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Storm Train

Throughout Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October), the Building Resilience in Breast Cancer Centre (BRiC) is sharing stories, told first-hand by women who’ve experienced the illness. Here, Sara Williamson, Writer and Chair of the Mid-Yorkshire Breast Cancer Support Group, shares her journey.

image of Sara Williamson quote

So, after a mastectomy: node clearance (as 14/17 lymph nodes were affected), then chemotherapy, sepsis delaying radiotherapy, more surgery due to infections, Herceptin being stopped and started due to heart failure twice, then the Zoladex harpooning, followed by reconstruction, reduction, lypo filling – that filled four years from 2015 – 2019. That was the treatment plan! Nothing went in a straight line! The train kept derailing and diverting. Nothing prepares you for the side effects. Having to relearn to walk again and use my arms was an upward challenge.

Cancer disrupts your career, friendships and day to day living. I remember people being scared of me, the sad looks, no close proxemics. I was a reminder of the possibility of death and subjects always changed so that they did not have the burden of carrying my illness.

So, grade 3, stage 3c with a 40% chance of living. Five years was the predicted life expectancy, if I completed all treatment. I fought to continue treatment as was bloody minded enough to prove that those stats would be wrong. You would think after completing four years of treatment that you would be relieved, but the truth is that psychologically and emotionally the clock starts ticking backwards and the mind plays tricks on you. There’s the whisper in your ear that means that you have one year left to live, and reaching the five-year mark is supposed to be good, right!? People don’t realise that although alive you feel half dead with the side effects.

Every blood test recalled, mammogram, urine test and medical review terrifies me, so much so that there are sleepless nights until a recurrence is ruled out. When the word ‘cancer’ hangs over a cancer survivors head, it can be emotionally paralysing, making decision-making a challenge. New unexplained aches and pains cause fear of recurrence, and anxiety can be triggered by sounds and smells in hospital waiting rooms. Knowing your own body helps distinguish and recognise changes, but to what extent are we vigilant? Checking daily is obsessive but like a form of necessary obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

There’s emotional grief with enforced menopause and the loss of fertility, even if you never planned to have children. Body image, scars and disfigurement mean that you can’t relate to old friends in the same way. It’s difficult losing part of your body especially one so visible, and one which defines you as a woman. There’s frustration at life interrupted. Trying on bras and t-shirts that never seem to fit. Life and the body is lopsided.

Words all seem to have new meanings: ‘Warrior, fighter, survivor’. There’s no emphasis on one’s quality of life, or acquired disabilities, or new health issues. For secondary metastatic breast cancer patients, the word survivor seems to optimise the gift of life inappropriately. Then there’s guilt and grief at hearing of friends that have not lived. You are back on that storm train again.

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