‘As far as we can see you are now cancer free’ my surgeon told me today.
Everyone is telling me this is great news. So why don’t I feel relieved?
We have been waiting for today’s post-mastectomy follow-up appointment with trepidation. This was when we would discover exactly what they found when they opened me up, including how many lymph nodes were affected and whether the cancer had spread to other parts of my body.
The potential for a devastating outcome felt palpable, and we were quietly bracing ourselves for news to that it had spread to other areas of my body, even for news that it was deemed untreatable.
So I would have expected, when the surgeon told me that the scans had showed now apparent evidence of spread to anywhere else in my body and that as far as he can tell I am now cancer free, to feel an overwhelming sense of relief. And yet I didn’t.
And despite lots of heartfelt, caring and welcome messages saying how relieved others feel, somehow I still don’t.
To me this is perhaps a tangible sign that I have finally stepped over the threshold into a different space. The club that no-one wants to be part of. The cancer club.
And through the cancer club lens, the world looks different. Somehow turned on its head.
Until I woke up this morning, I am not sure I had fully grasped my diagnosis and its potential implications for my life – even, bizarrely, following the removal of my left breast and all of my lymph nodes on the left hand side. Things have moved very quickly the last six weeks, and I have felt overwhelmingly strong and fit, and robust. My diagnosis has had an other worldly quality – almost as if it had belonged not to me, but to someone else.
But waking this morning I felt, perhaps for the first time, afraid. The last time I was waiting for a result was back in mid-January when I got the results of my biopsies, and my initial diagnosis. I was, perhaps a little strangely, not especially nervous before that call. I had been very clear in the lead up that there was no point in worrying in advance about something that was not yet a reality. In all likelihood it would be nothing – after all lumps and bumps are deemed to be a common feature for women on the menopausal spectrum. And at worst, I figured, even if it was cancer, surely breast cancer is easily treatable and curable these days? (I have since learnt that statements such as this really are of limited use – each woman’s cancer is different and it so hard to fall back on gross generalisations).
But this morning, I was struck by the difference this time around. Today, I could not even bring myself to contemplate the worst-case result. And the best-case result? I would still have a cancer diagnosis and be about to undergo a lengthy and frankly daunting treatment programme to mop up any hidden, lurking cancer cells, with no guarantee of a successful end result.
It was also the realisation that these results were not the only set of results that I am going to face. Today was not an end point. Instead, the realisation that my new reality is going to be a seemingly endless continuum of tests and scans, nail-biting waits for results, and follow up appointments. I am still only on the early steps of a long odyssey. There are many potential twists and hidden turns along the route, and one thing I have learnt from talking to others who have trodden this well-worn path before me – things rarely go to plan.
While rationally I can understand that this is broadly a good news day (although I was also told that 15 out of 20 lymph nodes showed signs of cancer – a high number…), there is a part of me that is still waiting for something else, a part that sees today’s results as somehow caveated and provisional. I am on guard still, and that feels harder to let go of.
So, for now, thank you for your kind expressions of relief. I hear and appreciate them, deeply. I respect that for those who care about me, this news has perhaps allowed you to put down some of the fears that you have been silently carrying, and breathe out a little. I am grateful for that.
But please forgive me if I still feel like I’m playing catch up. I will get there.
I can see very clearly that, to get through this year, I am going to need to learn to sit in and embrace uncertainty. Things will rarely be clear cut. That is my new normal, at least for the foreseeable.
Alongside this, I know I will need to learn to celebrate even the smallest of victories, however fleeting or fragile they might feel in the moment. On some days that might simply be that I get out of bed. On others it might be that I get the fantastic news that as far as my surgeon can tell, I am currently cancer free.
I have a lot to learn. One day at a time. It is the only way forward.
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