WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Next, you sit and wait….
Something you have a lot of during a cancer diagnosis is time. Sat around waiting for scans, results, to see an oncologist, leaves you with nothing but time on your hands to think about Cancer. Loaded up with pamphlets and booklets when you are diagnosed there is no support group that welcomes you with open arms and gives you a big hug as you imagine there would be. You walk out into the stark light of the hospital waiting area, full of people with various ailments, none of them aware of what you have just been told. Just the tears in your eyes and the solemn faces of your parents and your boyfriend walking behind you that gives away something awful is happening. Then that’s it, your home, pamphlets in hand, to begin navigating your way through this shit storm.
Everyone deals with news like this differently, and some people just don’t want to know anymore than they need to. Being the eternal problem solver, and wannabe know it all that I am, this was going to be no different to every other problem or project I had tackled in my life, and I threw myself into research…reading, watching and listening to everything I could that gave me different perspectives on Cancer and health, to help start putting together a plan of attack. I wanted, needed to understand exactly what the numbers and letters of my grade 3 IDC ER8 HER2 (0) cancer actually meant!! All the FNA’s and LNC’s can be overwhelming but I had to understand otherwise I was in danger of spiraling.
Cancer is something we think we know about, this scary monster, that holds no prisoners, doesn’t discriminate. It is a disease we learn to fear, a disease that comes with preconceptions about what it looks like, what it will do to us, thanks to all the TV coverage that we sit and cry at during cancer awareness weeks. We watch with sadness at heart wrenching stories, of sick people being taken by this disease, how sad it must be to be in that position, “it could happen to any one of us”, but in the back of your mind you know it probably won’t. I was exactly the same. In reality I found only a bit of this image of Cancer to be true, and I actually came across more positive stories than not.
I’d scoured the internet looking for some sort of comfort, from like minded people, and didn’t find a huge amount. Granted there are loads of great spaces for young people going through cancer, or survivors of cancer, which offer great support, but not many young women, at stage 4, that where offering much hope in this crappy situation, so I reached out to some people I found in the same position and found more than I would of liked to be honest, and find more everyday, but there’s a lot of comfort in knowing there are tons of other people in your situation. Their faces aren’t posted all over cancer awareness adverts and TV campaigns because they look ‘normal’, they might have all their hair, they might not even be on chemo (shock, horror!) but their struggle is all too real and they are just as much the face of cancer.
The more I informed myself and began understanding Cancer, why and how it happens, and the REAL face of it, the less scared of it I was and the more in control I felt. More importantly I began to realise that no book of pamphlet is going to prepare me for what is ahead, or be able to tell me what is going to happen to me. We are all individuals in mind and body, and this has a bigger effect on how we deal with, and thrive with cancer or any other disease or illness, than any NHS statistic or booklet. There is so much beyond a diagnosis and conventional medicine that can help heal our bodies, and drugs administered by doctors for any disease are only one small slice of our healing options. Doctors, as incredible as they are, do not know about all of it, and nor should they. The don’t need to know about nutrition, acupuncture, natural medicine, the power of meditation, oxygen therapy, the list goes on…so the only way is to inform yourself, and hopefully as I go through this journey and document all of these, I can help other people make sense of all the things I have learnt.
So from here, I decided not to read, or listen to anything that wasn’t ultimately positive, always a big believer in the power of the mind, positivity is in and dismal stories and life expectancies are out. I am dedicating all this free time I currently have to exploring alterative therapies to help support myself, and no I’m not too embarrassed to say it, maybe even cure this cancer! Miracles do happen…..but if they don’t then at least I will live my future as the most well and mindful version of myself.
L xx
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