104. The breast lump: a year on

When people ask me how I am (and they do ask, all the time, which is very kind of them), I can genuinely say: I'm fine. I am still waiting to see whether the booklets and cancer information websites are right when they assert that the months following the end of cancer treatment can be the hardest of all.

So far, I'm glad to say, there's no sign of this predicted hardship.

I am genuinely happy, every day, most of the day, that the ordeal is more or less behind me. My annus horribilis is set to turn into an annus mirabilis. I have counted my blessings and here they all are, spread before me, ready to be enjoyed to the full. It is not hard. It is wonderful.

I've heard people say that one of the upsides of having cancer is that you become aware how much you are loved, and this is true. I wouldn't go as far as saying that it counteracts the downsides of cancer (fear, exhaustion, misery, pain and nausea and breathlessness, sudden collapses, losing your grip on life, missing body parts, that kind of thing - see blog). But now that the fear, misery, pain/nausea/breathlessness etc have passed, and the missing body parts have become like a fondly but no longer longingly remembered deceased friend, the feeling that remains is of being loved and blessed.

Plus, enough energy again to actually enjoy that feeling. Plus, enough energy again to enjoy forgotten pursuits: going for walks, playing my cello, doing my job. Plus, gazing at my lovely husband and children in pure awe. Look at them, look how they've coped with having an ill wife and mother. The children have done so much growing and learning and maturing in a year; I wasn't always looking, but I'm looking now, and I'm proud of them.

I don't know how soon I will start taking these things for granted, but for now, I'm deeply aware of how lucky I am.

And yet, and yet.

It isn't all plain sailing, and this week has been a strange up-and-down one.

I suppose it's too much to expect life to go neatly upwards from henceforth. Energy levels fluctuate, which is remarkably easy to forget during the good times. I went for a tough, hilly coastal walk near Hastings, with a fellow Night Owl (training for the Moonwalk). Quite an achievement, we agreed. This was followed by a full day in the office working flat-out, using up all remaining brain power. Submitting a paper to an academic journal. Two steps forward.

Two Night Owls on a coastal training walk

After that, I had to spend two consecutive afternoons in bed. One step back. Cue frustration and that familiar feeling of uselessness.

I'm still not quite as bushy-tailed as I think I ought to be. Moments of happiness are quickly followed by sudden brief snatches of plaintiveness. In fact, I have been feeling rather melancholy recently.

Why?

Well, I wonder whether it's the anniversary effect.

It's March, winter turning into spring, exactly a year after finding the breast lump that changed the course of my year and my life.

That paper I submitted earlier this week? I was meant to sent it off last spring, but there was the small matter of a breast lump throwing a spanner in the works.

It's funny how the turn of the weather, the date in the diary creeping towards diagnosis day, brings it all back. It's not so much the memories of events that engulf me, but the feelings and emotions that accompanied those events.

I went back to the diary I started writing the day before I was given my cancer diagnosis. I'd found the lump, gone to my GP, visited the hospital breast clinic. I had not been sent home with the all-clear I had expected: rather, I'd been given an appointment to come back for the results. Oh dear.

I started writing that diary on the 1st April 2014 (pointing a little arrow to that date with the words: "If only this notebook was a joke...").

"Well, go on then," it starts. "Let's open the pages of this virgin book and start writing: that tried and tested way of making sense of life when life seems overwhelming or unnamed feelings vibrate below the surface. Using words to dig them up, look at them, expose them to the light of day. Keeping track, so that I can go back and have another look, ah yes, that's how it was, that's how it is, that's how it is no more."

The same sentiment can be heard in this:

"One day, we will look back, Owl and I, and marvel at the road we travelled."

You may have read these words before. I wrote them on my About Owl page.

The day for looking back has come. Thank goodness for that notebook, because remarkably, you do forget the details. Not just the details of exactly what happened, but also the details of how you felt. The sands of life have shifted; I am looking at a new landscape.

But the echoes of those feelings still sound a year later. Reading my year-old diary helps me understand why I am feeling strangely vulnerable and somewhat shaken right now. What shocked me most, reading it, was how utterly shaken I was by my diagnosis. There was a month between the diagnosis and the first lot of surgery. Physically, nothing had changed in that month; yet I was utterly unable to function.

Because everything had changed.

I was, quite literally, floored. This is what I marvel at: the extent to which I am now happily recovering, physically floored but no longer emotionally devastated. If you'd told me then that I would still be struggling with the effects of cancer treatments a year later, I would probably have locked myself in a darkened and soundproofed room for some proper wailing. Or, more likely, I would have laughed. Ill for an entire year? Don't be ridiculous.

"This could be the eve of becoming a cancer patient," I wrote on that April Fools Day. "I was going to wait until tomorrow before starting this journal. Why waste a perfectly lovely notebook on a benign breast lump that warrants few words beyond the minor surgery that will sort it out?"

But I couldn't wait, because these events are big. I'd forgotten how big.

Perhaps it is time to share the beginning of my cancer story.

I started this blog three months after finding the lump, summarising those earlier months in a few succinct paragraphs. I could not have shared my real emotions with you then, because they were too raw and I felt too vulnerable. In addition, I had no idea what blogging might be like. Would I mind it being public?

As it turned out, my public writing about deeply personal stuff has been well received - to the extent that it has given some sort of meaning to the past year. I couldn't do proper mothering, I couldn't do my job, I couldn't do anything - but at least I could write about it all, and that seemed to help not only myself but also a few other people. Marvellous. "I cried all over your blog today" would be the best news of the day. I moved people! I made them think and laugh and cry! Who knows, perhaps I could save the world from the comfort of my bed? Turn being a cancer patient into a new career?

Now that I'm back to mothering and doing my job and generally doing everything again, I don't feel quite such a strong need to keep blogging. But reading that diary, I realised that this blog is incomplete without the start of the story.

So, over the coming weeks, I will take you back in time and tell you what happened. What it was like.

Those were not the easiest of times, so it will not be a particularly jolly read, but somehow I feel it is important to share it with you, who have stuck with me this far. Feel free to skip or save till later if you'd rather enjoy your Easter egg hunt without my tales of woe. The advantage of the extra year is that you don't have to worry about me anymore.

As I said: I,m fine. Truly.

I'll see you tomorrow with the first instalment.