the "C" word

Many will tell you that being told you have cancer is like a knife through the heart, or a hammer blow to the head.  A life changing sentence at the very least.  And I can fully understand that.

But I didn’t feel like that.  I felt relieved in a very strange way.  Don’t get me wrong.  I mean I didn’t start dancing round the hospital ward or celebrating.  But I was glad that I now had an explanation for the way I’d been feeling for the last 10 months or so.

I started feeling unwell around Christmas 2013.  Persistent colds, bugs – that sort of thing.  Then I was told that my mother had little time left to live.  I saw my GP and she told me that I was stressed and depressed causing me to be run down and susceptible to infection.  I reluctantly accepted the diagnosis and was signed off work for a while.  Mum died.  We had the funeral.  I went back to work.  I still didn’t feel well but put it down to working hard to catch up, and the after effects of bereavement.

Then the pain started in my lower back.  Nagging at first then more severe.  I went to see a chiropractor but no change.  I was now being sick quite a lot and not eating.

So, my wife persuaded me to go for an x-ray (you can self-refer at the local hospital) and they told me to wait around 2 weeks for the results.  The next day in work I had to come home early as I was feeling so unwell and in so much pain.  I felt really guilty doing this as I’d been off for a long period earlier in the year.

When the phone went I knew.  I knew that it would be my GP.  I knew it would be bad news.  Don’t ask me how, but I just did.  He thought I had myeloma and said I had to go to hospital.  I went in the next day and the tests began.  Then on 23^rd October 2014, 10 months after I’d started to feel ill, I was told that I had myeloma in my spine.

One thing I do recall was the feeling of being overwhelmed.  Yes, I had answers but now I had a huge problem to face up to.  Dying was a very real possibly.  Months off work and more treatment were more definite.  But, as I already said, I was also relieved.  That chapter of my life was now over.  Getting ill.  Losing my mum.  All that was now neatly compartmentalised behind me.  Ahead of me lay uncertainty.

And as I wait to see my consultant for the results of my latest blood tests, I am reminded that more uncertainty awaits.