A year ago tomorrow I received the potentially earth shattering news that I had been diagnosed with breast cancer. As I said at the time, nothing changed in that moment except my plans for the next few months and to a certain extent that still stands. My only addition to that would be that I now live in fear of various tweaks and aches and, through personal experience I am much more aware of how this disease can ruin and destroy lives. Not just those of the patient but their families and friends.
I've just read that back and it is wrong. I do not live in fear insomuch as that implies it is governing me and ruling my life. I am just more aware of these things and I get them checked out. Sometimes this is bordering on the neurotic but then I think that it is better to be safe than sorry.
Good things have come out of the last year. A greater appreciation of the little things in life. A rearrangement of priorities. For example, and this is just picked out of thin air because it has just leapt into my head, I am embarrassed to admit that I used to set a lot of store by Valentine's Day. It was incredibly important to me that I was shown love and appreciation on this one day above the others either side of it. Whether this was brought about by years spent at all girls schools where the florist made regular trips to the front door, alas never for me, or an inherent insecurity in my own attractiveness I shudder to think. This year, I found it so unimportant that I even failed to get Ian a card!!! Unheard of. If I need reminding that he loves me every day, regardless of which Saint is being celebrated (or massacred) all I need to do is remember his support, kindness and unwavering love during my treatment and recuperation. One thing that sticks in my mind is how careful and gentle he was when helping me walk to the loo (yep, dignity is something that vanishes pretty fast) when clobbered by chemo.
Another thing I have noticed is the different ways people deal with a diagnosis and subsequent treatment. I know I have been VERY upfront about mine (although slightly less frontage these days, oops and the dark humour is still there). Having said that I have fiercely protected my children from knowing exactly what was going on. We have not referred to the cancer by name in front of them, the chemo was called bad medicine and they helped pull out my hair when it started falling out (even though in retrospect this was not a great idea cos it made my scalp very sensitive for at least a fortnight!). Now I know not everyone is going to agree with our method of dealing with this in relation to the children but i do cling to the knowledge that each parent knows their own children the best and we knew that they were too young to fully grasp the situation so we talked them through the whole thing in stages as each thing came along.
The main reason we avoided calling it cancer in front of them was in case they went to school and mentioned it and another child said "oh yeah, my [insert any relative of your choice] had that and they died" thus completely freaking out a small person whilst at school where necessary reassurance was not immediately accessible.
After all. Two of the main reasons for fighting so hard were my children.
Well. That and my natural bloody mindedness.
I have recently filled in a form to detail other family members who have been affected by cancer. This entailed one full set of grandparents, an uncle and an aunt all on my Dad's side. I filled out the form and gave it to my doctor to send off. Two days later I had to phone them up to add my Dad to the list.
He is OK. He has to have a big operation and then chemo but at the moment the doctors seem pretty confident that they have caught it early which is incredibly lucky as his particular cancer is normally symptomless and usually only causes visible issues once it is too late. Thankfully Dad's one tumour blocked his bile duct so the gentle orange hue was a good indicator!!!
So 2013 is not going to go quite how we thought either....
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