Now, this one might be a little controversial, and I understand everyone has a different viewpoint on this one. But this is just my own personal view and I'd never tell someone they were wrong for disagreeing with me on this. But, I HATE it when people use the word fight, fighting, battle, battling, etc to describe the relationship between me and cancer.
Everything you see in the media and from friends and family as you go through life refers to someone with cancer 'fighting' it. This never sat right with me but I didn't know how to express it. That was until the drama 'The Big C' came on television. I started watching it before I was diagnosed, or had even found the lump. And I think it was between a couple of seasons, or in the middle of a season I got my diagnosis and suddenly I was watching this program from a whole different viewpoint. It was still just as amazing, in my opinion, but it had changed and suddenly I was feeling more and sympathising and understanding the main character more. And then in one episode, she came out with a line that made me audibly gasp and say 'Yes!'. Let me see if I can google the exact quote..... Nope! Apparently my googling superpowers have left me today and the internet has won. For now.
Anyways, the idea was that calling this relationship a fight or a battle means there is always going to be a winner and a loser. Now obviously, everyone wants the person to be the winner, but what happens when that isn't the case? When the cancer wins? That makes the person the loser. It conjures ideas that they just didn't try hard enough, and that if they'd just fought harder then maybe they'd have won. And you do hear it being said 'they lost their battle to/against/with cancer', so you end up dying a loser. And I just hate that idea, or for that to ever be said about me or someone I know and care about.
Also, a battle or a fight is a really angry, rage filled, violent, bloody, and negative thing. And while a lot of those emotions and feelings are spot on the nose, I don't want to think about this part of my life as negative. If this is the winding down of life for me, no matter how slow and drawn out it is, I don't want to think about it negatively in the whole. And even if this isn't a winding down and is just a stage - fingers crossed - I still don't want to look back on these years as a battle or a fight, because that's not what I feel this is. I have nothing to punch, nothing to bite, nothing to scratch or kick (I'm such a girl!). There is nothing for me to look at and verbally fight with, because it cannot retaliate verbally, or physically reach out and smack me back. So even if I found some inanimate object to smack the living daylights out of, that's not a fight - that's........ bullying? I guess.
So how do I look at this? I look at it as a relationship and a journey, just like everything else in life is. There are ups and downs, as with everything else, and there are choices to be made. Choices on what treatments to have or not, choices on how to let myself feel, choices on which days do I give up and which days do I decide to plough through, choices on whether to eat that salad or eat that cake (cake more often than not wins that choice let's be honest here!). People say I'm brave for the way I just get on with life regardless of everything going on, but I honestly don't feel brave. I made the choice to not wallow in self pity as these people seem to think I would, I chose to continue on as normally as possible, because why wouldn't I? Are they saying that if they were in my position they would just curl up in bed and stay there until it was over somehow? (Don't get me wrong, I have quite a few days where getting out of bed to pee or eat is the extent of it. Everyone needs duvet days in their life - they would just be made better if there was a nice looking man there to wait on me and fetch me the food from the kitchen downstairs! Self sufficiencyindependence/the single life can be well overrated)
And then there's the fact that actually, this journey so far hasn't been filled with only negative experiences. I'd hated my job for a while, but I was too tied in and tired to be abe to find another, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. Then cancer came along, and in my worst moments, where my head was all over the place - I baked to ground myself. It switched off my brain and let it relax as I focused on whatever I was making. Then it clicked, if that was what I went to in my worst moments, why would I not want to do that as a career? So listening to my oncologist, and how things looked to be going, I made the decision to enroll at college and took a two year course to retrain as a professional baker and patissier. This then allowed me to go to France one year and then Iceland the second, for three week work experience in both places. It was hard work, harder than anything I've done before because of my health and the restrictions I now have through pain etc. But I wouldn't have had that opportunity without having cancer. My health did take a turn downwards though, and so the plan didn't get all the way to where I'd hoped - but I finished my courses with a distinction and am fully trained. Just still unable to work dammit.
I've also started making toys, hand sewing them whenever the feeling takes me and I love seeing what comes from the flat cloth. Each toy has its own personality, usually from the mistakes I've made when putting them together, and individual looks. Even using the same pattern creates completely different toys each time, and the joy on kids and parents faces when they get them is something to see! I've also manageed toget around to making a garden. I've always loved plants and flowers, seeing things grow. But here, I have a concrete slab out of the back and a gravel pit in the front - nothing inspiring, and before I had no time to actually work out what I wanted to do in there. Now, my back is still the same but I have plans to try and get some friends to build a frame over the top of it all, to then be filled with earth, and then planted with hanging flowers and fruits. So you can walk or sit underneath and have the sun streaming through the leaves and colours of fruit and flowers, and perhaps reach up and pick a strawberry and pop it in your mouth. While out the front there is a complete transformation. I have a flower bed with a palm and a fuchsia in it, planters down the path filled with a variety of things, a wildflower patch under the random fir tree, and then pots that fill the gravel pit with fruits and flowers and trees. I've also got margarine tubs and pots filled with seeds to see what I can grow from nothing. I have an avocado tree growing, planted after lunch one day on a whim and is going great guns. I have two baby pine trees popping up, and a few other seeds and saplings poking their heads through the earth.
The house is a mess, I am a mess, I can only find 5 or 10 mins of energy to do anything before needing to sit down and relax my back/hips/all of me, I have treatments that make me feel ill and leave me 'reduced' for over a year as everything tries to get back to an equilibrium that works (ish). But I'm finding joy in little things, and changing my life for the better - even if it is just eating that cake and saying stuff it. And to me, none of that sounds like a fight. It's just a more testing time in the whole journey of life. In my opinion only of course.
