The years following the end of my chemotherapy were a strange mix of trying to be a ‘normal’ teenager, dealing with the onslaught of puberty and dealing with the trauma my body and mind had previously experienced. Coupled with this, I had deep family issues that weren’t going to be put to one side to accommodate this strange time for me. Things like that don’t just stop because you have just had cancer, life isn’t a film and sometimes cancer isn’t enough to kick people up the behind and sort themselves out.
It was a depressing time, and even more frustrating when for example people would actually question me about whether or not I had had cancer. One day I actually had to bring photographs of me in hospital to school to show a group of people who didn’t believe me.
Equally very difficult is trying to be a 13 year old girl with very very short hair and a figure like a boy because I had lost so much weight. I had friends, but the bullying and cutting remarks still continued, including ‘is that a boy or a girl?’ being shouted at me in the street.
One day, in front of everyone as the school had finished for a day, I was waiting for my car home and this boy who had it in for me, ran up to me, pulled my hat off, revealed my baldy head and stood there pointing and laughing, in front of about 300 people.
Until that point when I returned to school I refused to take my hat off, for fear of scaring people.
When that boy used my weakness to feel superior I realised that I had something these idiots were intrigued about, and I didn’t owe them a thing.
The next day and from then on I refused to wear my hat at school. I went to assembly, and I walked to my lessons without my hat on and people stared at my baldness but they didn’t question me and they stayed away from me.
It was a very empowering feeling to know that instead of hiding what I was very proud of; I was taking ownership of it and making it mine.
I’m not recalling this experience for pity, it’s just how it was for me at that time, and those are the facts. Once I owned the experience I realised I could use it to get me through anything.
The increasing awareness that I couldn’t talk to the people around me for a number of reasons became stronger and I became more and more frustrated with wanting to feel positive about it and acknowledge it.
When the physical elements of the chemo were over, that was apparently ‘it’ for everyone else.
Including my own father and other family members, who had previously made a lot of effort when I had cancer and now no longer did. That probably made the feeling of needing to talk about it stronger.
Cancer is an isolating experience, because each experience is different and all encompassing so not having my achievement acknowledged and not have me be seen for whom I really was, coupled with puberty was very confusing and frustrating.
For two years this continued, and why should other 13 year olds understand? It’s out of their comprehension and so it should be.
There is no way that the people around me could understand the gravity of what I felt and the mental impact that having cancer had had on me. At 13 I completely understood my own mortality and how valuable and fragile it is.
Despite the frustration I knew that this experience was making me who I was and if I wasn’t facing that again, I knew I would be fine.
It wasn’t the process of owning and feeling proud of having overcome it that helped me get it into perspective; it was meeting a great friend and becoming part of a very unique organisation...
