A - Z of Breast Cancer: DENIAL

I have heard it said that denial is part of the cancer patient’s profile. Guess what? I fit the profile. On the day I was diagnosed the doctor advised me to inform my son’s school. This is good advice. Take it. Children need adults looking out for them at a time like this.

You don't train for this

After several days of Cry Howling (see A for Anger) I dutifully made my way to my son’s teacher. I did not have an appointment but as I had cried all that day I figured I was too wrung out to blub in front of him and so seized my chance. We went into a small office just inside the front door. Neither of us sat down and I just said in a very whispery voice “I have cancer”, as bald as that. I remember having difficulty keeping eye contact with him. I felt sorry for him; he didn’t know how to deal with this and was obviously terrified that I would start to cry. He hadn’t trained for this. Neither had I.
We agreed that he would keep a discreet eye on my son and said goodbye. I remember him saying, ‘I’m sorry for your news’ and I thought, that’s what they say at funerals, I’m sorry for your trouble. The next thing I remember I was running. I was out of breath by the time I reached my car. My heart was pounding like a ‘Looney Tune’ and I remember looking down to see if it really was pushing out through the wall of my chest like in the cartoons.

Liar Liar

I headed home but the traffic was bad; Chelsea tractors and trucks the size of small houses bringing school children home sat bumper to bumper, and the journey took ages. Ages enough for a strange thing to happen in my brain. Sitting in the traffic jam I looked in the rear view mirror and saw a liar staring back out at me. Oh My God! I had lied to the teacher. I had gone to him all washed out and red eyed and told the whopper of the century. I supposed he was already with the headmaster (a man whose antipathy towards parents was legendary) and they were discussing how best to deal with and protect children from lying, hypochondriac, Munchausen, psycho mummies who were trying desperately to find ways around the 11+ exam. I began to sweat.

11+

Despite being flawed, socially divisive and downright unfair the 11+ transfer test still had a stranglehold on the education system here when this all happened. Parents were obsessed with it (still are). And if you said you weren't obsessed, you were considered a liar or a lunatic. If you don’t believe me, listen up: On hearing of my admission to hospital one mother assumed I was having a breakdown over the 11+. I kid you not.

If a child does not perform well in the transfer exam exceptional circumstances can be invoked which might still secure a grammar school place. It happened all the time apparently. Only the week before, a friend had pointed to a newspaper article that said parents were faking marital breakdown in order to claim exceptional circumstances. Seriously! Elsewhere stories were rife of numerous little Tarquins and Tarquinas being marched off to the doctor in the hope of finding some ailment. Suddenly it hit me like a brick to the head, I had pretended to have cancer in order to secure exceptional circumstances for my son. Oh. My. God. I became panicked. Sweat seeped from my armpits, sorry axillae, and the traffic still wasn’t moving.

Move over, crazy lady coming through

That’s when I had this crazy thought: I could abandon the car and go back to the school and tell the teacher it was a mistake before he had a chance to speak to the headmaster. And then the sane part of me chimed in pointing out that the teacher would think me deranged. Perhaps I was. Why else would I make up such a rank lie? I stayed in the car (thank you God) and somehow made it home.

I made a plan. I would ring the breast care nurse and tell her what had happened and she would write a letter explaining that there had been a mix up. Seriously. And even as I took the nurse’s card from my purse and dialled the number it did not occur to me that I had her number for a reason. It was an answering machine. Thank you God again. I didn’t leave a message, just hung up and slumped to the floor as it dawned on me what was happening. I took out the information pack the nurse had given me and read the storybook ‘Mummy’s Lump’ designed to help me talk to my son. I puzzled over the leaflet on breast reconstruction. I had this stuff for a reason. I hadn’t lied. This was real.

Now that is what I call denial.

Read more at http://breastcancercares.blogspot.com/