A - Z of Breast Cancer: HONESTY, HYPOCHONDRIA and HOPE

What is it with people and honesty all of a sudden? Now that I have cancer I am supposed to be an open book. Why? And why is everyone pretending that we don’t lie to our children? Have they forgotten all about Santa and the Tooth Fairy? Apparently I need to tell my son that I will be going to radiotherapy because I will be leaving the house everyday. Hello! I already do leave the house everyday. I wouldn’t tell him if I were leaving the house to have sex with someone I met on the internet; I’d tell him I was popping out to the shops. Apparently, I also have to be honest about the medication I’m taking because it can make me feel sick and tired. If I were taking medication for gonorrhoea, guess what? I wouldn’t tell him. I’d say I was feeling a bit off and probably lie that the tablets were vitamins.

A bitter pill

I did eventually swallow the honesty pill and told my son the truth. I wasn’t one hundred per cent convinced at the time but I did it anyway. Now, I really, truly and absolutely believe this was the right thing to do. Then a friend asked me what she would tell her son! I was so cross, ‘Tell him I’m having a vaginoplasty*’ I wanted to scream (not that I need one, you understand).Why on earth would her son need to know anything other than I was feeling a bit unwell at that time? Honest to God, honesty gone mad.

*There really is such a word.

H FOR HYPOCHONDRIA

I am now a fully paid up, life time member of the hypochondriac’s club. Every twinge and ache I feel I think, cancer. I am particularly concerned about uterine cancer (see H for Hormonal Treatment). My GP tells me these feelings are normal and shows no sign of tedium when I tell her of a new worry. She tells me that for the next twenty years they too will think cancer at each of my aches and pains. Twenty years. I like the way she said that. Sounded so ordinary. So taken for granted. I have become used to how reductive cancer is; I used to have vague ambitions for work and for travel. I haven’t seen the pyramids or the Great Wall of China yet. Suddenly, these don’t matter anymore and my ambition is reduced: I want only to be alive. So I will continue to take each and every ache to the doctor. Do the same and don’t apologise, until one day, eventually, just being alive will no longer be enough.

H IS ALSO FOR HOPE

You must keep believing that tomorrow or next week or next year will bring some breakthrough in cancer treatment, even when your doctors stubbornly refuse to give you hope. They don’t want to give false hopes and they don’t want sued when it backfires. That’s fine for them but you must never stop hoping. Hope makes you human. Hope keeps you alive.

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