Being Sarah
Continuing a true story about choice, control and breast cancer.
A ‘normal’ day
Posted: December 22, 2011 | Author: Being Sarah | Filed under: Breast cancer, Psychological impact of cancer | Tags:anger, boxing, cancer, colon cancer, diagnosis |1 Comment »
M's home-made mince pie
Imagine this as a film. There I am having a ‘normal’ day. I eat breakfast, crumpets with Marmite and cranberry juice; cut to my friend M in hospital, changing into a gown; then I’m walking down the road, to the hairdresser; M is having a CT scan; me chatting to my hairdresser about my hair, her baby, her plans for Christmas; then M is having an MRI scan and ringing her colorectal specialist to see if they have the results of her biopsy for suspected colon cancer.
The day before, I visited M at home. On her front door there’s a wreath of green yew, decorated with fir cones and an artificial robin. M is sat in her cosy lounge doing her Christmas cards, her little doggie asleep in front of the log fire. Fairy lights twinkle above the mantlepiece which is decorated with Christmas ornaments, shiny red apples and pears. Her partner is sitting in an armchair in his slippers reading the Radio & TV Times Christmas Edition. M offers me home-made mince pies and chocolate truffles. It was just so ‘normal’. We talked about possibilities, but they were just possibilities. She thinks she will get her biopsy results the next day, but is not sure.
So today it’s scan day and maybe ‘results’ day too. After I come back from the hairdresser I send M a text:
‘Hope you are OK, I always find scan days very draining. x’
Two minutes later my phone goes. It’s M. I have to resist asking her straight out, ‘Is it cancer?’ She tells me the details of the hospital and that she was very aware of her name being mentioned at the reception desk, and hearing that the colorectal specialist wants to see here when her scans are done. I remember moments like that. You hear your name. You are in a cancer clinic. Shit, it’s probably bad news.
So, yes, M does have colon cancer. Her normal Christmas – if there was any chance of her having a normal Christmas – is now completely blown apart. Whilst her cancer diagnosis may pierce or puncture my world right now, it comes like a bomb into hers. Lives are not touched by cancer, no it’s a much heavier blow, the fall of a hammer.
‘I am so, so sorry,’ I say to M over the phone. I can feel the tears. ‘I’m just really sorry.’ Because the thing is, as I wrote before, I know. I know what a cancer diagnosis is like, I know how tough treatment is, the decisions, trying to make the ‘right’ decision when the statistics look terrifying. I know all that. She tells me what she knows about possible treatments and surgery, but nothing is definite, not until she has all the scan results, until she sees her specialist in the new year. Everything is delayed because of the ‘holidays’.
After I come off the phone I feel sad. I’m just about to go out to meet two girlfriends at the boxing gym for some fun. It’s only the first proper week since surgery that I’ve been able to do my ‘normal’ activities, and I like being physically active. Maybe I won’t go now. I’m upset. ‘Hell, I think, ‘I am going. I’m not going to let cancer stop me.’ Cancer – M’s cancer – has become an enemy, something that’s trying to spoil my ‘normal’ day. I’m not going to let it. I shove my boxing gloves into my rucksack and leave the house. It’s a cold, grey day and it’s starting to go dark. I run across the park in the gloom, listening to Elton John and Leon Russell (an iPod favourite). I’m breathing deeply, and then I realise, I’m actually crying. Not just weeping a few tears, but deep, lung-wrenching sobbing. I’m so angry. That cancer has turned up like this. Angry with cancer, not angry with M; I’m scared for M. I run up the small hill, a sort of mound, at the edge of the park and make myself run so hard I can’t think about anything else. I want this time now for me, not cancer.
I arrive at the gym and everything is forgotten as I punch and concentrate. I’ve written before abouthow much I enjoy boxing, the physical and emotional pleasure I find here. Sure enough, it’s there today.
Running home I take a different route as it’s dark. Thoughts of M are back. I’m trying not to cry. As I come up the road nearly home by the park I go through the black metal gate on hinges and I swing it hard so it shuts with a very loud ‘clang’. That feels good so I do it again.
M’s diagnosis reminds me, very deeply, of my diagnosis day, or D-day as I came to think of it – now nearly five years ago. I’ve learnt to live with the fear, the fear of recurrence, the possibility that cancer will return to my life. To take pleasure in ‘normal’ days. To remind myself that life is good – now – and that I don’t have any control over the future. That’s ‘normal’ for me.
So on M’s D-day I get the ‘normal’, or my ‘normal’ day. What’s M left with? A million questions, no answers right now and scared of dying.
That’s all so crap.
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I don’t know if M reads my blog or not, she’s never told me. But if M finds herself here then please visit the comments on the previous post I know - I wrote this after you gave me ‘some news’ – and please read the lovely supportive messages from people all over the world sending good wishes to you.
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One Comment on “A ‘normal’ day”
Yep…it’s all just total crap…..I hate that M has to wait until after “the holidays” to get all of the facts. Seems rather cruel to me. But that’s cancer isn’t it? Never convenient and always cruel.
- http://beingsarahblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/a-normal-day/
