Cancer,  Gynae Cancers,  Health

Two Years On

Two years ago today I attended my first colposcopy appointment. I was 29 years old and I had just had my second baby. I was pretty much exuding happiness, tired happiness, but happiness nonetheless.

Cancer.

It’s a word none of us want to hear, ever. Not for ourselves or for those around us. It’s deceitful, it’s cunning and sly. It hides and it eludes is. It puts those who are diagnosed with it through hell (and that’s putting it mildly). It’s the word I heard by the end of that first appointment.

As time goes by I become increasingly aware that I’m able to examine this memory from different angles. Almost like when it happened it was a spotlight, just on me and what happened that day, but the further away from that moment I get the more that comes into the light, the nurse and the doctor, my sister in law, my four month old baby.

I realise now that without my beautiful Sophie, my wonderful sister (because you don’t go through those days together and keep up with the in law bit except for descriptive purposes), I’m not sure I’d have gotten through that moment. She must have been devastated herself but she didn’t show it.

I remember the amazing nurse who took Isla for a few minutes so that my sister in law could comfort me, and who became my first source of belief that whatever was to come I could face and beat.

I remember sobbing into my Dad’s shoulder that it just wasn’t fair (it never is), and asking what had I done? Nothing, he told me, nothing.

I remember the look on my husbands face when I got home, the desperation of wanting to fix it and knowing he couldn’t, the fear that this was a disease that could cost him his wife, the mother of his children.

I remember thinking this would be the worst day of my life. That it couldn’t get any worse than that. It wasn’t.

So much has happened in the last two years, a lot of it, really devastating, some of it brightening. I have come across some of the most beautiful human beings in existence while fighting this, so many amazing people have followed my journey and shared my posts.

I’ve been in national papers and on the local telly and radio. I’ve started something really positive out of it. I knew early on if I beat this thing I’d find a way to foster change and I will.

But for today, the day the C-Bomb detonated, blowing my life into smithereens and threatening my very existence, today I will remember and let myself feel whatever I need to feel and then I hope that I can put it aside for a bit and have an amazing Christmas with the family I was so desperate to survive to be with.

Life is so precious. I’ve learned that 100x over throughout all of this that life is so, so precious. My new world is very different to the old one, it’s still so new and fragile, built from the war zone the C-Bomb left behind, but it’s mine and every bit as precious as the old one.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.