Ep.47: Cancerversary

It’s a year. A whole 12 months. How can this be? I know dates and markers in the sand don’t really mean anything, but we reach for them and wrap them in sparkly-papered significance all the same, presumably because we have something we feel is significant enough to dress up.  But I’m not sure quite how to dress this up, how to mark this cancer-versary.  How do you commemorate an event singularly lacking in sepia-tinged charm?

While I push this thought around Facebook throws a memory at me, not of my walk into the breast clinic on 15th January 2020, the needle punch into flesh, the pull of that small cylindrical slither of tumour, instead it’s a picture of a woodland landscape, Daviot woods, heavy with winter. I’m sitting on a track inches deep with snow, feet in front, knees bent, hands back behind me.  I’m refusing to get up, it’s all I can do not to throw myself down and have a complete hissy fit, the toddler in me is itchy with it.  I’ve almost certainly just thrown my water bottle because I remember having to wade through even more gorse covered snow to retrieve it which only deepened the huff. David stands to one side, holding our bikes, relaxed, you can’t see it from this angle but he’s laughing, alot. On this completely insane club ride I didn’t take my inability to stay upright terribly well and the more I fell, the more cross I got, the more David laughed.  Was that really only 4 years ago?

I tap the photo then zoom in, closer then closer still, close enough to imagine stepping lightly through the frame to drop down quietly beside my sitting form. The snow cushions my fall, and I do fall, my balance is off these days.  The temptation to ball up the snow and throw it at myself is irresistible, especially since I know it would tip my digital half into meltdown.  No wonder David finds the huff so funny.  I do too.  The scene is postcard perfect, a Narnia, the only blot is my scowl. I want to gently reach out and stroke it away, whisper in my own ear not to be so daft.  I feel an inexplicable tenderness for that younger me, a nostalgia. 

I try to stay with that soft thought but there’s a whine building from stage left, a voice muttering that this is yet another bloody photo of how marvellous it all was before cancer bla bla bla (yes even though it’s a picture of me in a foul mood!).   I start to quantify just how much I’d give to be back there, how much I’d love for the biggest problem in my day to be whether I face plant in another gorse bush before the end of a ride.   Even that personal tenderness turns to annoyance, why was I so stupid, so childish, why not just enjoy the moment instead of sulking in the snow, didn’t I realise how lucky and healthy I was?  

Stop. Enough. I am sick of hearing my inner voice bang on about fecking cancer.

I’m starting to wonder if I’ve ploughed an unnecessarily negative furrow for myself.   More and more my default seems to be that I look at photos from the past, before I had cancer, and instead of allowing myself to enjoy the memories they conjure up, I’m letting the positive thoughts get eaten up by the idea that life will never be as good again. All I focus on in every photo – and we have lots, they cover the walls of the kitchen - is the sense that i had no idea what was coming my way.  As a consequence, each dip into the past is tinged with pain and regret, a curious mix of sentimental longing seasoned with resentment.  I know this isn’t healthy and I start to wonder if there’s a different way of being.

When the term nostalgia was first coined, (back in the late 17th century by a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer if you’re a detail geek like me), it was used to describe a disease, an illness suffered by Swiss mercenaries fighting far from home.  But 300 years later when nostalgia was studied in the lab, far from being a mental disorder researchers found it had a positive effect on us, looking back at moments which meant something makes us feel good, because those moments were good!

At the moment its almost as if I actively avoid nostalgia, refuse to let myself enjoy the past or get fuzzy and misty eyed over fun times we’ve had, but maybe I’m missing a trick.

You know how we do that thing when we see a photo of always looking at ourselves first, me, me, me?  I do that too, but what I see is totally blinkered because all I see in those images is a woman without cancer. Correction, a woman who doesn’t know she has cancer, the cancer could have been there for ages.  But while I give cancer, even in its absence, centre stage, its obscuring the bigger picture.  One of the reasons we get nostalgic is it reminds us that we have friends, family, love, laughter, special moments, good things that happened, look past your own image and you see the context.

With this new idea in mind I wander over to look at the wall above the stairs to B’s room.  I try to look at the pictures with a new mindset, focus on what the photos represent.   There’s a wonderful photo of David and his brothers.  It was taken the night of a cancer charity event, just 2 weeks’ before my mastectomy, but instead of remembering why that night was so hard I focus on their brilliant smiles, the remarkable closeness they share; in another photo we’re cycling up The Mall in the heart of London, 7 of us crossing the finishing line together at the end of 100 miles of support, laughter, friendship, companionship, determination.  There’s Alison and me, grinning like idiots because we’ve just completed the Mallorca 167 sportive and there 4 of us are finishing the beast race and I’m laughing so hard and so covered in mud I can hardly stand up.    Photo after photo of love, laughter, daftness, joy and so much friendship and support. 

Cancer has stripped none of these things from my life.  Not one.  In fact, it’s brought even more of all of that to our lives.  And with that thought I realise it’s safe to look back, its ok to enjoy the past and by allowing myself to do that I’ve gone and reminded myself how fucking brilliant all our friends and family are. 

I need not fear the approach of this cancer-versary.  Of course I will always remember when I found out I had cancer, why would I forget, but I don’t need to do anything more than let myself acknowledge it and, if I do happen to allow myself to dip back into those indescribably painful weeks and months after my diagnosis, I need to make sure I don’t just see my personal struggles but also make room for the ongoing warmth, love, support and friendship that underpin all those moments we went through.