When I was first diagnosed with the early stages of breast cancer, I remembered everything I’d ever heard or read about cancer, and I was paralysed with fear. I tentatively scoured the internet, stumbled upon a few blog posts and in my fragile emotional state, they all scared the living daylights out me. Many of them I left unfinished and vowed never to read by accident again. A couple of negative phrases stuck in my mind and I remember thinking, ‘I really wish I hadn’t read that. I just know that will jump back into my mind and bite me in the bum later.’ I desperately wanted to find positive stories. I needed to, as part of my coping mechanism, to try and right-size my situation. I wanted the fear and the unsurmountable panic to go: it was destroying my ability to live.
In an ideal world of course, following diagnosis we all go into the hospital for the appointments and any treatment, and then come out again so we can get back to living and laughing. Despite having heard about numerous people who have had cancer, been treated and have been fine for years, only to die in their 90s of something completely unrelated, my mind was rigidly sticking to the worst case scenario. Like many people, I entered into my journey with cancer engulfed in total debilitating fear.
I decided then that any public discussion about my experiences would leave a ‘safe’ positive trail behind me: to write as if it were me who would stumble upon my post, desperately looking for some respite from the despair that I was feeling. I couldn’t bear the thought of potentially, albeit subconsciously, instilling fear in others.
With this in mind, I also became acutely aware of the people close to me, watching me travel my journey. I knew they would subconsciously log everything they saw me go through, which would then resurface in their minds should they find themselves on a similar journey later on. So I decided that even for their sakes, I had to find the positive, focus on the funny side of life and get on with living.
Then a strange and very unexpected thing happened…with my efforts to change my mindset and leave a positive trail behind me, it actually made me feel positive and I found myself living again. With every appointment, with every piece of news, with every investigation or treatment, I made myself find the positives in what I’d just been told before reporting back to friends and family. I relayed tales of anything funny that had happened while I was there and, as is my usual approach to life, I opened my eyes to things I could laugh and joke about. Soon there was much banter going on, my stress levels went down and everything felt much more ‘right-sized’. Very quickly I realised that however difficult others perceived my situation to be, I just didn’t feel that way myself any more. It really could be so much worse and I was coping fine. I remember telling people I was going to have a mastectomy and seeing them crumple before my eyes. Some cried. My first thought was confusion as to why they found this news so difficult. It’s only a bit of soft tissue inside me, not the essence of me. But they of course have their own views on how they would feel if they had a mastectomy, and it was that they were reacting to. After my initial thoughts about it all, I’d chosen to see it differently and I felt 100% genuinely fine about it. Having had the mastectomy, I still do.
One of my earlier seemingly overwhelming tasks, was how I would tell our three young kids what was going on. I decided to take the same approach and thought about all the positives of my situation. On the way home from school one day, I simply brought it up as ‘I have good news, which may not sound like good news, but it really is.’ They asked a couple of questions and then asked what was for dinner. A perfect outcome!
Yes of course I've had my panics about what news I might be about to hear while sitting in the waiting room, but in between times I’ve felt fine and have been living life as normal. When I was diagnosed, I assumed my future could be nothing but full of fear. It really needn’t be. As someone once said to me, ‘it seems to me that your fear of you dying young, is stopping you from living. Do you think that sounds like a reasonable existence?’
I’d so love to have a magic wand and wave everyone’s fears away. I can’t do that, but I can tell you that by focussing only on the positives, it has driven my fear away and given me my life back. Life is for living, not fearing the tomorrows.
Visit the International Elf Service to find out more about receiving exclusive news from the North Pole.