I wrote the first draft of this about anger a few weeks ago. I was feeling so so angry. The emotions that living with cancer bring up time and again are ever changing, and often repetitive!
Right now I feel much calmer, strange considering I just had chemo. Physically I feel crap!
I am in the liminal part of the cancer rollercoaster. A scan on 13th February with results hopefully on 27th when I have my next oncologist appointment. As a result my main emotion as I wait is fear.
I am scared the cancer has grown and everything will change. In contradiction I am also scared too if it is good news because I will then be having a break from chemo for a few months.... Despite reassurances from my NHS and private oncologist that this is a good decision, and my gut telling me it is too, the thought of being off treatment is terrifying.
For 3 years chemo has been my life with a regime of chemo every week for 3 weeks then 1 week off. Today I started cycle 35, that's my 103rd chemo for secondary cancer - for which I am of course eternally grateful. For 3 years my life has been ruled by that regime, and being available for the weekly blood tests (for example I am having to come home a day early from a trip to ensure I can get bloods done in time for chemo).
I am quite calm today, but I feel it bubbling this fear. Quite a few times a day I notice it and have to give myself a talking to, if I dont catch it it grows, frustration kicks in and that can easily turn to anger. Small things will send me spirlling, and under the anger is this fear trying to find it's way out.
I'm Angry
I'm angry Grace has to live a life where she knows the words "chemo day" and that that day is just another part of the weekly routine, where hospital appointments dictate our schedule.
When she was just 2 years old I was diagnosed for the first time. She was too little to understand, but I will never forget the ache of wondering if I’d even be here to see her start school and witness her personality unfold.
By the time she was six, cancer had returned. Old enough then to know something was very wrong when I ended up in hospital for weeks after seizures, caused by treatment .
This is not what our relationship should revolve around.
Childhood is supposed to be filled with carefree laughter, bedtime stories, and new adventures not hospital corridors, blood tests, and the constant fear of what tomorrow might bring. It is cruel beyond measure that so much of her memory of me is tied up in ill health. I try so hard to make memories and have good days together in the hope they will be the main memories of me, not poorly mummy. It's a lot of pressure to put on myself. Normal days at home are of course just as important as big gestures. When we inevitably fall out, as all parents and children do, or when I say I can't play or put her to bed, I then panic that's what she will remember - sick mummy, too poorly to take her to school or read her a bedtime story. Another layer of hurt, fear and panic sets in.
What hurts most, too often keeping me awake at night, is the possibility, the likelihood, that she will have to go on without me and the hurt that will cause her, I am desperate to ensure she has as many people around to catch her when needed.
The other big ache is the probability that I will not being there to see her as a teenager, navigating those messy, beautiful years. That I won’t get to marvel at the young adult she becomes, or to stand beside her as she builds her own life. Every milestone she reaches feels extra special because I don’t know how many more I will be here for.
I am angry. I am devastated. Cancer has stolen so much already, and the threat of what it may still take is unbearable.
All I want is to be her mum—not her mum with cancer. To witness her grow, to love her in all the ordinary, extraordinary ways a mother should. To be present, simply present, without this disease dictating the terms.
It is wrong. It is cruel. And my heart breaks every single day that this is the reality we’ve been forced into.
So yes, I am angry.
I am angry with cancer and I am angry that life threw this not at me, but at Grace.
Powerful writing about the layered fears that come with chronic illness. The tension between being grateful for treatment and terrified of breaks from it captures how uncertain everything becomes. Grace is lucky to have a mom who's so intentional about creating those joyful memories alongside teh hard ones. That kind of presense matters way more than the perfect days.