Very tentative about this but here goes. I have been thinking about cancer a lot recently - mostly unresolved feelings welling up uncontrollably eg I put on some music to log into this site for the first time and broke down crying for a few minutes. Then my son came in to clean his football boots so I wiped my face, thought what I would say if he said 'are you CRYING?' ...but he didn't.
He's 17 and I had cancer before he was born, so you might wonder why I am writing this now. I cant answer that. The episode of my life I am writing about feels like a recent memory.
I lived in South London (Streatham Hill), and worked in North London (Tottenham), and I cycled to work every day. One morning I was knocked off my bike, and my hip fractured.
Two months later I was off crutches and off the warfarin. A month later I was cycling again and a month later I started getting sciatica. I saw an osteopath (Jeremy) who spotted an overgrown mole on my back. You should get your GP to look at that he said.
I hadn't used the NHS that much but had an impression that waiting times were long. My GP got me seen at St Thomas' in a couple of days - that was scary.
It was November - bonfire night and I was going to the big event in Lewes, where my partner's mum lived. But in the afternoon, I was lying on a … well it was a metal table...on my front, aware of the two surgeons who were taking a biopsy from my mole. I could hear their conversation - which had nothing to do with me and everything to do with their plans for the same evening. I could hear tissue being torn from my back.
They sealed me up again and off I went to Lewes. Felt Ok but later in the middle of a huge crowd, I fainted. That spoilt the evening for a few people who had to get back to my future mother-in-law's house and goodness knows what my future brothers-in-law thought about this rather unmanly man that had captured their sister's affections.
A week later I was back at St Thomas' discussing the biopsy. It was cancerous, 0.8mm deep and on the edge of the depth where they would investigate further. However they were doing a project to investigate these small moles - did I want to participate. Damn right I did.
A while later, I had the mole fully excised and some lymph nodes from each armpit biopsied. This showed that the cancer - which I now knew was a melanoma - had metastasised. (I have a love/hate relationship with that word). There was cancer in the sentinel node on one side. I was told this by the surgeon who had done the investigation. Great surgeon. Not good at telling people they have cancer. He suggested I sail round the world and gave me about two years. My Dad was with me and I remember his ashen face. It "should be me" he said. Strangely, I do not remember the reaction of my mum, despite the fact that she was more expressive than he was. A year later she was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease; she died in 2001, and I cannot help thinking that the shock of my diagnosis triggered something that started her disintegration. Oh god, here I go again - I feel responsible for her death. And oh god I miss her, I miss her still.
I'll write more soon but this is pretty exhausting so I will stop for now.
