Today is World Cancer Day. I’m a new member, do I get a badge or a pen perhaps?
First things first - go to the doctors. I know it can be a ball ache getting an appointment and often a heady mix of worry and embarrassment but I can pretty much guarantee you the doctors will have seen whatever your ailment is before. And if they haven’t then boy, it’s probably even more important that you see them!
Secondly, don’t take no for an answer, don't get brushed off. If the prescribed treatment isn’t working then go back. And go back again. I went through five or six different creams and just as many different antibiotics to clear my legs - nothing worked, other than making a £9.35 hole in my pocket every time. Never mind going through every different washing detergent imaginable to try and find the cause! Yes, annoying, but if I didn’t keep going back the question of lymphoma would never have been raised later that summer.
The best tip I can ever give is don’t google your symptoms. Jesus Christ, don’t do it. You will only ever come away from it thinking you’re going to die. Every single case of everything that ever existed is personal to you and can’t be answered by some stock answers online. I was very fortunate to have Evie swallow the contents of a Lymphoma book for me - if I needed to know something, she would tell me like my own, live-in Lymphoma expert. I didn’t need to fill my head with any what ifs or maybes.
To this day I haven’t really looked in to why or how I got cancer. Do you want to know why? It’s pointless. It happened and I have to deal with it.
Out of mild curiosity (it is 5am, of course), and with today being World Cancer Day, I’ve had a look on their website. These are considered to be modifiable risk factors for cancer.
- Alcohol - I have the odd drink or two, very rarely to excess - who can honestly be arsed with a hangover after 25?
- Being overweight - I’ve ran over 1000 miles a year four of the last five years and the time I didn’t was last year when I retired on 847 miles when my treatment started.
- Diet and nutrition - sure, I like chocolate but pretty good, pretty balanced.
- Physical activity - see above.
- Tobacco - never smoked a cigarette in my life.
- Ionising equipment - closest I’ve got to radiation before all this was the Chernobyl level on that Call of Duty.
- Infection - nope, not to my knowledge.
- Age - 32.
Just shit out of luck then? You got it.
I’m yet to see a better rationale. You see, no point.
And so this is the fundamental reason for staying positive throughout this shit show. There is no alternative.
Of course, I know there is an alternative, but being anything other than positive doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help the people around you and it sure as hell doesn’t help you. My doctor explicitly said that being positive and attacking this whole thing head on will have absolutely contributed to *beating* it in four rounds of treatment. What would have happened if I let the diagnosis beat me?
I was lucky to have a form of cancer that I could front up to and fight - but still, positivity is so important.
I think some people have been surprised by my positivity, but that stems from the stigma around a cancer diagnosis in my opinion. Yes, it's never good news, but this is a key little segment from the World Cancer Day website:
"Cancer understandably causes fear. However, misinformation, misconceptions and stigma surrounding cancer – including that there is no cure – create a negative cycle that can confirm our fears. These fears and misperceptions can prevent us from screening or consulting for early symptoms, or to delay or avoid treatment and care altogether. A late diagnosis and delayed treatment generally result in worse outcomes, which in turn perpetuates the myths and misconception of cancer being incurable or untreatable."
I'd be lying if I'd say I haven't had bad days. I've had a lot. There were a few early Saturday's shortly after diagnosis, and especially during the first few rounds of treatment where I didn't think I could do it. Being faced with six months of this was ridiculously hard to compute, never mind the outside chance that it wouldn't work anyway. Way harder than any marathon nonsense or anything else ever thrown my way. But by talking to those close to me, writing this blog and fronting the fuck up have taken me through nine treatment rounds out of 12, 114 days since my first, and leaving only 40 to go.
(Soz language, but cancer is one thing that deserves it. More and more each day).
The final bit of wisdom(?) I can offer is there is no right or wrong way to get through something like this and everyone's experience is different. A lot of it, especially in a world of social media and limited contact, is being in control of sharing what I want people to see. Whilst I want to share a real world reflection of what this is like, and whilst I do on the most part, I can't share everything because, honestly, it would be a miserable read and I'd lose all my reader stats - and that's very important to my ego!
As I get closer to the end of this battle and the door to the rest of my life opens up again, I feel more passionate every single day about making a difference. It couldn't sound cornier, but so far I've got lucky. I have to use that platform for good.
So, apologies in advance for sounding like a broken record going forward - but hey, it might save your life one day.
I'm not even joking.
We've made some amazing progress with the charity evening on Saturday 10th September with a very professional looking suite of marketing created by my sister Sophie (at very favourable, Bulls Head pizza rates too I should point out...!), whilst you can find out more on the event page on Facebook which can be found here.
Everyone is invited and more than welcome, and again, I will apologise now for the weekly banging of the drum this is going to get all the way through to September.
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