Ep.2: W.C.
6 days and 23 hours ago I got cancer. Well, learned I have cancer, when I got it is a moot point although it is one of the many points I’ve been snagged by over the past week. When did I change from me Before Cancer (BC) to a me With Cancer (WC)? I can’t help but enjoy the shit storm associations of the latter. There’s something to be savoured in the former too, BC, before faith, before you had to pin all your hopes on the God like figure of your oncologist/surgeon/consultant/NHS on ‘curing’ you of your sin. And my sin is a 12mm sized grade 2 invasive lobular cancer of my left breast. Maybe. You can no longer talk with certitude I’ve discovered.
Yes all our language has changed now I’m WC. I used to hate the ‘C’ word. Now my language is peppered with references to ‘that Cunty Cancer’. The flinch I feel from the sharp-edged slap of the word sits about right in my mouth along with the bile that rises. Every conversation is laced. How am I feeling? Remind me when we will know more? And from my WC friends – so very many of us I now realise – a generous introduction to a crash course in the linguistics of stages, grades, invasions, lobules, scans, biopsies, comparisons, solidarity and love. So. Much. Love.
At home we don’t dance around the subject apart from when my 11 year old daughter skips merrily oblivious through our day and cancer is parked, temporarily banished but remaining glowering in a corner of the room. I usually mentally put it in the litter tray.
Each moment is singular. Now I’m fine. Now I’m not. Now I’m fine again. Now I’m losing my fucking mind.
The worst bit so far in these 6 days, 23 hours and 23 minutes? Watching the strongest man alive cry. I did that, I made him cry. I’ve wondered many times over the past week if that crushing guilt that comes with feeling you’ve just up-ended someone else’s world ever goes away? That I’ve just taken my personal shit storm and pebble dashed his life too. A man who has suffered the loss of both parents to cancer. Who has done more than his fair share of giving people he loves to hungry life- eating tumours. What right did I have to add to that burden? And of course I know it’s not my fault, in fact if cancer were a respecter of who does and does not deserve then I’m a cert for a clean bill-o. Compared to most people my age I’m a paragon of fucking virtue. I hardly drink, I’m not overweight, I haven’t eaten meat for 30 years, I exercise – a lot. But Cancer doesn’t give a brownie points shaped fuck for Miss Goody 2 Shoes. A good friend of mine said she couldn’t believe she was important enough to get cancer. Personally given she’s an exquisitely talented artist I’d have labelled her too precious. Rather arrogantly I thought I was far too fit, intelligent, feisty, fun-loving, life-filling but mainly just too bloody busy to get cancer. What? Like I thought I was too good for it? Should have spared a thought then for all the wonderful, creative, strong, beautiful and brilliant friends I have who are WC then shouldn’t I. Then maybe I’d have realised that, far from being blown sideways by the diagnosis, it was almost probable. Almost.
But I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready for this. I’m not ready to be WC.
So now I carry around this weight. This ugly, blackened, stinking, 12mm sized weight which far out-punches itself. Occasionally I sit it down beside me to rest a while and we eye each other warily. I try to convey to it my strength, my determination not to be beaten, my super-human powers and iron will. I try to ask it what it wants from me and circle back round again to asking ‘and why me?’. For this week at least and most of next it’s going to remain silent. We’re going to sit in no-man’s land together in a steely stand-off until the MRI machine and wonderfully concerned, competent and empathetic breast surgeon have consulted each other and reached a conclusion as to where we go from here.