F E A R

It has been 135 days since my last chemotherapy.


That's 11,664,000 seconds - and the ones of which I've spent awake have been filled with an overwhelming, earth-shattering, stomach churning fear.


You know when you wake up from a nightmare, and for a few moments, it feels completely real until you realise it was all just a bad dream?  Then comes that comforting rush of relief, and your anxieties melt away?  That feeling, only the nightmare is real, and you can't wake up from it because it is your reality.  And the anxiety stays, grows and mutates into something scarier than you've ever been confronted with before.


The first appointment after diagnosis (which was, quite frankly, an absolute sham; I felt truly let down by the NHS - but more of that on another post) with the haematologist, I remember sitting in his sterile office, buzzwords and jargon flying past my ears like bullets.  My mother, father and husband to my right-hand side, all three of them pale and silent.

"...look on the positive side, you're young and you can fight this, excellent prognosis"

"...stage 2, but still only early disease, extremely high cure rate"

"...if initial treatment fails, plenty other options to explore, new CAR-T therapy"

"...treatment with expectation to cure"

I wish I could say those words reassured me, but they just felt like white noise.  I sat shell-shocked; "will I lose my hair?" being the first words I could muster.  I'll be honest, I was quite proud of myself for not screaming and sobbing as hysterically as one might imagine they would upon being told such earth-shattering news.  For the tears I lacked that day, I made up for them a million times over the coming months.


I know many things are in my favour to ultimately be completely cured, but upon being told "you have cancer", it takes every ounce of your being to remain positive.


Sitting there still and silent, it felt like I had just been handed my death sentence - "this is what is going to kill me" were my honest immediate thoughts.  I knew the journey ahead of me would be the hardest thing I would have to do in my life so far, and the thought of my already weak body being pumped full of a poisonous "cure" was just as daunting as being told this disease was rapidly growing inside of me.  I was so tired, after a good couple of years of the disease already tormenting me and sapping my energy.  How would I muster the strength to evict this fucker?

But what is it about being told you have cancer, that is so terrifying?  Undoubtedly, it is having your mortality cruelly waved in your face.  Not only waved in your face, it smacks you around the head at lightening-speed, kicks you in the stomach, leaving you on the floor a trembling mess.  Feeling the very real terror of the prospect of living out what could be the end stage of your life running cold through your veins.

Your mortality, something you can (usually) push to the very back of your brain, hidden away nicely in a compact little box in cupboard locked away in the deepest recess of your psyche - suddenly takes centre stage.  For the first few weeks after diagnosis, death was my first waking thought and the last thing on my mind before I attempted sleep.

As I await my forthcoming PET CT scan on 25th March (with the results on 1st April - happy April fucking Fool's Day to me, ha ha), close to 5 months after my last round of escalated BEACOP-Dac, any small progress that was made in me attempting to stay positive and upbeat since the summer has gradually flaked away, leaving me feeling as fearful and vulnerable as I felt upon my diagnosis.  My antidepressants seem useless now, but still I religiously take them.  My precious but pathetic allowance of Valium being carefully rationed when I feel like I need the whole fucking packet at once.  I wish I could go to hospital and be put under anaesthetic, or pumped full of lovely comforting morphine, and woken up when this is all over.

But what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.  Right?