Identify Theft

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you to complain about the recent two cases of identity theft by Mr Carcinoma which I still do not feel have been adequately dealt with.

In the first case, Mr Carcinoma attacked me just before my thirty-eighth birthday. I was fit, healthy, a recently qualified school teacher who had finally found her vocation and he took, in the first case, my looks, my health and my innocence. Gone was the complacency of a late thirties mother that she would live for the allotted three score and ten. Instead, days became hours, and as I sank deeper and deeper into the world that is defined for the cancer patient as hospital, appointments and chemotherapy, the original woman that was Minerva became lost.

Barely had I recovered from the earthquake that was the first episode before the second was upon me. My world shook again as I realised that Mr Carcinoma had infiltrated further into my world. A bare five months after the end of treatment, and I was facing his gang again. This time you brought out the big guns and smote him to the ground and back to his microcellular organism but he had already destroyed the small resonance of 'meness' that I had left. I am now bereft; I no longer recognise the woman in the mirror, not, this time as through chemo when I didn't recognise the physical entity but I do not know this new person.

I have not lived the last two years without cancer in my life, and I will never live a life innocent of cancer again. Who is this new person? What does she feel? How will she live the rest of her life? The choices are huge and I have no idea who I am.

Do I live my life as I did before? Am I carefree, a drinker, occasional smoker and cheerful party girl? Am I serious, a woman whose diet, exercise regime and whose frontiers of how far she is willing to go to avoid cancer in the future moving by the minute? Will I now go to faith healers, get my house assessed for geopathic stress and never drink alcohol again? Just how much do 'I' want to change? Just how much can 'I' change without altering the essential balance of ingredients which go in to make the cake that I am?

Who am I?

Minerva

Two words

Nothing there. The lump is there, but it isn't cancer, and there is no further sign of cancer in my shoulder.

What a relief. I never thought I would greet the word 'nothing' with such joy and exultation as I did today.

Maybe someone, somewhere is giving me a break, a time of peace and tranquility for a month until I get the CT scan at the end of August...

What a huge relief..


Thank you all for your kind words, thoughts and prayers. I have to say that I am still doubtful and those who have doubted with me at the loss of someone special to them are the people whose words chimed most resonantly.

Tussling with Faith

I am struggling with God at the moment. I know that so many of you are comforted by Him and his words, and share that faith with me. I know that many of you are praying for me and I do appreciate that. I have always believed somehow. At university, I flirted with the idea of becoming a Catholic in the Newman tradition but swerved away at the last minute. I have attended church, taken communion and believed, truly, in a divine presence that is greater than us all.

I have done all these things, all these things until now. I just cannot believe any more, cannot believe that someone, something which is essentially benevolent would visit on a mother the possibility of cancer for a third time in 18 months. I feel forsaken, lost in the desert, unwanted and unloved. I feel like the runt of the litter, one of the unchosen, the unelected. Why has this happened? Why is this happening? If there really is a 'big idea', then what part of it do I fit into? Do I really have to be a modern Job? My God, why hast thou forsaken me?

I don't believe any more. I don't believe in an afterlife, in great hands that will hold my soul for evermore. I have gazed into the chasm of death, and there is nothing after this life, nothing and no one for us just a great canyon of oblivion.

I no longer have faith.

Minerva

Limbo

I saw the doctors on Friday. An urgent ultrasound has been applied for this week to be discussed at the doctors' meeting on Thursday.

I am in a horrid place at the moment somewhere along the lines of blank denial. I just cannot believe that this is happening to me again.

All I want is a normal life, to see my children grow up and my career blossom. I keep asking what have I done that this rubbish continues?

I wait, I exist, I count off the minutes and the hours until I know. Knowing is so much better than this treading water with no solid standing. Knowing that it IS back is better than the uncertainty. Planning is easier than limbo.

Another three minutes passes....

Minerva

Fear

I have another lump. And I see the doctor tomorrow.

Please, not again...

Not 2 and a half months after chemo.

Please...

Manacles

I keep trying to move on with my life. Back at work in the mornings, I have become a teacher again. Back into the maelstrom which is the modern Secondary school I have become an anonymous symbol once more and I do rejoice in it. I love fitting into an ordinary role, not dogged by cancer in the children's eyes but rather a person to whom respect is given because I have earned it, rather than because of an anonymous disease which has me in its grasp.

My head is starting to sprout baby fuzz. Not yet brave enough to remove my scarf as it seems to be growing unevenly, thicker at the back rather than the front which still shows the scalp through it. It is dark again, which is a relief. I thought after all the trauma of the last 18 months it might come back a shocking white. I was secretly hoping for blonde curls but clearly that isn't my lot at the moment!

So with so much positive news why have I called this post manacles? Because I still feel the tentacles of the cancer octopus reaching for me, swirling around my ankles. The 97% chance that it will come back in the next 3 to 15 months is a constant alarm clock in my mind. Everytime I mark a piece of work, count off the academic calendar to the end of term, I keep wondering if this will be my last term as a teacher, if cancer will return and put paid to the one career that I love with a passion. Any minute I expect Cancer to tap me on the shoulder and remind me that I was not meant to live this life, that it will pull me back to the daily routine of hospitals, sickness and tiredness. Please, please no.

If I have ever wished for anything it pales into insignificance compared with the flaming desire I have to live an ordinary life. I don't want riches, fame or fortune, just to live, to breathe, to work, to love and to mother. I want so little, and yet at the moment, it seems so much. I am so blessed in so many ways: I have three gorgeous girls, a warm supportive family and great friends, a wonderful man who loves me and whom I adore, a work place and a career where I feel appreciated, wanted and needed, and yet the door of illness is not yet shut. It still leads to a place of darkness and fear, a place that I have visited two times too often, a place which I never thought I would visit so early.

It has been two months now since I finished chemotherapy and my first CT scan to check for recurrence is at the end of August. I so want this year to be free of cancer, of sickness and of bodily concerns. It is time for me to move from matters of life and death to the everyday decisions of what lesson I will plan, or what I will pack for my lunch at school.

Please, Cancer, release me. Let me go and live my life.

Minerva