TEN YEARS ON FROM BREAST CANCER

They say that time is a great healer, and I’d agree that time has given me the space and distance to evolve new perspectives on my illness. When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, my daughters were just seven and five years old.

I can still recall very clearly the sequence of events as I visited the breast clinic for that first time, and yet it’s now much harder to remember the taste of that undiluted gut-wrenching moment when I knew with complete certainty that I had cancer in my left breast.

In my book, See the Colour in the Clouds, I talk about time as – the waiting game. We all know that time is a constant, and yet I’m sure many of us have experienced how time becomes elastic when our days, hours, minutes and seconds are suddenly plugged with uncertainty. It is then that time plays a harrowing role – playing ‘the waiting game’ for results of a scan, and the two weeks feels more like two months.

So here I am in 2022, and I am wondering how I feel about it now with the benefit of time. Time continues to heal my physical wounds, and continues to fade my scars, but I wonder about my mental wounds, and those of my family and especially my two daughters.

I know now, more than ever, that my daughters played a huge part in my recovery. The routine of family life, hectic as it was, became the glue that held me together and helped to make my days feel as normal as possible. I relished their chatter, those funny things they would say and do every day became little gems of magic that gave me the strength to push through those hard days.

Looking back I feel humbled by the way they adapted to such an upheaval in their world. As well as the many hospital appointments, being collected from school by friends at short notice, moving house to escape our building work, and seeing their mummy go bald – there were the days following a treatment that we could practically chart on the calendar – the sleepy days, grumpy days, tearful days, mouth-sore days, until finally the arrival of the much better, smiley days again. I think how bewildering all this must have seemed to them, and yet they soldiered on.

My husband and I were always very open with them, explaining why things were happening, guiding their thoughts, encouraging their questions and trying to answer them in a way that they could understand. But we never used the word cancer when they were so young. We felt it could be upsetting for them if taken into the school playground and taken out of ‘our’ context, so we used other words instead, like the ‘hurty’ that needed to be mended by the doctor’s medicine.

By early summer 2013, just as my eldest daughter turned 9 yrs old, I said goodbye to the chemo suite and the wonderful staff. Life gradually meandered back to a new normal consumed again by the daily rituals of school and work. Whilst I was determined not to dwell on this whole experience, I knew I was forever changed by it, relishing the simple things in every day as if I’d been blind to them before. I’d grabbed back my life but it was more precious and fragile than I’d ever realised.

Four years on, in November 2017 and a good friend told me I looked tired. That was enough to start alarm bells ringing, and for me to admit to myself and to my husband that I hadn’t felt well in a while. I was diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer – the same type in the same place. Those medical wheels were set in motion again; time played its trick on us and we walked the treadmill as if we’d never left it.

Facing up to cancer a second time was so different to the first time. There was definitely some benefit to feeling familiarity with what lay ahead, but I felt consumed by anger this time; the words ‘not fair’ ringing in my ears. Telling our daughters a second time, when they were older and more worldly-wise was one of the hardest moments. Now 13 and 10 yrs old, they were more self-sufficient and that would be helpful, but their emotional maturity brought with it a deep and very real understanding of cancer. Over time, through talking, (and through not talking until they were ready), we worked it out together, and as a family we fell into a new rhythm of life that embraced the influx of hospital visits, treatments and mood swings.

Just like when you walk up a steep hill, feeling exhausted as you keep peering up at the summit, so far off and daunting, and then you stop looking up but instead concentrate on small steps, one after another … and suddenly you realise you’ve made it to the top. We took it one step at a time and never looked too far ahead.

So how do I feel, now, today? I feel lucky for the love from my husband, my daughters, family and friends, and eternally thankful to the medics for their expertise, tenderness and respect. I still have days when I feel very acutely the permanent stamp that cancer has left on my body when I glance at myself in a mirror. And I have days when I feel old and cranky and wonder if it’s my age or if I can blame the cancer for feeling like this. But overwhelmingly, thinking again about time, I know how fortunate I was to have discovered my illness, both times, with time on my side. And I am full of gratitude, for my life.

I remember the intensity of anguish I felt in 2012 as I started on my cancer journey, desperate to know if I had a future with my daughters. Ten years on and my daughters will be 18 and 15 yrs old this year. I know we will never know for sure how my illness has shaped the people they have become, but what we do see every day is their strength, their independence, their compassion and a very mature sense of morality.

Looking back, I believe we’ve become stronger as a family, because of the hills we’ve had to climb. Let’s face it, none of us know what lies ahead. We’ve learnt to look at the positives in life and to appreciate the here and now. We laugh a lot, usually at the most ridiculous things, but it feels so good.

A few years after I finished my treatment I re-visited my diary and wrote ‘See the Colour in the Clouds’ using excerpts with pieces of my art, to evoke and visualise the events, thoughts and emotions throughout 18 months of cancer treatment. Initially I did it for myself as a means of therapy, but encouraged by my oncologist and some close friends I decided to share it. This is my journey—it is personal to me, but if I can help others through sharing it, then every step of it has been a journey worth making.

See the Colour in the Clouds by Stefanie Sixsmith
Published 30th November 2021 by Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

https://www.austinmacauley.com/book/see-colour-clouds

Post Views : 234