An hour or so after I had told my mother about my cancer I drove home berating myself; I really had to stop lying like this. What kind of attention seeking insanity had taken hold of me? I had lied to my mother, friends, and to my son’s teacher. Surely it was all just one big mistake. I told my GP and she said ‘That must be the unreality people talk about with cancer.’ It is as if this awful thing is not really happening to you. I have even heard of people feeling as if they are watching this happening to them, almost like an out of body experience. Others move like automatons not really engaging with the process. I suppose this is the mind coping and not coping.
Cancer only happens to other people
Even when your breast has been removed and you have the stitches to prove it, when radiotherapy has left its mark across your chest and chemotherapy has made all your hair fall out, still you may not quite believe that you are sick. When I suggested to one patient who had just finished her chemotherapy and was about to start her radiotherapy that she might be entitled to financial help in the form of Disability Living Allowance she said, ‘But don’t you have to be sick for that?’ My reaction exactly. Bizarrely, I thought she should be entitled to it and she thought I should, but neither of us thought we were entitled ourselves. Now six months on from diagnosis, when trying to sort out sick pay or insurance or my job I still baulk when asked the reason for my absence from work. Then I say cancer and I still don’t believe it. I see it written on a sick line or a letter from the hospital and cannot attach this word to myself. Cancer is something that happens to other people. This cannot be real.
Read more at http://breastcancercares.blogspot.com/
Comments
celticman | December 18, 2009 - 20:27
Cancer is something that happens to other people. This cannot be real.
Yes. But you have made it seem real. Well done.