Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of ‘luck’ and, specifically, how it does or doesn’t pertain to the past year of my life. I believe that one of the first questions a cancer patient asks when they receive their diagnosis is, “Why did this happen to me?” I know I asked that question repeatedly for many months and on occasion I still ask it now. The monologue that I found myself giving to anyone who’d listen was principally focused on how this especially shouldn’t have happened to me; I’m far too young and fit, I’ve always eaten very healthily, and I have very little family history of cancer. I just couldn’t wrap my head around what had happened to me, and it made it all the harder for me to be continually hearing the advice doled out regarding how to lower recurrence risk because such guidance always involved things I had been doing long before my diagnosis. To me, my diagnosis felt like a horribly unlucky thing to happen and I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who would agree with me. The awful thing about unluckiness is that there’s not really much you can do to take back control.
A very short time after my diagnosis, when I was in the initial onslaught of treatment and terror, I was told by somebody I don’t know all that well that I was incredibly lucky. They said this with complete sincerity, and although I’m sure they meant it with the best of intentions, it greatly upset me. I was really hurt that they could even think that (let alone say it) and that they didn’t see me as the utter wretch I felt like. If I’m being honest, I wanted people to feel sorry for me and I’m not sure that there’s anything wrong or abnormal about that: who doesn’t need compassion and kindness when they suddenly find themselves attempting to navigate their way through a very real and hideous Hell? I was faced with over a year of chemotherapy, multiple surgeries, the loss of my breasts and in reality, the loss of my entire life as I knew it. Conversations with my husband suddenly shifted from saving for a house deposit and starting a family, to how we’d afford to pay for treatments and preserve my future fertility. Obviously cancer is never a fair thing to happen, but this all did feel so very unfair.
I don’t think I’ll ever be someone who says that their cancer was a blessing (although obviously I’m very pleased for people who are able to feel that way) but of late I do find that I can’t stop telling people how lucky I am. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t in any way feel that I’m lucky to have had cancer but the more I carve my way through this journey, the more I’m forced to take stock of all the things I have to be thankful for. This was made all the more apparent to me when a few weeks ago I lost one of my dearest childhood friends to breast cancer. Many of you reading this blog will also have known and loved her and for that reason, I feel you will know that there are no words I could write that would do her justice. But, for those of you who did not know her, she was a fiercely smart and strikingly beautiful young woman who was neverendingly caring and loyal. She leaves behind her husband and two gorgeous little children who were her whole world. Those of us who knew her are grappling with the reality of her being gone; with her having done so well with her treatment and then suddenly having an incurable recurrence. The cruelness of it all smacks me in the gut and at times, makes it hard to breathe, but the thing is that my friend was one of the bravest people I’ve ever met and I feel I just have to do her justice in how I choose to face my own diagnosis. I have to honour the woman she was; the friend who let me live with her for a year in her tiny room in student halls because I didn’t know what I was doing with my life, the person I could always count on to tell me when to man up (and still do so with love), the mother who when faced with the devastating news of her illness thought only of her family and how she could support them.
So you see, I am lucky. When I tell people that I feel lucky, I really and truly mean it. I am lucky that I’ve had the best treatment money can buy because my friends and family were so kind to support me through my Gofundme page. I’m lucky that so far I have been able to make it through my chemotherapy and immunotherapy infusions without any delays or complications. I’m lucky that my husband works from home and took care of me 24/7 during the worst stages of my treatment. I’m lucky that he then took me to Maui to celebrate finishing my hardcore chemo back in May. I’m lucky that on Friday I will get to watch my older brother marry the loveliest, kindest woman whom I know he completely and utterly loves. I’m lucky to have known a person as beautiful and loving as my friend. Most of all, I’m lucky to even be sat here typing these words, because I know in my heart that nothing is promised, and nothing is certain.
With much love,
Emma xxx
Triple Positive +++ 
I can’t stop crying after reading this. Your words are so heartfelt and beautiful. It is so hard to know the right words to say but I will try my best. I am so sorry for the loss of your beautiful friend who was dealt such a cruel hand and robbed of so much so young. I am so sad for you too and her children, friends, and family who no longer have her shining soul in your life but know she will live on forever inside your hearts. We are lucky too. We were so blessed the day you fell in love with our son and joined our family. The love, laughter, strength, and joy that you bring is more than we could ever have hoped for in our daughter-in-law. We only wish we could take what you are going through away. Sending all our love to you and best wishes to your brother, his lovely bride-to-be and your family for a beautiful day. xx
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Viv I’m so sorry for the delay in my reply! I got swept up in the wedding activities 🙂 thank you so much for this lovely comment. Your words mean so much to me, and when I read them I was also crying! I’m so happy and grateful to be married to your son. He is truly the best thing in my life and marrying him (twice) was the best decision I ever made! All my love xxxx
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I would say you are remarkably brave and inspirational xx
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Thank you so much Kellie. That’s a lovely thing to say and I very much appreciate it 😘 xxxx
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Love you, see you Friday xxxxx
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So fantastic to meet up with you and to finally meet Bret! Oh, not forgetting your mum of course. Have a wonderful time on Friday. We are so happy for Tim and Lauren. Lots and lots of love xxx
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Emma it’s all so true what you have written. You are more SPECIAL than lucky though. You look brilliant in all your pics and would have no idea of what you have been through. Can I see you after the wedding let me know what’s good for you. Lots of love Nicky x x💛
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Thank you Nicky! So sorry I missed you xxx
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Dear Emma,
You probably don’t remember me, but I was one of the Governors at High Hurstwood Primary School and as your Mum has reminded me, been working with her for the last thirteen years. I‘m using the past tense as I have just quit – much to Janes horror – but I’ve done it long enough.
I’m prompted to write as I’ve just had a call from the local MP responding to a letter that I wrote to her about the woeful state of aspects of school funding. (The election is upon us which is why she called I’m sure!) Anyway I thought I’d let your Mum know which took me to her last email to me in which she shared some family news. Well your news. So forgive my presumption but I thought my email meanderings might be a distraction but I won’t be offended if you don’t get very far as I do tend to bang on.
I’ve followed your cancer journey, which you have so generously shared, with great interest. You did make me laugh in your writing about swimming in the sea and your fear of sharks. But goodness me you have been through the mill. I, like no doubt your many readers, am in awe of your stoicism and cheerfulness in the face of a pretty shit hand of fate. I was also moved by your last dissertation on being lucky. I don’t think anybody who knows me would ever say that I’m a cup half full sort of person – and it’s a good thing to be reminded to check in on one’s own good fortune.
I’m retired now as two years ago my back pain became too difficult to manage. What I had thought was going to be a month or two off work in 2016 getting some facet and RF ablation blocks to spinal nerves, turned after a year, into another surgery. I woke to my normally taciturn surgeons face looking very cheerful. I drowsily inquired why he was looking so pleased with himself – he replied that he’d found a broken bone in my back and could probably publish a paper about it. We later worked out I’d lived with this bloody thing floating around for three decades. So much for modern scan technology which despite multiple imaging procedures over the years never showed any indication of a broken back!
So no more trips to LA driving an A380. I’d love to say I miss it but if I never set foot in an airliner again I wouldn’t be unhappy. Although curiously I do miss my little bit of LA that I carved into a home away from home. The Berlin Bistro where they were always welcoming, a dive of a Pool Bar filled with very ‘interesting’ clientele and of course getting the boat trips from long beach to see the migrating whales. I also miss the sun! The whale trips were awesome and usually I got to see some wonderful sights. The most magical moment was whilst the catamaran was stationary as we were close to some grey whales; something prompted me to look down, and coming up head first under the boat was a huge Fin whale. Magical doesn’t describe it.
However although retirement is nice, thirty years of working in a cockpit environment with suspect air quality caused by unburnt oil in the air conditioning has left me with some kind of illness that mimics an auto immune disorder, so retirement has been rather quiet so far. I’m hoping that as time goes by the chemicals will leave my system and I might recover. As you can see your treatise on luck was very relevant as I can reflect that I saved the resources to retire, have a great family, lovely wife, hot and cold running water, roof over our heads and live in a country with a half decent political system and a moderately free press! And actually having seen the rest of the world – the UK seems to be a pretty fair place to live. So lucky fellow indeed.
Being stuck on my back for much of the last few years has also allowed me to read a great deal and as I’ve principally been looking for ways to improve my health I have become, to the chagrin of my family, a complete bore about food. One of the reasons I am interested is because I am so concerned about why there is such a huge uptick in children with SEN and various behaviours on the autism spectrum. If ‘you are what you eat’ then that might explain a lot. My conclusion is that if you can’t make it from scratch in your kitchen – don’t eat it. I don’t do this! But I try to work out if the constituent parts of the recipe I am following could conceivably have been created in a kitchen environment by a determined homesteader. And top tip – avoid vegetable cooking oils that aren’t cold extracted. Which is precious few other than coconut, palm oil and olive oil. And the worst culprit – sunflower oil – packed out with yummy free radicals ready to fry your arteries! Hmm – told you I was a bore on the subject of nutrition.
I think by now you will be in recovery from a reconstruction procedure. I so hope that it went well and that you are not in too much post operative discomfort. And that is something I can truly empathise with. Soft tissue injury can take a while to knit back together. Not much fun at all. In my peripatetic wanderings around medical stuff I read quite a bit about pain and its management. This lead me to an app called Cureable – which I purchased for some silly amount of money! One of the things it did teach me to do is to change the language describing pain. This in an attempt to fool the brain or at least not reinforce the brains perception of pain. So now instead of saying, for example, my thoracic spine is agony today – I might say – I’ve got a lot of fruit in my back just now. The family think I’m barking but I think if it even knocks a tiny percentage off the perception of pain then its worth a shot.
Jane also tells me that your hair style is now very Audrey Hepburn. Will you be updating your triple positive page?! My wife says when my mop of hair gets long and bouncy, that I look like a grey Michael McIntyre. I don’t find this flattering so make sure I then get it cut – which I suspect is the point of her comment!
I became a Grand Father in January of this year. I now have a Grand daughter who is of course the most beautiful person in the world! She was however born with a cleft in her soft palate and three weeks ago had surgery to repair this. Fingers crossed that the repair holds and life gets back to normal for her and her parents. My knowledge of Cleft issues was not very large but we do have some fantastic experts in this country for which I am very grateful, and my daughters family have received a huge amount of support.
My Emma, having been ditched by her revolting partner of 8 years, and after moving home a couple of times and travelled around bits of the globe where things bite you (!) is now working in the travel industry. From wannabe actress singer to telesales for G Adventures is, I suspect, a journey she didn’t think she would make. However she seems to be having fun and gets the odd free holiday out of it too. She recently went on a solo trip to a Yoga retreat in Portugal. The kind of Yoga retreat where is quite a lot of Prosecco! She managed, on the last day, and in walking shoes, and stone cold sober (she says,) to fall off a pavement and hyper extended the ligaments in one ankle. So she’s been with us for the last three weeks as the swelling has slowly gone down. Happily she can work from home. When the incident occurred and she was carried back into her accommodation she asked the organisers if they had some pain medication. They replied they didn’t and the pharmacies were closed – so they offered her a pain relieving meditation instead. Happily a fellow traveller was more prepared than my daughter and Tramadol and prosecco took the edge off things.
I’m trying acupuncture again and had my second course today – I find it leaves you feeling a bit wobbly so have been tapping away one handed from the usual horizontal position on the sofa. The laptop has only fallen onto my nose twice. So thank you for giving me something to do whilst my abused meridians do whatever it is they do when a needle is stuck in them.
I send so many good wishes and thoughts for your recovery and look forward to your next instalment.
But before I cease my musing, one final point on your fear of sharks. LA is an area of coastal waters where the Great White gives birth to their pups. So they secrete a hormone which stops them eating. Should you go on a whale watching trip and fall overboard – well it won’t a Great White that gives you a nibbling.
With all good wishes.
Peter
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Hi Peter,
Thank you so much for your comment! I do indeed remember you very well, and it is lovely to hear from you 🙂
Thank you so much for following my blog and taking the time to get in contact. I certainly need to post on here again soon and have been working on a new post. Hopefully, I’ll get it finished in the next few days!
I have recently begun to refer to myself as being ‘fortunate’ rather than lucky. I’m not sure there’s really any difference between the two, but it feels apter somehow. Luck always seems to me to be tied to fate, whereas fortune can come from privilege? I’m not sure if that’s nonsense, but that’s what I’ve been thinking about recently anyway!
I absolutely love your description of changing the pain narrative! I think that’s a brilliant idea. I was surprised to find that I was in barely any pain after my recent operation (I have no idea why, but I didn’t question it!) but I will be sure to give this a go when I next need to! I also am a big proponent of healthy eating, as I was before my diagnosis, but now I make more of an effort to eat organic and cut down on refined grains. Luckily, I love eating vegetables! haha
Congratulations on your new lovely granddaughter! I have no doubt she is the most beautiful baby in the world, and I wish all the luck for her upcoming operation. It also sounds like your Emma and myself have a lot more in common than our name! I also enjoy singing/acting/yoga/prosecco and being clumsy! Although I don’t enjoy that last one so much as I am just very good at it!
Thanks for the info about the sharks! Very timely as my friend has been trying to convince me to go paddleboarding with her and I may have to give it a go!
All the best to you and hoping for your continued good health,
Emma
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