The next task in my cancer journey is giving the diagnosis to family and friends. I'm not looking forward to this but it proves surprisingly easy. I expect to get upset but I don't. I just give basic details and try to sound as positive as possible. Close friends and family are told over the phone, but we know a lot of people and I can't cope with ringing everyone. We mainly keep in touch with people by email anyway, most of our friends and family aren't local, so I send out an email and post a letter to the few who don't use email.
I'm not supposed to be going to work but it is coming up to the Financial Year End and I know there are a lot of important things to do. I've already been off over 2 weeks when I was only expecting to be away a couple of days. I go in on Friday 22nd March 2013, the morning after the diagnosis. I break the news to everyone and then go into my office and start working on a plan to get my work up straight by the night of Tuesday 9th April. The operation is on Wednesday 10th April, and I can see I am going to be struggling for time as there is the Easter break in the middle of all this.
What then surprises me are the reactions of everyone. Firstly I didn't expect such an outpouring of kindness. So many lovely cards, letters, emails, offers of help. And so many presents! Flowers, chocolates, books, magazines, music, cuddly toys. I feel quite overwhelmed, it's like several birthdays all at the same time. I hear from people I had not not much recent contact with, and it's lovely to suddenly find I have so much support around me.
Some people are shocked, completely unaware that all the tests etc were going to end up with a cancer diagnosis. Others aren't surprised, they had apparently expected this from the beginning.
After a week or so I am not feeling so upbeat. The phone doesn't seem to stop ringing and there are piles of letters and emails to answer. I am beginning to find it all stressful and some of the callers are not helping me at all. Some are talking to me like you'd talk to someone who has had a bereavement. I get unhelpful comments like oh dear didn't your cousin die of cancer? Or they tell me they know someone who had cancer, I enquire how are they now, and they say that the person is dead. A lot of the people who I thought would be most helpful are the ones that aren't.
A strategy is sorted out. Nobody but very close friends and family get to speak to me. Everyone else is told that I am resting and that it would be best to email or write. Emails and letters are answered with a standard reply explaining that I have been overwhelmed by the kind wishes of so many people that I can not answer them individually and that regular progress reports will be circulated.
I have by now selected a small group of people who I do want to be in regular contact with. They are either nurses, people who have had cancer, or people who can be guaranteed to cheer me up. It sadly includes a friend in America who has just had a diagnosis of ovarian cancer and is about to start Chemotherapy.
