Although I am enjoying the half term break, I am also very aware that this week will trigger me. Firstly, it was on 27/10/19, I ran my hands over my torso in bed, on the Sunday morning, and felt the lump snuggled in the bottom left quadrant of my right breast. Today, is 27/10/20. Exactly a year on. 365 days of knowing I had a lump that I hoped wasn’t cancer, told that it wasn’t, then told that it was. It was eating me alive and it has been doing so since then. The anger and rancid frustration revisit me today. If this was diagnosed properly in November 2019, like it should have been, I would have a very different story to tell now wouldn’t I? Would it have been a grade 3 tumour? Would I have needed chemotherapy? If so, would it have been as hard and as long and as difficult? Surely a tumour sized 1.7cm is easier to treat than a tumour sized 4cm? I am fuming. Bubbling inside with the fierce rage I have had sweep through me whenever I allow myself to reach back into these thoughts. They are unpleasant and really really hurt me.
I would have been through the treatment now – getting back to my life. The life I grieve for every single day. The life I can no longer have and maybe be months, even years away from having again. I hate cancer. I hate it. I hate the fact that I was not taken care of when I should have been. Sadly, my story is common. Not unusual. It happens. I have so many questions, but am afraid of the answers. It kills me. The dread of these uncertainties weigh heavy. I feel like I am dragging around stone with me. I feel it’s burden on my soul.
I urge any of you to ask for second opinions and challenge any outcomes you don’t feel happy with. I took what the consultant said to me in November 2019 as the truth. I now question absolutely everything and push for more to be done. More to be tested. This has made this whole experience much harder than it needs to be. It will never leave me now – the fear ‘they have missed something’, or ‘got it wrong’. This drive to be looked after properly with respect, has spilled over into my personal life too. Here it is welcomed. Here, in my private world where I am a human being with needs, here it is celebrated. It is useful here and helps me set boundaries and expectations. I no longer suffer idiots, and can see those trying to drain me or bring me down. I won’t allow it and I am enjoying walking in this light and new found freedom it brings me. I just wish I had been brought to this place through a different door.