Fighting

Shortly after your diagnosis, someone will be along to tell you how you must FIGHT cancer. They will no doubt have some stories about friends who were given 3 weeks to live and went on to prosper for another 40 years.

Though they definitely mean well, these people are thoughtless. They are implying that if you die it is all your own fault for not fighting hard enough. I'm not really sure what they mean by fighting and perhaps they don't either. Is it turning up at the office party with a big smile on your pale and skinny face? Or running 20 miles  in a teddy bear costume? Or hosting dinner parties? Or having lots of kale smoothies? All of these things will make your friends feel better but won't do that much for the cancer victim, who would rather be sucking their thumb under the duvet.

The idea that you can have a fair fight with cancer is a fairy tale. You are facing a secretive, cruel and unpredictable opponent armed only with a balloon on a stick.

Your cancer started when a cell mutated into a variation that has never been seen before. The mutant cell fell in love with itself and started dividing at a rate of knots. Pretty soon, it made a spot. The spot got above itself and became a tumour. Pleased with its progress, the tumour got bigger and invaded some other organs nearby. Maybe it hit upon a lymph node. Lymph nodes are like underground stations that link the whole body. So cancer shot off through the lymphatic system and went to colonise somewhere new, possibly a long way from the mother ship. (Science might be a bit wrong here but it works for me.)

It can get quite a lot of this work done without anyone noticing a thing. Sometimes the cancer is in a body part near the surface and the first sign is a lump. My own tumour started in my pancreas and nobody has felt it yet, though at the last count it was impressively huge. If you have a lump that is hiding, then the first sign is that it hurts. A lot.

Cancer is so sneaky. Modern medicine has some gob-smackingly advanced tools but even these can only catch shadows. It shows up as a dark area on a scan. As a cluster of cells taken with a terrifyingly huge needle (biopsy). As a debatable antigen in your blood, assuming someone has figured out which blood test to do.

So if you are going to fight, be aware that you and your oncologist are fighting in the dark.

On the other hand, if you have cancer and are still alive then you are fighting. You are fighting with a courage and a determination that you didn't know you had. This isn't optional. You have been forced into it.

As usual, this post got too long. Verbal diarrhoea c'est moi. So I'll tell you how you're a hero in another post.

Tinkerty-Tonk

Helen xx