Cancer

Noun: cancer

A disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body.

• A malignant growth or tumour resulting from an uncontrolled division of cells.

• An evil or destructive practice or phenomenon that is hard to contain or eradicate.

Plural noun: cancers

What can you say about the C word? 

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I asked a good friend of mine who had just come to the end of her breast cancer journey, happily still very much alive and now, thankfully, cancer-free, how she could describe cancer. I thought what she said next was spot on.  ‘Cancer is a cunt’ she said.

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It totally is. 

It is indiscriminate, unkind, cruel, scary, invasive, emotionally and physically all-consuming, uncontrollable, restrictive, harmful, life-changing (not in a good way) and often life-ending.

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I would like to point out at this juncture that neither she nor I are prolific users of the C Bomb.  However, it does conjure up all of the feelings that you as the sufferer and everyone around you feels.

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Cancer doesn’t care if you are a good or a bad person; someone’s parent, child or sibling.  It doesn’t care if you are young or old, fit or unhealthy; if you work tirelessly for charities or mug old ladies in the street.  If it picks you, you have to hope you got a ‘good’ cancer and that you caught it early enough.  And then you have to put yourself into the hands of the professionals, who hopefully, with years of research and training, luck on your side and a bit of magic, will get it right, and kill the fucker before it kills you.  Or at least, put it on hold for a while.

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What it will do though, is suddenly clarify all the things that are important to you.  All the small stuff you used to sweat over seems so unimportant, because in truth, with all the medical intervention in the world, you just don’t know how long you are here for.

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Every day is a gift.  When you go to your kid’s presentation, you really listen, and feel yourself bursting with pride.  Everywhere you go, you drink in the atmosphere and burn the memory of it into your brain.  Of course you still get annoyed when no one has emptied the dishwasher, or put the bins out.  You are still human!  But you are changed.  You hold the people you love so close to your heart, and others, who you thought were important can sometimes end up not being so.  So you let them go.

The other thing is that you have a little more empathy for others that you might not have had before.  If the lady at the coffee shop is taking an age to get your latte, you might think that the reason she is slow or forgetful is that she may have had chemo yesterday, or her dog may have died, or her back might be hurting.   You are much more aware of other people and their struggles.  I think you are just a little bit kinder.

And, despite having ‘The Cancer’ you find yourself being thankful for so many things.  Your family, the NHS, the roof over your head, your job.  Imagine being struck down with this horrible disease in war-torn Syria?!  It could be so much worse.

But on the whole, I do have to agree with my friend.  Cancer is a cunt.