As you all know, I’ve only recently returned to work after a year on sick leave. I’ve decided to write this piece, as painful as it is for me, because I know there are others, like me, who have faced the unimaginable, and wondered how to begin living their lives again. Whether you are the sufferer, or the loved ones of those who suffer, it can often be the same. The helplessness and the vulnerability – a dramatic shift from life once known.
My first encounter with cancer was in 2009. I thought this was my biggest hurdle. Hearing cancer and my name in the same sentence. It was halting, terrifying and I felt as if my body shrank to nothing when told. Several surgeries later, it seemed I had won.
In 2013, a sore back sent me to the doctor and in turn I was ordered a scan to see if I had a kidney stone. My doctor asked me to read the report as I was leaving for a holiday the next day and my knees buckled under me when I read the word lymphoma.
I think I’m going to die. I see my children’s faces as I totally fall apart and realise I must find some courage from somewhere for them at least. I walked the next 9 months as if each foot was housed in a lead boot. Each step of fortnightly chemotherapy over 9 months was difficult and overwhelming. Unmanageable nausea was my constant companion for 9 long months. I didn’t die. I thanked God for sparing me and giving me a chance at life.
In 2016, after a scan and biopsy, I was told once again I had lymphoma and my only choices were probably death within a year or a stem cell transplant.
I remember having to tell my children and watching their hearts break. I remember falling into my brother’s arms and sobbing from my gut. Cancer could run faster than me and I was never going to win. I seriously considered no treatment. But constantly the tug of leaving the people I loved told me I had to face, as I’ve said, the unimaginable.
I had just met my two grandchildren. They would not remember me if I didn’t take this step. That scratched my heart so ferociously. I suppose I need not go on as this brief account of
my broken heart and all the broken hearts around me, explains what life had become. It explains what I had to address. And what others daily with harsher stories than mine must address. How to
begin living again when the trauma is over.
I would sit with my dear friend in coffee shops and say, ‘what are these people doing? Shopping? Thinking about dinner? Holidays? – as if tomorrow is guaranteed’. My heart felt as if I had no choice other than to just sit waiting to be told again that the disease that wants to kill me was back and what point was there to joining others in life.
As a therapist, I know all the platitudes and try to avoid them at all costs. As a cancer sufferer I have heard even more. Each to warm the heart of those speaking rather than being relevant to those facing the reality of imminent death.
I guess I want to speak to all those who have felt this “lostness”, and tell them I understand. As a therapist it has given me another dimension to what I know, and what the pleading eyes of those who suffer want others to know. They are trying to heal, and it seems impossible at first. But the human spirit seems to eventually find a way. A God given blessing perhaps. Who knows? I am starting to live again with the un-knowing of what tomorrow will bring. I can’t just sit and wait for what I fear. I want to try, and I hope this encourages others to try too. For those who love those who suffer, my greatest advice would be to just be with them. Listen to them as many times as they need to tell you how it is or was. This is how healing happens. This is what it is to love the broken-hearted.
I hope as I take one step at a time, one day at a time, I can start to heal. It doesn’t mean it’s not terrifying. As I now relive my story briefly, my heart hurts. But if I can’t raise my hand and say, ‘me too!’, life is unbearably lonely.
As the saying goes, sometimes you have to fake it before you make it. That’s where I am today. I’m trying. Each day a little more sunshine comes in. To trust in the first step was the hardest – each day is a little easier. One step at a time – one day at a time
