I have a week left until something – and everything – changes.

Unfortunately I have way too much medical knowledge. Most women in this situation must feel they've woken up in a foreign land, no Google Translate in this swampy, desolate landscape. A sea of grey clay and an endless piece of glass between them and the trees just budding delicately into a spring gentleness on the other side.

Their only guide is the doctor in front of them uttering soothing words about “early stage”” and reassuring sentences about the chemo getting you to the nirvana of “no visible signs of disease”, after which the ops and further treatments spreading vaguely into the distance will leave you in a state of health where your life expectancy is as good as theirs.

The catch is the small word “if”. Said quickly: with your emotional pitch so high you might miss it. But this progression is still predicated on “if”. In my case, the “if” still covers an MRI and a new ultrasound request. The PET CT showed some sign of nodal involvement, which could be because of the biopsy and markers (local swelling response to that particular piece of invasion). Or it could not. And that takes me from a Stage 1 (the docs don't like to use the staging system any more as it is a clunky definition – but it's a brutal striation of my chances) to a Stage 2. It would mean a change of regime, with an op first, then a wait, then chemo. An op that will gnarl up my armpit and reduce movement in my arm for a long time.

Equally, my lovely oncologist, in doing a physical exam, said that the lump feels more like 3cms, not 1.2 as on the ultrasound. And that makes me doubt the radiologist the first time around, who admittedly was quite scatty – she forgot to do markers, so had to go back in and do two more biopsies to put them in place – four shots of the gun into my breast. Ow. And the first one was without enough local, so it bloody hurt.

You can see where this all goes in my overactive brain. I'm not there listening to the honeyed words, I'm looking for the shows, the tells, the ticks that really reveal your chances. My poker brain is on fire. Each little flinch, each hesitation or tiny eye-widening is a nail in my coffin, and I can't hear the comfort in them telling me this is early stage. It is until it isn't.

We had a photographer take some photos of us on Sunday, someone who might take the photos for our wedding. S and me. And the dogs. Just in our place, cutting bread, walking out into the garden. They are lovely, and I think they show our love, our equal intimacy and trust. We look happy, and well, and joyous. I have hair! All things that we are, just with a horrendous weight attached now. I'm sitting here with tears running down my face, and the happiness hurts. But at least I get to experience this love, this joy, this sense of belonging. Home with S, my soulmate and now my anchor.

Enough for now, I have to get my son up for school.

#cancer #love

The 4am ghasts. Here's a moment that makes sleep ever more elusive:

I read a “cancer diary” yesterday. Deathtounclejoey.com. Rhianna pulls no punches, so I guess she's a girl after my own heart. But it means the blows hurt. Shall I write one here?

“30% of early stage breast cancer survivors will have a relapse....the average survival at that point is less than 3 years”

Since J died, there has been a spoken and unspoken deal between me and the kids. I'm the survivor. I'm their rock. I'm not allowed to get ill. I've been asked to promise. Fudged that one, but was confident enough to be confident. Of course I was: what are the fucking odds that both fit, strong parents will have cancer at relatively young ages?

This is going to crack their worlds. My 18 year old daughter Y had a nervous breakdown that started a year after J's death. She's only just recovering; doing so, SO well. Her OCD demon (we called him Kristos) still lingers, mewling a little like the vanquished Voldemort on a white Kings Cross station floor. This news will give Kristos massive fuel, just as she is starting to beat her wings.

My (just) 15-year old son M is blossoming, doing well at school, a great bunch of mates, some messy teenage parties just starting (give me strength, there are 10 mates staying over at ours as I write, in various stages of fug around the house), sport, boxing and gym. Where will his unformed brain take him with this news?

We will find out later. Whether we want to or not, because of the cancelled wedding date, we have to let our world know this news. I mean, I'm still willing to try the phrase “cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances” but 250 people who we are either related to or are close friends are going to demand a little more detail than that.

And that means I need to start with the kids and my parents. Oh god oh god oh god.

Y is currently travelling, having fun and freedom on her year off. She organised her trip herself, a best friend from home has just flown out to join her, and it makes me feel sick to my core to spoil it. Can I give her another three weeks without this knowledge? She'll be angry with me, but can't I just let her exist in that relatively secure world for a little longer?

But then I'm telling M today. We have a ski trip in a couple of weeks, I didn't go on the last one (S took M and his own daughter T with him for half term. Lovely, beautiful man), and the one last year I was ill for the whole week (covid). So M's been challenging me to tell him quite how much I'm looking forward to finally going skiing with him. We thought of telling him that I've had a work thing come in which is so important that I can't come on the trip....but I don't want him living with that as my priority as a mother, even for a few weeks. It doesn't sit right. But he will have to not tell his sister. I just don't know if this will work.

And finally, I'm telling my parents later today. Oh god oh god oh god. My father is an oncological anaesthetist who ran the intensive care of two of the major cancer hospitals in the world for thirty odd years before he retired. He knows the score. It may kill him.

I'm anticipating both my parents deciding to jump immediately on a plane. They live as far away as it is possible to live. I don't take it personally (but to be clear, they left me!). But of course they have lives that can't be shut down in an instant. I have to persuade them that I am well looked after here (I am), and that at least one of them must travel to meet Y at the end of her trip with her home friend, and be there for when I tell her. That buys me a few weeks.

Oh, and S hired us a photographer, arriving at 12. To take photos of us together now, before treatment starts. Poor photographer man, his job will be to find and capture the last remnants of our lightness, our intense joy in each other that isn't stained with our new knowledge. It's still there, but the stain is spreading fast through everything. I'd better wash my hair.

Enough for one day? And it hasn't even begun. Hence no sleep...

#family #telling #cancer

So you couldn't make it up. Here's the facts: I'm 53, widowed, two teenage kids, living in London. My husband died in 2019 aged 48 after fighting bowel cancer for nearly five years.

My kids and I have been through the mill since Jack's death – we were deep in it through his illness – and have come out the other side to a life worth living.

I run my own company in the music industry, and I'm just at the point where my reputation gets me a constant stream of work. I'm good at what I do, and I've finally had the time and respect to become highly visible in my very niche part of the industry.

And with no small apology to Jack, I've met S: my soulmate, my sweetheart, the love of my life. We were planning on getting married in July this year. 250 of our closest friends from around the world at a massive party in London to celebrate.

And then I found the lump.

Well, lumps, actually, there's two of them.

That was Sunday 18th Feb.

I start chemo on March 27th, I've got triple-neg breast cancer – the most aggressive kind. I can feel it growing. And you know, I'm SO lucky: I've got private health insurance, my best friend is a doctor, my dad's a doctor (although I haven't told him about this yet, god I don't know how), and I'm in the hands of some of the best doc heads in this city, possibly the world. The transition from the NHS Breast Clinic at Guy's Hospital to the smooth moneyed environment of the London Oncology Clinic is a contrast worth revisitng later. Let's just say it will be a much, much easier journey this way – although not necessarily any more successful; that's in the hands of the gods.

The last month (has it really been so long? Has it really only been that short a time?) has been possibly the worst of my life, and I think I can genuinely claim to have had a few. All the lightness and strength of owning my hard won place in this world has gone, just vanished. The vacuum of their absence has now filled with adrenalin, nausea, and a heavy foreboding and weariness.

When Jack was ill I wanted to write, and god I wish I had. Details go fuzzy, however much you can't believe at the time that you could forget (did J have triple immunotherapy before HIPEC surgery, or after? – and apologies, this blog will get quite medical at times, I like the science). Beyond the facts, the feelings. We had good times – when were they? when was that small lovely day spent walking in the woods with the kids and the dog? – and bad (many, many bad). But sometimes I can't even remember events that justified my righteous anger (more of that later). Everything gets blurry and generalised.

And full disclosure, I've always wanted to write, in that slightly hideous “I've got 4 novels swirling around inside me” way of the non-writer. And if I don't do it now, that's it. I never will.

And I want to be truthful. The honest answer to my non-writing paralysis when J was ill was that if I told the truth I'd have to be pretty damn brutal about what I was really thinking, and what I thought of some family members, and I just couldn't. Wuss. I couldn't even work out if I should write long hand in a book and hide the book, or on my computer and lock the document. I was debilitated by medium, and by trying to appease and be the good wife.

So, with some pretty abject apologies to certain people who might feature here, and slight prayers that they never find this blog, I am here to be honest.

Because if I die, I want my kids to hear my voice. To know my truth (I don't say THE truth, there is always more than one interpretation of the truth, as Donald Trump is so keen for us to accept for all the wrong reasons), and take me with them through their lives.

Enough for now. My week next week involves an MRI, another ultrasound because one of my lymph nodes is looking a bit feisty (that's really rather bad news if it is, by the way), calling my lawyers to update my will (do it now, all of you!!!), getting my eyebrows tattooed, and visiting a salon that makes you a permanent wig with real hair. Life, death and vanity.

Can't believe this.

HP SAUCE

#cancer #breastcancer #diary