We only did 2.5 miles, but I felt every stride and bounce on the floor. I felt like I was running on clouds, floating in between each step. Invigorating. I did not think I would be able to run again this year.
Aside from my husband’s company, I have my ‘running’ playlist. Listening to these songs now feels a little sad. The last time I ran to these songs I didn’t have cancer. Or at least that is what I thought. I did have cancer didn’t I? I have had cancer for a long time. I look at photographs from our holiday in Florida in November 2019 and I had cancer then. I watched the fireworks over Magic Kingdom and the fake snow sprinkle down over Hollywood Studios with a malignant cancer growing in my body.
I read that by the time you actually feel a lump in your breast, the cancer has been in your body and growing in your system from between 2-5 years. This makes me feel sick. When did that first rogue cell divide, and the divide again – and again. I never checked my breasts. Stupidly I thought I was too young, too busy, and too lucky to get breast cancer.
Yet, I was the one who thought a headache and dizzy spells meant I had a brain tumor. I’m no stranger to health anxiety. Ask my husband – it was standing joke. The last time I thought I had cancer was February 2020 – in my throat. A year earlier I was in an MRI scanner as I’d had months of UTI’s a kidney pain. Convinced I had kidney cancer.
I’m a good friend of Sauvignon Blanc, so any pain in the bottom right quadrant of my torso meant liver cancer.
My sister (a nurse) has been contacted many a time with a list of symptoms and a Dr Google diagnosis. I think she’s often thought I button up the back!
I never ever thought about my breasts. they kept themselves to themselves unfortunately as I continued to look in all the wrong places for a disease I dreaded getting.