On 3 Years of Living With Cancer

On Monday next week, I will have officially been living with cancer for 3 years.

Of course, I’ve actually been living with cancer for longer than that. The back pain started 6 months before that, and it had probably been hanging around for some time before it made itself known. Lurking in the shadows of my bone marrow, rubbing its hands together with an evil grin about the havoc it was about to wreak.

Even Monday isn’t really true, as I have documents with the 8th on them, which means there were people out there who knew I had cancer while I was still sitting at home oblivious.

But anyway, if we’re going to put a date on it, my official diagnosis was explained to me 3 years ago on Monday. 3 years ago, I put on my best polka dot dress that I’d bought as the steroids for my back pain had already made me balloon, and I did my eye makeup nicely because if someone was going to give me bad news, I refused to take it in a bad outfit. 3 years ago I was told “You have incurable Cancer” and 3 years ago I asked “Will I ever be able to do a pull up?”¹ because that was the first thing I thought of.

I really had no idea how bloody hard it was going to be. When my treatment plan was explained to me, I blithely thought that I’d be popping in for 45 minutes for treatment twice a week and carrying on with my life. I thought I’d take a couple of months out for a Stem Cell Transplant and then just pop back to work like nothing had changed. But in fact, it changed everything.