In August 2009, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. By the time it came to the formal diagnosis it was more of a hope it wouldn’t turn out to be cancer, but the initial referral to the breast clinic was wholly unexpected. To say it had an impact on my life would be the understatement of the century – in my mind there is still the life I had before cancer, and the life I had after. But, overall, I choose to take the positives from the experience of which there were some.
The cancer diagnosis wasn’t the only significant event in my life that had a huge influence on my perspective – my parent’s acrimonious divorce when I was 10 and the subsequent parental abandonment by my father has had a seismic impact on my life to this day, 44 years later. The deaths of my beloved grandparents had a huge impact on my life but I don’t think my perspective on life. And the requisite heartbreaks from relationships did and didn’t have an impact on my perspective. But what narrowed all of those things down into an intense focus was the cancer diagnosis.
I’d been having a few problems for around 12 months prior to my diagnosis – a cold that would never truly clear up, endless mouth ulcers for example. The problems incrementally increased to bone-deep exhaustion no matter how much rest I took, a constant feeling of nausea whenever I thought of eating or drinking so I lost weight (though I was also trying to), leading to passing out in the street twice and blood from my nipple on a regular basis. I didn’t have a lump so I stupidly dismissed the blood and the ‘eczema’ I’d had for longer than I can even remember which turned out to be a secondary cancer – Paget’s Disease of the Breast – which I have the ignominy of being one of very, very few women under the age of 60 to have got. When I finally went to the doctors I knew something was wrong but, as breast cancer did not run in my family I had convinced myself it was not that at all. But, in the end, it was. And it brought my whole life into sharp focus.
Just before my diagnosis I had finished therapy for the impact of my father’s actions on my life. My inability to commit, the fact that I had pretty much shut down all emotions by the time I went for therapy, and my brilliance at self-sabotage. I was in no way ‘cured’, but I felt decidedly better about myself. During my time at therapy I had given up smoking, started training at a boot camp run by ex-Royal Marines three times a week, and was generally just more positive about life. So, to be hit with this diagnosis was tough. I did, though, have the tools at my disposal to deal with it, and I was lucky enough to go straight back to my therapist to help me deal with it.
At the time, Swine Flu was rampant and people with underlying conditions were being hit hardest by it with it often proving fatal. Consequently, I was not allowed to return to the office in case I contracted it, and I was signed off under sickness straight away. In all honesty, with all the hospital appointments, tests, biopsies and the like I wouldn’t have had much time for work before my treatment began. So, I had the time to spend with my mum and do things I loved such as walk the dogs through the forest, one of my favourite places to go. It was on one of these walks that I truly felt the presence of something. Whether God or Source or whatever, I felt the sense of something greater, something that was pure love as it seemed to envelope me in that love. I felt completely protected, utterly safe and secure. It was, next to the birth of my son, the most spiritual experience of my life. I’ve had others, but none come as close as this. This sense of absolute bliss as I stood among the pine trees in Elvedon Forest and I knew in that moment that this feeling alone was worth living for. Not dying for, living for. It was worth the fight to be in and amongst the beauty and majesty of the forest, feeling the creator of it all around me looking after me. In that moment, unbeknownst to me, I had a seismic shift in my perspective on life.
I have never been a religious person but I have always described myself as spiritual. I always felt that there was something, I just couldn’t articulate it and as far as I knew had had no experience of it. I had no real attachment to churches other than liking their architecture – to me, if you want to find the Creator look no further than nature not in a man made building. The jury was out for me on the existence of Jesus though I always thought, after studying Ancient History, that there had to be something that converted a Roman Emperor who had more to lose in becoming Christian than he had to gain. The experience in the forest solidified my spirituality.
During the course of my treatment, I nearly died. I often think that the treatment was closer to more effectively killing me than the disease. It turns out that I have a problem with my blood clotting and as I was given a lot of anti-clotting drugs to help with the surgery I had to have, I haemorrhaged an awful lot, rather often. I have vague recollections each time I had to have an emergency surgery the doctors explaining in vivid detail what they had to do in order to correct the issue before I literally gave an X for my name to give consent. Except for the last (and luckily, successful) surgery where they simply said they would do everything they could. That was all. And apparently I was nearly lost on the table (I honestly could have happily not known that). This had a huge impact on me as well. I hadn’t feared death before, now I was conscious it was everywhere. The first time I went back on the tube there was a man standing in front of me with a backpack – it wasn’t that long after 7/7 where I had been working in the thick of the atrocity and got back on the tube with no worries the following day. I had such a panic attack I had to get off the tube three stops early and walk the rest of the way. I’m a lot better now, but it took a long time before I stopped thinking that any twinge or unexpected pain was either the treatment gone wrong or a different cancer in my body.
You would think I wouldn’t fear death after my spiritual experience but I think the trauma of the problems I suffered during my treatment was pretty strong and took me a while to recover from. But I prefer to take the positives from the whole experience. I still have the friend I met in the High Dependency Unit where we didn’t see each other’s faces for days because we had to lie flat and not move after the surgery. But we laughed, and laughed, and laughed. We teased the young doctors, we joked about my random dreams of Simon Cowell (X Factor was on TV at the time), and I was introduced to Come Dine With Me by my friend. And I have my spiritual faith which has grown and grown, and which I have studied extensively over the past 15 or so years. I am tremendously grateful for the experience I had in Elvedon Forest, I will never forget it. If I close my eyes, I can feel myself back there again. And I am, of course, hugely grateful to still be alive and healthy.
I know my life is very different as a result of the cancer, especially my perspective on it. I don’t carry the monkey on my shoulder that is my father’s behaviour anymore. When my mum asked me if I wanted to get in contact with him I realised that the thought had never crossed my mind. In which case, I asked myself, why was I wasting so much time – ruining my own life in the process – focused on what he had done? Again, I am not completely ‘cured’ and can still be triggered, but I am a lot better at loving myself now than I was before the cancer. So that is another positive I take from the experience of cancer.
Something as huge and life changing as cancer cannot not alter your perspective on life. It really can’t. When faced with your own mortality, you really do re-evaluate what is and isn’t important. Some of that fades with time but some of it sticks to us closely. If I had a choice would I choose cancer again? Remove the trauma of the experience and keep the positives, yes I would. But then I wouldn’t have some of the positives without the trauma of such a diagnosis. So, believe it or not, I’m not sure I wouldn’t. This is entirely my experience of cancer, I know it isn’t everyone’s. Not everyone who is diagnosed with cancer needs to rid themselves of childhood trauma, my friend didn’t and I know she would choose not to have had it. But for me, it was a profound experience that completely changed my perspective on life in a positive way.
Louisa Simpson 