Write or Wrong

Words will out.

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

It is ten years this month since I was diagnosed with stage three, triple negative breast cancer. Yayyyy happy tumour free me.

Fortunately I am now fully in remission and the whole things seems like a faded nightmare the morning after. Aside from the odd temporary blind panic if I ever feel a weird pain, anywhere, I then divide into two parts: one side thinking through the logistics of managing palliative care alone without burdening anyone and choosing a list of poignant funeral tracks. The other more sensible and calmer side heads to the bathroom to take a couple of ibuprofen until the minor ache, muscle strain or headache passes. I am well aware of how lucky I am but a decade ago cancer was still treated with an almost reverential quality, a whispered swear word with very little transparency about what went on behind the closed doors of the chemotherapy ward, a place you didn’t willingly head to unless out of necessity. The goings on within that room and indeed the consultation offices belonging to oncologists were a shrouded secretive mystery as were the after effects and the people you met along the way.

The instinctive need to communicate daily happenings, conversations with nurses, consultants and hospital admin staff were crowding my head as I recreated what I encountered in thought out clever sentences and vivid descriptions while I waited wherever I was needed, to be scanned, poked and prodded. People I came into regular contact with never disappointed; what they wore, said and did were added to my overthinking conscious where they were constantly developing and bursting to life with words of my choosing, the harder to believe they were real the better; "There's nowt so queer as folk” - I wanted the opportunity to capture these scenes and subjects in all their deliciously strange and weird ways. I figured that writing about it would inform people what I was going through without the need to send endless messages and make tonnes of exhausting phone calls.

Away from the hospitals and clinics and doctor’s surgeries my friends and family needed updating but were reluctant to press for details in case it came across as inappropriately clumsy or invasive. I decided that their queries and curiosities should and would be answered in full, written in a way to allow them a peek into a highlighted and yet private world. More than anything I wanted to relieve the pressure on all of us by creating something people could laugh at - the very black comedy of my medical situation.

My reasons for doing so weren’t entirely selfless…

It was more than cathartic, it came from a deep seated need within me to document, report back and show what it was really like to go through cancer, and despite it not being a laughing matter I wanted my words to make it somehow more palatable to those reading about it, by writing it in glorious metaphoric technicolor meant I felt less alone, people could come along and join me on that ridiculous rollercoaster ride.

It helped them and it definitely helped me.

That basic need to communicate through a blog what I was feeling, thinking and experiencing would become the blueprint for all my writing even if unknowingly it had always been there, the emails I sent from Nicaragua were already proof of that. In this particular case it centered around my ‘battle’ with a hidden enemy, a grim task as I dealt with a tiny but dangerous tumor, little did I know back then it was merely a dress rehearsal for much later when I would face a much taller but equally poisonous presence and my writing ability would take on a life of its own.

In 2015, when my physical strength was disappearing along with my hair and immune system, writing gave me a focus, a creative outlet and the people reading and enjoying it were my lifeblood. The knowledge that despite the subject matter my words were being enjoyed by family, friends and even strangers was like winning a special prize with every reaction, comment and message. My words seemed to be having an impact and that made a tiny part of me believe I had some sort of ability, I was nowhere near calling myself a writer or heaven forbid an author, but maybe, just maybe one day.

I could barely contain my delight at his success on the job front, the move to Italy, and all the implications: a wedding to plan and a beautiful new part of the country to explore together. There was something else to be over the moon about too. My dream had always been to write, and although I had penned a few magazine articles and blogs, I had been too busy to spend any real time on it. Now, there was a real chance I could stop working and focus on writing. The idea of exploring that further, no longer worrying about money and being ‘looked after’ while he worked, was everything I had ever hoped for. 

Excerpt from Hello Flower - Chapter 30

Contrary to what I had hoped and wished for it took me another six years before I wrote anything more. I pretended it didn’t matter, but it was always there when I was out walking, the sentences piling up in a muddled mess inside my overloaded brain, wanting and needing a place to settle, to be spread out and edited and licked into shape. I never once considered writing fiction feeling my own experiences needed a home and yet I was losing confidence, in myself and my ability - so I parked any thought of writing and temporarily buried that medley of adjectives and adverbs.

There was one story which he told me I should write. I will, I agreed, believing in it and in him at the time, it was definitely a story which needed to be told, everyone told me so.

I always keep my promises.

(My cancer blog is available on here in full)