This is just one on the many inspirational stories out there of survival and hope.
The feelings of love and support that bring family’s together to fight off the cancer and to go on to live a happy and fulfilling life.
It sounds melodramatic to suggest that cancer is some sort of dark spectre that hangs over you and your family but to some degree it really does feel like that.
Cancer is like the unwelcome uncle that comes to stay in your family, ruins Christmas and that you can’t ever really get rid of.
Cancer means that you don’t take time or life for granted any more. Maybe that’s the good thing that comes out of it.
YOU REALLY LEARN TO LIVE YOUR LIFE
They say that 1 in 3 people are affected by cancer in their lifetime. We’d been lucky – it had never touched our family.
At Christmas 2005 I was eight months pregnant with my first child. Unbeknownst to me my mother had found a breast lump some weeks earlier and visited her GP. The GP had immediately referred her to an oncologist. Mum was lucky – she had private medical insurance, which meant that she didn’t have to battle the NHS waiting lists.
The oncologist, Dr Hall, carried out an ultrasound, a mammogram and then, finally, a biopsy. Mum hadn’t told anyone at this point. Being a mother herself she “didn’t want to worry anyone.”
In January 2006, just one week after I’d had my first baby, Mum asked me to go with her to see the oncologist. Even then she glossed over it, saying it was probably nothing.
Unfortunately it wasn’t nothing.
It was cancer. And it was already at stage 3a.There was a total of four breast lumps and also cancerous cells in the lymph nodes. A mastectomy was recommended and an immediate appointment with Mr Rains-bury, the breast surgeon, was made. He explained that they could carry out breast reconstruction after surgery but Mum felt that, since she was already in her late 60s, that wasn’t something that was necessary for her and that she’d rather mitigate all the risks.
After surgery, chemotherapy started almost immediately.
The irony of sitting in the waiting room, breastfeeding my baby, whilst Mum had chemo for breast cancer didn’t escape me. She had the option of a cold cap, to try to delay the inevitable hair loss, but after one session it gave her a headache, so she went without. And she couldn’t stand how wigs made her feel – so she rocked the bald look instead!
The chemotherapy made her nauseous and tired, but she felt that she’d actually gotten off quite lightly compared to the reaction that some people had to the cocktail of drugs. However, she refused to rest. I think that she felt that if she gave an inch, the cancer would take a mile and she couldn’t afford that.
The radiotherapy department was at a different hospital,
so my siblings and I took it in turns to take her down, sit with her during the treatment and then bring her home again. For all its bad points, cancer really brought us together as a family and we rallied round.
Having cancer in real life is not like it is in the movies. There is no big celebration once your treatment is over. No one announces “Oh, you’re in remission!” or “ You’re cancer free” or anything like that. Time just starts to pass normally again and the more time that passes without any symptoms is a good thing.
But the doctors will never tell you that you’re clear of cancer because they can’t possibly do that. Cancer is too much of an invasive and insidious disease for the doctors to say that you’re in the clear. So the fear of it returning remains with you all the time. Every ache or pain you feel, you think that maybe it’s the cancer back again for a return visit.
Mum has yearly checkup with the oncologist and she still has mammograms and chest x-rays, blood tests and check ups and so far there hasn’t been any sign of the cancer returning but we also know that there’re no guarantees. It’s been seven years since her treatment and so far all the signs are positive.
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