A WARM WELCOME TO MY BLOG
SO GLAD YOU CAN JOIN ME….
CANCER GOT ME TOO
OUR CANCER – OUR JOURNEY
Hi. I’m Heidi and I have recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. I am determined that this will only be a ‘part’ of who I am. An even bigger part of me is my role as a counsellor. I have been listening to others, their traumas, their sadness, their despair, their anxiety, their depression for 20 years now. I have worked with children, adolescents and adults. I have been honoured to have worked in the organisations I have and I also have my own private practice. I teach on a number of counselling courses, and am passionate about what I do. It’s all the training, experience and knowledge that I have that has brought me this far as a human being. I care about others and I want to support. Being diagnosed with this disease will not stop me from doing this. I need to keep listening and reflecting.
HOW TO USE THIS BLOG
My posts start on 26/05/20 – the day of diagnosis. If you look under ‘SUPPORT’ in the top left menu bar – you will see a section on COPING SKILLS…. from pre-diagnosis to the present day…LIVING WITH CANCER. Your feedback on my blog will be valued.
Hello there, I've been expecting you.
This is the most hideous game of hide and seek in the world. Your cancer has sent you messages, signs, pains, and feelings of unease. Maybe for a week or two maybe for years. It has been presenting itself, ‘BOO’, fooling you into thinking and feeling the worse. Some people are alert and are good at this game and find the division of abnormal cells quickly. Sadly, some don’t.
Cancer conceals itself in a set environment. Is it waiting to be found or does it have another intention?
If you have ever been told you have cancer, you can skip the next bit. You’ll know how it felt to you. To receive the news, you were so scared of hearing, or maybe in ignorance of. The total and utter shock as the word ‘cancer’ breaks through your conscious and exposes itself to your anxiety. To feel the air in your body, drop out of you. To feel the heat in your blood vessels, charge and gush through you, hot one minute, ice cold the next. To feel, you no longer have a future, a family or any kind of identity. To believe you are now going to die soon. For me it was the rancid feeling that I will be leaving my children and my husband to live without me. I’d be a memory, a picture in a frame, a shadow at the table, a hole in their hearts.
I am blogging my experiences of my transition from ‘normal self’ to ‘cancer self’. This is taking me right out of my comfort zone. I don’t have any personal social media presence. I am private and being a counsellor has always meant I have protected my professional life and those involved with it.
But no rules apply now do they? Cancer tore that book up.
I am desperate to give others the insight I am developing by the hour, and to share mine and hear others’ feelings. I hope this experience will give us both the strength to continue with as much normality and control as we can muster.
This won’t be a sad place to be. It will be a refreshingly and honest place to be. And to share.
Naturally looking to the best in people and in life, you will come to appreciate my humour and empathy towards myself and to others. Especially you x
“I want to journal my journey”
But now, I want to share my story. I want to journal my journey, to not only give me a place to document what is happening to me and it’s affects, but I want others, similar to me, to read this and know they’re not alone. I want you to feel comfort, warmth, joy, and positivity from this. Cry with me, laugh with me and think with me. Get in touch with me, share your story with me, reach out to me. I am hoping to give you the courage to be with what you have and it not define you or destroy you.
Cancer is in our bodies. We cannot control that – we did not invite it in. But remember – it is only one part of us. That part of you has brought you to this part of me. That part of you is reading about that part of me. Knowing you are not alone is fundamental to your experience.
‘A place to help us heal….’
…I am not here to tell you how to feel. Nor will I give advice or assume you feel the same as I do. Counsellors listen with compassion and kindness. I am here as a woman with breast cancer wanting to be heard and to make sense of what is happening. I am here because I have had the pleasure of working with hundreds of clients over the years, all of which have changed and shaped me. I am here because I have learnt something from each one of them which has increased my self-awareness and appreciation for another’s suffering. I am grateful to everyone of you who has allowed me into their lives, into their often intimate feelings, and let me walk by their side until they felt strong enough to move on. So, I come soaked in their strength, power and determination, as I hope to continue to walk each step with you. For as long as you need me there.
MY LATEST POSTS…
Do Polo mints have feelings?
So, to radiotherapy I go. I had a fair few weeks with no treatment. Plenty of aches, pains, fatigue and the like but my body was beginning to take the big strides it needed to, to get away from cancer treatment. I was eating better, starting to run again, and loosing...
Does cancer really ever leave you?
It appears living with no obvious cancer in my body is the same as living with it. I am anxious, scared and feel pain everywhere. I have spent the last 6 days convincing myself I have it in my brain. It has travelled up there somehow, and all the lymph nodes and tests...
I am disease free
Three days before Christmas I answered the phone to the Consultant. The same person who operated on me just under 4 weeks ago. She rang with 'good news'. There was no cancer found in the breast tissue removed from my lumpectomy. I already knew there was no cancer...
IT’S CHRISTMAS!!
Well almost. I am just over two weeks on from my operation. I have written nothing since the night of my op. I have not wanted to. I have not wanted to sit and think and write about having cancer and having an operation to see if it is still present. I have been in...
OPERATION: Heidi
I feel a gentle nudge on my shoulder. It's 6.14am. A nurse has woken me up for my obs. I had only got to sleep just after 3am. I was thinking through the night. Over and over - on loop - from the cannula going in, to the anesthetic, to be woken up, to being back in my...
The day before the operation
Leaving my husband at the lift door was heartbreaking. I was full of anxiety and over filled eyes. I am so vulnerable and crying. I want to go home with him, not up to the first floor of the Peony Suite in the breast clinic. I have about 4 seconds to compose myself...
YOU ARE NEVER ALONE