chosen to entertain those thoughts you have before the scans, that the cancer could be everywhere. But not for long. For me it helped to prepare me mentally for what they might tell me. Dwelling on it and going down the path of fear wasn’t going to help though. It wasn’t going to change what they said.
- But you can’t help it can you? So I chose to verbalise it. I told my husband. And he counselled me that there was no point in worrying about what we don’t know. I chose to listen.
- I chose to give air-time to every well-meaning person who has shared the benefit of their experience of cancer with me. But I chose not to apply it to myself. Everyone’s got a story, but everyone is different. It won’t necessarily happen to me.
- I have chosen to be encouraged by the women I have met today who have coped well with chemotherapy. I have chosen to let that brighten my day and hope that it will be like that for me. It might not, but today that choice is helpful. I feel positive!
- I have chosen not to look at the statistics. What I don’t know can’t scare me.
- I have chosen to view this treatment as curative. I don’t know if that’s fact, but right now it helps.
- I choose to be honest, but encouraging, with my children, aged 9 & 10. I have chosen so far, to down tools immediately and make time for them to express themselves whenever they say they’re feeling sad.
- I have chosen to let my friends in. I’m an extrovert. Their attention is helpful. I feel loved and energized by them.
- I have chosen to let people help me. I know that when others are facing challenges, I want to help them. I choose to remember that being helped is not a sign of weakness. Allowing yourself to be helped is therapy for everyone who is affected by your diagnosis. We all just want to get alongside each other in life. I believe we’re made that way.
- I choose to count my blessings. I was diagnosed the morning after the Manchester Arena bombing. I was receiving a bombshell of my own, but my eight year-old daughter hadn’t just died unexpectedly at a concert. I have met women at the Christie today whose situations are far less-well researched and more complex than mine.
- Ahead of time, I choose to do what I can to help myself. This is where my dear friend, Dr Rosanna Montgomery, and this blog, come in. Rosanna has been reading-up on aspects of diet that could help me travel this journey feeling more well than I perhaps might. I choose to involve her. I choose to listen to what she finds out. And to give it a whirl! We’re choosing to try to reap some extra benefit from our combined 40 years’ medical and nursing experience (that includes both of our training, which we started in 1997) to explore whether or not this diet business is beneficial. We care about each other. We’ve got each other’s best interests at heart and so this will be an interesting and intimate journey for us, even though we live two hours apart. We don’t know what it will look like, but we’re choosing to try it and to document it. Who knows? It might help others think about what they choose in the future!
Over and out, while it’s still day one!
Helen xxx
