Not our fault.
Why is it that we who get cancer, are torn apart by this awful disease and its treatment, are now blamed for it?
Time after time, I am asked, why do you think you were the one to get this illness? Was it, and then you can put in any number of words denoting various potential causes of cancer including the pill/stress/depression/diet/exercise/breastfeeding or not breastfeeding. The fact is I have done NOTHING to bring this plague upon myself. In the same way that you can't blame the Egyptians for their plagues of locusts apart from the fact they planted the corn, how can anyone blame me for the cancer I am unfortunate to have?
The biggest risk factor for the majority of breast cancers is getting older. That is the fact of the matter. Of course there is no harm in trying to eat better, in taking care of oneself and exercising regularly. But I refuse, absolutely categorically refuse to be blamed for the cancer I have. On the contrary I really believe there is absolutely nothing I could have done differently which would have changed the way this has happened to me.
I think the propensity to blame the patient for the disease is an awful side effect and an unforeseen one too. Something that one really doesn't expect either. I think it must have come from the obvious correlation between smoking and lung cancer which has slipped into the rest of the cancers. It must be a necessity of the human race, this quest to find a cause for everything. Is it possible that there really isn't a cause for cancer, or rather, that we haven't found it yet? Cancers are as individual as the people that have them. My cancer was clearly not due to age - you see? I still try and look for the reason.
I am beginning to realise though that the reason truly is just really bad luck. There are factors which mitigate and factors which condemn which travel in parallel in my past. I have experienced awful stressors, the triple death of grandfather, grandmother and father in a month, a divorce a year later, and being overweight for most of my life. There are also factors which help me; I breast fed my oldest daughter for over 9 months and I am still very young.
No, if cancer is an individual thing, something which is as atypical as the patient who has it, then clearly the means, if there is one, must be as individual as the case itself. So please, next time you meet someone suffering, who has suffered, or has someone in their life who has suffered from this dreadful disease, please don't ask them why they have it or what they think caused it because we don't know, we don't care and it isn't helpful. All we want to know is how to get through it day by day, how to keep our time as long as we can so we can be with those we love...
Minerva
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
41 Today...
41 Today...
To everyone of you that replied to my previous post - thank you. Thank you so very much. I found your stories so very interesting and am so pleased to meet you all. I am also enormously flattered that each and everyone of you check this blog regularly and take the time to read, and add comments. To those of you that have only commented for the first time, a huge welcome and please, do it often. It is lovely to hear from you. And to those who have supported me regularly, an enormous thank you to you.. I owe you all so much.
I will post on the PET scan another day for today, my 41st birthday, I want to try and forget the whole cancer thing, just for today...Two years ago just ten days shy of my 39th birthday I was first diagnosed and then, I didn't even think I would make 40 let alone 41 but here I am.
It's a damn shame of course that I still have this curse. I haven't got an appointment yet for the results of the PET scan and to be completely honest, I am desperately trying to keep my head in the sand. I don't want to take any more time off for results, I don't want to have to confront the dual headed monster of chemo and radiation any more. I just want to move on, to drive on into the horizon of the rest of my life.
That's the theory anyway. But, like all great stressors, it isn't working. I have been utterly revolting two days this week, stressed, depressed, weepy, angry and antagonistic. I want to run away from everyone I am close to, live completely alone and if necessary, die completely alone somewhere. I don't want anyone near me and I presume, in my amateur psychologist kind of way, that that is all about pushing people away so I don't let them down when I find out I have secondary cancer...
I presume that is the case, but that was also yesterday, and if necessary tomorrow. Today though is about celebrating life, the beginning of life and the annual festival that commemorates it, that holds it up for the world to see saying this is when Minerva's life started.
I'll deal with the end another day.
Minerva
To everyone of you that replied to my previous post - thank you. Thank you so very much. I found your stories so very interesting and am so pleased to meet you all. I am also enormously flattered that each and everyone of you check this blog regularly and take the time to read, and add comments. To those of you that have only commented for the first time, a huge welcome and please, do it often. It is lovely to hear from you. And to those who have supported me regularly, an enormous thank you to you.. I owe you all so much.
I will post on the PET scan another day for today, my 41st birthday, I want to try and forget the whole cancer thing, just for today...Two years ago just ten days shy of my 39th birthday I was first diagnosed and then, I didn't even think I would make 40 let alone 41 but here I am.
It's a damn shame of course that I still have this curse. I haven't got an appointment yet for the results of the PET scan and to be completely honest, I am desperately trying to keep my head in the sand. I don't want to take any more time off for results, I don't want to have to confront the dual headed monster of chemo and radiation any more. I just want to move on, to drive on into the horizon of the rest of my life.
That's the theory anyway. But, like all great stressors, it isn't working. I have been utterly revolting two days this week, stressed, depressed, weepy, angry and antagonistic. I want to run away from everyone I am close to, live completely alone and if necessary, die completely alone somewhere. I don't want anyone near me and I presume, in my amateur psychologist kind of way, that that is all about pushing people away so I don't let them down when I find out I have secondary cancer...
I presume that is the case, but that was also yesterday, and if necessary tomorrow. Today though is about celebrating life, the beginning of life and the annual festival that commemorates it, that holds it up for the world to see saying this is when Minerva's life started.
I'll deal with the end another day.
Minerva
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Are you a lurker?
Are you a lurker?
Just one little request today. Do I know you? Do you comment frequently or are you one of those people who click and move on without leaving a footprint?
Today, please, just for me, do it differently? Could you just click on the comment button and leave a comment? According to my sitemeter I get over 100 visits a day and I really would love to meet you all...
Just leave your name as anonymous and make up a nickname if you want, but please, leave a mark..
Minerva
Just one little request today. Do I know you? Do you comment frequently or are you one of those people who click and move on without leaving a footprint?
Today, please, just for me, do it differently? Could you just click on the comment button and leave a comment? According to my sitemeter I get over 100 visits a day and I really would love to meet you all...
Just leave your name as anonymous and make up a nickname if you want, but please, leave a mark..
Minerva
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Oops.
Oops!
I got the date wrong. Not this Thursday, but Thursday next. A mere three days before my 41st birthday. Strange how my whole cancer story has been woven around my birthdays for the last two years. Diagnosed a mere two weeks before my 39th birthday, cleared by my 40th and back into the mire for my 41st. I hear so many friends of mine scared of the age of 40/30/50 - you name it. I'm not. In fact, the whole fuss about being 40 pretty much passed me by in the whole cancer typhoon so I guess there is one advantage from diagnosis.
No, I just wondered if I would make 41, or 42.. Indeed it is all very much still up in the air. I mean, I don't that my time is near, but then again, I have never felt so well as when I was diagnosed for the first time, or the second. One of the strange things about having cancer is the huge empathy the world shows you when, actually, you yourself feel a bit of a skiver. I mean, you have absolutely no symptoms, you look great on the outside and feel fine, completely fine. Even with chemotherapy the first time, I was ok between treatments. A little sick for about 5 days after each one, but even so, between the two I could lead a relatively normal life.
Taxotere knocked me for 6 though, threw me to the floor, stamped on me and then ran me over with his truck for good measure. Getting back is going to take me a while, I realise, as I find it difficult standing for long periods, walking extensively or getting out of bed in the mornings.. Mind you, I have always found it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings!
So where am I going with this? Yes, my appointment isn't until the 20th of September at 2pm which is great because I only miss two periods of school rather than more. I hate being away from my job with a passion, love striding around my corridors and my classroom. I can't tell you how much fun it is simply being back, being a part of a community again, even though I am finding the sheer physical stamina that it requires difficult. Difficult, but not insurmountable..
A PET scan.. Ever had one? A first for me and hugely ironic I think that whilst eldest daughter studies radiation in physics her mother is taking yet another dose in the name of science. Why do they all have three letter acronyms? PET, MRI, and, erm, CT? Ok, maybe not then! So this scan. I turn up at 2pm and am injected with some sort of glucose solution. I then have to lie on my back for 90 minutes towards the end of which they start taking pictures for another 90 mins. 3 hours in a scan. Jeez...I will be glowing by the end of it. Apparently they are scanning to check how quickly the cells take up the glucose; cancer cells have quicker receptors of glucose than ordinary cells. I am pleased though that it is an all body scan. That gives my doctors a baseline of where it is, if I have secondary cancer, and it gives me reassurance if they don't find any that they haven't found it anywhere.
That sounds really calm, doesn't it? The fact is that I am really calm. I am already living with disability and with illness. The mere observation that there is more illness somewhere in my body won't change my reality substantially for a while. Of course, if it should spread into my major organs, or my bones causing fractures, then that will change my life but even if that is the case, that won't happen for a while. Additionally, with all the new drugs on the market, I figure that secondary cancer really is a case of staying alive as long as I can to benefit from new treatments. The figures for mortality from secondary cancer are always based in the past, of course, so the future chances can only be better. As the chances stand at the moment, if I have cancer in one of my major organs I have 20 - 30 per cent chance of making 7 years. I figure that will mean I should make 5 at least which puts twin 1 and twin 2 at A-levels and I have to be around to get them through those!
But we don't know any of that yet. It is so hard not to let one's mind run ahead. For now, I have my lessons to plan for tomorrow, my children's homework to mark for tonight, and a PET scan for next week and that, my friends, is quite enough for the moment.
Minerva
I got the date wrong. Not this Thursday, but Thursday next. A mere three days before my 41st birthday. Strange how my whole cancer story has been woven around my birthdays for the last two years. Diagnosed a mere two weeks before my 39th birthday, cleared by my 40th and back into the mire for my 41st. I hear so many friends of mine scared of the age of 40/30/50 - you name it. I'm not. In fact, the whole fuss about being 40 pretty much passed me by in the whole cancer typhoon so I guess there is one advantage from diagnosis.
No, I just wondered if I would make 41, or 42.. Indeed it is all very much still up in the air. I mean, I don't that my time is near, but then again, I have never felt so well as when I was diagnosed for the first time, or the second. One of the strange things about having cancer is the huge empathy the world shows you when, actually, you yourself feel a bit of a skiver. I mean, you have absolutely no symptoms, you look great on the outside and feel fine, completely fine. Even with chemotherapy the first time, I was ok between treatments. A little sick for about 5 days after each one, but even so, between the two I could lead a relatively normal life.
Taxotere knocked me for 6 though, threw me to the floor, stamped on me and then ran me over with his truck for good measure. Getting back is going to take me a while, I realise, as I find it difficult standing for long periods, walking extensively or getting out of bed in the mornings.. Mind you, I have always found it difficult to get out of bed in the mornings!
So where am I going with this? Yes, my appointment isn't until the 20th of September at 2pm which is great because I only miss two periods of school rather than more. I hate being away from my job with a passion, love striding around my corridors and my classroom. I can't tell you how much fun it is simply being back, being a part of a community again, even though I am finding the sheer physical stamina that it requires difficult. Difficult, but not insurmountable..
A PET scan.. Ever had one? A first for me and hugely ironic I think that whilst eldest daughter studies radiation in physics her mother is taking yet another dose in the name of science. Why do they all have three letter acronyms? PET, MRI, and, erm, CT? Ok, maybe not then! So this scan. I turn up at 2pm and am injected with some sort of glucose solution. I then have to lie on my back for 90 minutes towards the end of which they start taking pictures for another 90 mins. 3 hours in a scan. Jeez...I will be glowing by the end of it. Apparently they are scanning to check how quickly the cells take up the glucose; cancer cells have quicker receptors of glucose than ordinary cells. I am pleased though that it is an all body scan. That gives my doctors a baseline of where it is, if I have secondary cancer, and it gives me reassurance if they don't find any that they haven't found it anywhere.
That sounds really calm, doesn't it? The fact is that I am really calm. I am already living with disability and with illness. The mere observation that there is more illness somewhere in my body won't change my reality substantially for a while. Of course, if it should spread into my major organs, or my bones causing fractures, then that will change my life but even if that is the case, that won't happen for a while. Additionally, with all the new drugs on the market, I figure that secondary cancer really is a case of staying alive as long as I can to benefit from new treatments. The figures for mortality from secondary cancer are always based in the past, of course, so the future chances can only be better. As the chances stand at the moment, if I have cancer in one of my major organs I have 20 - 30 per cent chance of making 7 years. I figure that will mean I should make 5 at least which puts twin 1 and twin 2 at A-levels and I have to be around to get them through those!
But we don't know any of that yet. It is so hard not to let one's mind run ahead. For now, I have my lessons to plan for tomorrow, my children's homework to mark for tonight, and a PET scan for next week and that, my friends, is quite enough for the moment.
Minerva
Monday, September 10, 2007
After cancer
After Cancer
Strange the life of a survivor. On the one hand I really want people to treat me just as a normal 40 year old. I don't want a seat given to me on the bus or pitying looks in the street. I don't want the extra attention paid to one who walks with a stick or the concern as I struggle with my shopping. I don't want priority treatment in shops nor a special parking space...and yet, I do?
I find it so hard to suddenly move on with my life when over my shoulder I carry a year's worth of baggage. I want that experience recognised somehow, to be venerated as one who has not just fought the cancer demon once but twice and won. I want the recognition of bravery, of courage and of slow healing and when, as so often happens at the moment, I move stiffly from a chair or I limp on my first steps, I want someone to be reminded and to remember.
I don't know how to manage the dichotomy at all. I veer from one side of the road of survivorship to the other: now in the fast lane of ordinary life and suddenly back on the hard shoulder of illness. Surviving and continuing to live is hard. Difficult to fight constantly against an enemy and then back to living where people don't even acknowledge the fact that you have been somewhere else, in a parallel universe to the one we are all in facing death. Now I know how those veterans from Vietnam and now, in our age, from Iraq must feel. What must it be like to wake up not knowing if today is the last day you see on earth and then returning to a world where the week's shopping is the greatest trial?
I am sure it will get easier but for now my little car is all over the road.
Minerva
Strange the life of a survivor. On the one hand I really want people to treat me just as a normal 40 year old. I don't want a seat given to me on the bus or pitying looks in the street. I don't want the extra attention paid to one who walks with a stick or the concern as I struggle with my shopping. I don't want priority treatment in shops nor a special parking space...and yet, I do?
I find it so hard to suddenly move on with my life when over my shoulder I carry a year's worth of baggage. I want that experience recognised somehow, to be venerated as one who has not just fought the cancer demon once but twice and won. I want the recognition of bravery, of courage and of slow healing and when, as so often happens at the moment, I move stiffly from a chair or I limp on my first steps, I want someone to be reminded and to remember.
I don't know how to manage the dichotomy at all. I veer from one side of the road of survivorship to the other: now in the fast lane of ordinary life and suddenly back on the hard shoulder of illness. Surviving and continuing to live is hard. Difficult to fight constantly against an enemy and then back to living where people don't even acknowledge the fact that you have been somewhere else, in a parallel universe to the one we are all in facing death. Now I know how those veterans from Vietnam and now, in our age, from Iraq must feel. What must it be like to wake up not knowing if today is the last day you see on earth and then returning to a world where the week's shopping is the greatest trial?
I am sure it will get easier but for now my little car is all over the road.
Minerva
Friday, September 07, 2007
So Tired
So Tired
I simply can't believe how tired I am. I fight to keep my eyes open at the computer as I type this and my feet ache from five days back at school. It is quite amazing to realise how much energy it takes to operate as an 'ordinary' person. My hips, my knees, my ankles hurt so much by 3pm that I find it difficult to get up and down. I am living on paracetamol and ibuprofen to help ease the aching in my joints but despite all this, I constantly remind myself how lucky I am.
Lucky for I love every minute that I spend in the classroom. Whilst I am teaching, I am never in pain, my legs and hips don't hurt, or rather, if they do I am not at aware of it. No, I am intent on the boy who is looking puzzled at the back, or the boy who is sizing up the paper in his hand wondering if he should throw it, or, like today, the rapt fascination of boys engulfed by the stories from survivors of racial segregation in the 1930s. For a woman whose last months have only been punctuated by hospitals and hospital appointments, I am in heaven.
And speaking of hospital appointments, the PET scan is booked for Thursday. I really don't want to go to be honest. I don't want to disrupt the routine of my job, to take time off work is really more trouble than it is worth and it won't make much of a difference either way. How strange to be talking like that but the fact is that with the pain in my joints and my stiffness, I feel as though I am dealing with a chronic illness anyway. To find out that I have cancer in my thymus or chest lymph nodes is now not that shocking for I have dealt with it already now both emotionally and physically.
Frankly, cancer isn't as scary as living with disability. The doctors have told me that it takes two years for the full effects of one set of chemo to wear off. They haven't been able to tell me how long it takes for two sets just six months apart! Living with pain every day, all day, is hard. I desperately want to get back into my career and my life, but the constant aches remind me that nothing will ever be the same again. I am no longer scared of death: should it come back it will just be another hurdle to go over. I am going to continue working, I am not going to change my life for it, but I do see now that it will be a hard struggle to do that not because of what the cancer did, but what the treatment did. How bizarre is that?
The second time it came back, I was devastated. Devastated because just a short five months before I had been announced 'cured'. I felt that the first episode was almost a coincidence, a mere comma in the sentence of my life. I had just regrown my hair from the first batch of chemo and getting back into the rhythm of my life. For the moment though, this life path is one where I am no longer alone for cancer is a constant companion tugging at my shirtsleeve. Every scan I have, every time I see myself in the mirror, everytime I get a twinge in my legs, I am reminded of the reality of a survivor of cancer. Life will never be as carefree as it was before all this happened. I permanently have a dagger hanging over my head but have no idea how strong the thread is that holds it up. Will it fall in the next few months or could it be years? How does one live fully to the extent of one's life, how does one make plans knowing that any second, it could snap sending the my normality onto the rocks.
So on to Thursday and the all over body scan. I am pleased it is all over because at least then I will know. I will know if these rogue cells are settling anywhere else in my body, and give myself certainty. Of course, I hope for the best, but I know now, after two years in the gutter of cancer, that it is so hard to scale the slimy walls to escape. Either way, it really is ok. I know that I can cope with cancer and its treatment; but if it is there again, and if it is secondary, then I want a life full of life, a life full of laughter and love, and a very quick death. No disabling trickle into the next life please, just a gushing hose and a quick turn of the tap.
Minerva
I simply can't believe how tired I am. I fight to keep my eyes open at the computer as I type this and my feet ache from five days back at school. It is quite amazing to realise how much energy it takes to operate as an 'ordinary' person. My hips, my knees, my ankles hurt so much by 3pm that I find it difficult to get up and down. I am living on paracetamol and ibuprofen to help ease the aching in my joints but despite all this, I constantly remind myself how lucky I am.
Lucky for I love every minute that I spend in the classroom. Whilst I am teaching, I am never in pain, my legs and hips don't hurt, or rather, if they do I am not at aware of it. No, I am intent on the boy who is looking puzzled at the back, or the boy who is sizing up the paper in his hand wondering if he should throw it, or, like today, the rapt fascination of boys engulfed by the stories from survivors of racial segregation in the 1930s. For a woman whose last months have only been punctuated by hospitals and hospital appointments, I am in heaven.
And speaking of hospital appointments, the PET scan is booked for Thursday. I really don't want to go to be honest. I don't want to disrupt the routine of my job, to take time off work is really more trouble than it is worth and it won't make much of a difference either way. How strange to be talking like that but the fact is that with the pain in my joints and my stiffness, I feel as though I am dealing with a chronic illness anyway. To find out that I have cancer in my thymus or chest lymph nodes is now not that shocking for I have dealt with it already now both emotionally and physically.
Frankly, cancer isn't as scary as living with disability. The doctors have told me that it takes two years for the full effects of one set of chemo to wear off. They haven't been able to tell me how long it takes for two sets just six months apart! Living with pain every day, all day, is hard. I desperately want to get back into my career and my life, but the constant aches remind me that nothing will ever be the same again. I am no longer scared of death: should it come back it will just be another hurdle to go over. I am going to continue working, I am not going to change my life for it, but I do see now that it will be a hard struggle to do that not because of what the cancer did, but what the treatment did. How bizarre is that?
The second time it came back, I was devastated. Devastated because just a short five months before I had been announced 'cured'. I felt that the first episode was almost a coincidence, a mere comma in the sentence of my life. I had just regrown my hair from the first batch of chemo and getting back into the rhythm of my life. For the moment though, this life path is one where I am no longer alone for cancer is a constant companion tugging at my shirtsleeve. Every scan I have, every time I see myself in the mirror, everytime I get a twinge in my legs, I am reminded of the reality of a survivor of cancer. Life will never be as carefree as it was before all this happened. I permanently have a dagger hanging over my head but have no idea how strong the thread is that holds it up. Will it fall in the next few months or could it be years? How does one live fully to the extent of one's life, how does one make plans knowing that any second, it could snap sending the my normality onto the rocks.
So on to Thursday and the all over body scan. I am pleased it is all over because at least then I will know. I will know if these rogue cells are settling anywhere else in my body, and give myself certainty. Of course, I hope for the best, but I know now, after two years in the gutter of cancer, that it is so hard to scale the slimy walls to escape. Either way, it really is ok. I know that I can cope with cancer and its treatment; but if it is there again, and if it is secondary, then I want a life full of life, a life full of laughter and love, and a very quick death. No disabling trickle into the next life please, just a gushing hose and a quick turn of the tap.
Minerva
Saturday, September 01, 2007
Been Reading...
Been Reading...
Too much I think... Apparently although it is extremely rare, it is possible for breast cancer to metastasize or spread to the thymus. As these researchers explain, there are literally only three or four cases reported. So I feel the anger rising again, only three or four? I have been unlucky enough to be one of only three or four people whose cancer moves on to the thymus?
And then the reasoning voice kicks in,'Most women's breast cancer moves on the liver or the lung, you could consider yourself lucky.'
Lucky? LUCKY?? You are JOKING aren't you? Lucky to have flaming cancer three times in less than two years? Lucky to have metastasis three months after six months of the most gruelling cancer treatment ever? PAH!
Now come on. You haven't even been diagnosed yet and you are running down a path where the gate is still shut. Just because you have been here before doesn't mean that it will happen again..
Easy for YOU to say. You just take your ordinary life for granted. Next week I will blah, next year I will holiday blah, Christmas we will have at your house.. I don't have any of that certainty. Next year I could be just struggling along, completely strapped for cash AGAIN and I am FED up of this! I wan't my life back, oh please, please please, let me have my life back..
You have got through this before, and if necessary, I know you can get through it again. It is horrid, depressing, gruelling and desperately unfair but you CAN do it, and you can do it with grace, style and chutzpah. We can only hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Let's just wait and see...
Wait and see...
Wait and see..
Minerva/Minerva
Too much I think... Apparently although it is extremely rare, it is possible for breast cancer to metastasize or spread to the thymus. As these researchers explain, there are literally only three or four cases reported. So I feel the anger rising again, only three or four? I have been unlucky enough to be one of only three or four people whose cancer moves on to the thymus?
And then the reasoning voice kicks in,'Most women's breast cancer moves on the liver or the lung, you could consider yourself lucky.'
Lucky? LUCKY?? You are JOKING aren't you? Lucky to have flaming cancer three times in less than two years? Lucky to have metastasis three months after six months of the most gruelling cancer treatment ever? PAH!
Now come on. You haven't even been diagnosed yet and you are running down a path where the gate is still shut. Just because you have been here before doesn't mean that it will happen again..
Easy for YOU to say. You just take your ordinary life for granted. Next week I will blah, next year I will holiday blah, Christmas we will have at your house.. I don't have any of that certainty. Next year I could be just struggling along, completely strapped for cash AGAIN and I am FED up of this! I wan't my life back, oh please, please please, let me have my life back..
You have got through this before, and if necessary, I know you can get through it again. It is horrid, depressing, gruelling and desperately unfair but you CAN do it, and you can do it with grace, style and chutzpah. We can only hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Let's just wait and see...
Wait and see...
Wait and see..
Minerva/Minerva
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)