Laura writes…

What does a cancer diagnosis feel like?

One of my favourite Michael Bublé covers is “That’s life”, originally by Frank Sinatra. One of the lyrics is “…you’re riding high in April, shot down in May” – a line I’d never given much thought to until 2022 happened.

Here’s me riding high in April…

…and shot down in May:

I truly didn’t see it coming.

I mean, I wasn’t feeling quite right, but I couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong. I was managing a hectic full-time job, climbing mountains at weekends, socialising, looking for new jobs even, so my tiredness wasn’t disproportionate to my lifestyle. I’d woken up a bit sweaty a few times, but I also slept with my electric blanket on full blast. My occasional niggles – a sore left armpit one week, occasional weird twinges in my chest – were just that, niggles. Plus, we’d just been through a global pandemic and we were all sick and tired of being sick and tired.

I was ecstatic when an offer came for a brand-new job, my excitement tinged only by the presence of a strange sensation in my chest. I obsessively compared both sides and decided that yes, it was more raised on one side. I couldn’t feel a lump exactly, but my 2^nd and 3^rd ribs felt fused together. Weird, I thought, then pressed on with writing handover notes and chasing my landlord about the damp problem in my kitchen.

I decided to see a doctor though, just to be sure. “It’s definitely not cancer or anything like that,” she said. I was a fit and healthy 29-year-old, so I’d never even considered that it could be. After all, weren’t cancerous lumps all soft, rubbery, and movable? (Note: I was wrong about that, especially when in the chest wall, cancerous lumps are often large, hard, painless to touch and appear spontaneously.) “Probably costochondritis,” she said.

A couple of weeks later, when anti-inflammatories had seemingly caused more inflammation, I told a different doctor that not only was the lump still there, but that it seemed bigger too. Costochondritis was a somewhat random diagnosis, but she didn’t know what else it could be. I was sent for an X-ray, just to be sure. On the way home from the hospital, fat flakes of snow fell from a clear blue sky. Life was so strange.

A few days later, as I walked to the car after my first day in the new job, a call came to say that my X-ray was abnormal. My happy feeling disappeared in a puff of health scare smoke. The report hadn’t given any indication that it was serious – “looks like your lymph nodes, they could just be swollen due to an infection, or Covid” – but they were referring me for a CT scan, just to be sure.

The next morning, I was summoned for bloods. “It’s the standard battery of tests” the nurse said, “don’t worry about a thing”. I stared out the window and wondered which things I shouldn’t be worried about, given that I’d just been called in urgently for blood tests on the second day of a new job. I felt my life starting to split in two. I smiled in the office and made plans for the weekend, while the impending scan followed me around like a shadow.

∞

Then came the scan.

…

The day after, an appointment with a haemotologist “for more detailed bloods”.

I swanned in on my lunch break, convinced I’d walk out with iron tablets and an anaemia diagnosis. It sure was strange that I was sat in the Oncology & Haemotology ward, and it sucked for everybody in there, but I was just popping in briefly before getting back to my life. My scan results weren’t in, so we had a chat about my diet, then I went for more bloods in a room across the corridor.

…

Then came the phone call I overheard the consultant make to a radiologist.

…

Then came his voice: (“bring her back in here.”)

…

Then came the news: (“the reason there’s a lump in your chest is because you have a 9x7cm tumour.”)

…

Oh.

…

Then came the shock.

…

Then uncontrollable sobbing in the hospital car park.

…

When my tears ran dry, I was hungry, so we had a nice meal in a pub that overlooked a sparkling lake. The driver in front of us on the way home went frustratingly slowly.

…

ThencamethebiopsiesandscansandchestclinicsandphonecallsandstressandappointmentsandbonemarrowbiopsiesandMRIsandstaging
andbloodsandultrasoundsandpetscansandprognosesandappointmentsandlogisticsandpainandangeranduncertaintyandshieldingand
morephonecallsandgooglingandstressandtellingpeopleandmovingandconsentformsandmorebloodsandpainandnotknowingandthe
whirlwinddidn’tstopandthewhirlwinddidn’tstopandthewhirlwinddidn’tstopandthewhirlwinddidn’tstop.

∞

In movies, when people are told they don’t have long left to live, there is often a mad rush through bucket lists. Scenes of great love and joy run alongside realisations of how precious life is and declarations of how we must make the most of every single moment.

When my own mortality was brought into sharp focus I did not, in fact, make the most of every single moment. I quickly became obsessed with not wanting to be a bench and warded off this preoccupation by spending most of my moments reading celebrity gossip. Articles upon articles, anything I could find. I desperately wanted to escape a reality that was quickly spiralling out of my control.  

Cripplingly anxiety would occasionally pierce my numbness, making me feel like I couldn’t trust my body, my mind, or my feelings. If I knew my body better than anyone, how could I have been walking around with a tumour the size of a brick for several months? Was my body harbouring any darker secrets I was unaware of? None of it was real and yet the scans said otherwise. I felt embarrassed that I’d ‘missed’ it and wasn’t sure what to say to people, so I caged myself off until I knew more.

∞

I had a tumour, so that was bad, but the question of how bad is it going to be? loomed large.

Everyone said it was better to know, but there was something morbidly delicious about not knowing. The suspended reality you live in, where none of it is happening, where life continues. There is a loss of innocence that comes with knowing, because once you know you can’t unknow. Your mind may deny it, but the truth settles deep in your bones.

So you wait to know, and the waiting is excruciating in every way. Your life is dependent on what happens on the other side of the consultant’s door, or what the voice on the other side of the phone says. Everyone knows it and the anxiety infuses every single interaction you have. You can make the most of the day, of the hour, but the waiting elephant takes up the whole room, sucking out the oxygen and leaving you breathless and panicky.

One day, I received more updates about the status of my parcel delivery than the status of my insides. I rang the hospital to find out what was happening at the exact same moment my consultant called me. I missed his call and waited another hour for news. I was frantic.

“There’s nothing I can do to make this wait easier, the only thing that would help would be it ending” I gasped.

“You just said the answer then – it ending.”

And that’s when I learnt that the only comfort you have in this period is knowing that it will come to an end. Because the day of the appointment will come and go, because the phone will ring and the phone call will end. However you spend these torturous days, each one that passes is a day closer to the wait being over, for better or for worse.

∞

Not long after, my diagnosis: advanced lymphoma with 6 months of chemo ahead.

∞

Now I know that I couldn’t have seen it coming. I went to the GP as soon as I could’ve done.

Now I know that a cancer diagnosis is life changing in the long-term, but the day the news is delivered is just another day.

Now I know that in a matter of days, a cancer diagnosis irreversibly changes a person’s whole life.

Now I know that a shock diagnosis is a grief. You can be surrounded by love and support and feel utterly alone.

Now I know that distraction techniques are survival. You must be numb enough to get to the treatment, then to get through the treatment, then you can crumble. 

Now I know that waiting is torture and absolutely nothing can make torture feel better. Nothing. Torture in the sunshine is still torture. The weight of waiting is unbearable, but it is borne because the clock keeps on ticking.

Now I know that the pattern you’ve been given for the foreseeable future is chaos. You can’t balance chaos with no chaos. It will envelop you and your loved ones.

Now I know that the chaos will eventually subside. The deluge of bad news will morph into drips of news and the ship you’ve found yourself sailing on dark stormy seas will get to a shore.

∞

I know all these things now, but I didn’t when I was riding high in April or shot back down in May.

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