Telling folk

Sometimes we all look ropey. We get ill, our noses are Rudolf-esque and we are generally not feeling on top of our game. When that happens, when you have a cold, feel sick, trip and bruise your hip or face, you can if you wish, hide at home until you look like yourself again. Equally, if you want, in this oversharing world of the twenty first century, to make a social media post, to announce your misfortune to the world, then you can. If you are diagnosed with cancer, it’s not as straightforward a choice as that. It won’t come as a surprise to hear that I hadn’t planned what I would do if this befell me, I expect you won’t have either. Here are some of the key points from my experience.

Your illness and recovery time will be months, maybe years, not days or weeks, and you’ll have to tell someone during that time, maybe if you need a lift, some shopping, a natter, a cry, I could go on. So once that is accepted, the plan then needs to be about scale, what’s right for you? I am not only insanely popular (I jest, but I do know a lot of folk), but also fairly simple minded (not a joke), and lazy (still not a quip, my rule is no more than one per sentence), so I just told everyone, in a variety of ways. Easy. Well, no, of course it’s not. But that was what worked for me, and here’s why. 

Of course, I told my family and close friends in person, and that is awful. You do get better at it, the poor first people I told, I just blurted it out, and watched them deflate in front of me, like when the air is being sucked from a balloon. Over time though, I developed a bit of a system, here it is, it may also work for announcing other things, car scrapes, spending saving etc but I haven’t tested that, so don’t hold me to it! 

Firstly, I’d say, “I’ve got some bad news” (don’t just say ‘news’, you might have to fight off pregnancy questions, or marriage questions - don’t ask - just trust me). I’d follow this with, “I’ve just found out I’m not very well, but I’m going to be ok”. I find that smiling a lot at this point is a good move, it shows (or seems to show, faking it is fine, always) that you’re not worried, you have everything under control. They might say “oh dear” or ask what was the matter, and I’d say, “I’ve got breast cancer so - I won’t be at the gym for a while/I’m going to be off work/I’m not going swimming/you might see me less (delete as applicable). I usually ended mine with a healthy dose of “I’m fine, they’re confident they’ve found it pretty early” (because they were) “I’ll be back to relatively normal pretty soon”. Those last sentences were mostly to stop people cocking their head to one side, like a sympathetic, kindly, but ultimately irritating Jack Russell and then stroking my upper arm. For the record, that doesn’t help. What does? Cake. As for a face to face telling people system, that was it. Of course telling loved ones and close friends wasn’t easy, but they deserve to see your eyes as you tell them, if it’s possible.

I also decided to do a diva Facebook status announcing my illness to the world, like a proper millennial. My mother wasn’t happy. She didn’t understand at all, but there was method in the plan. Remember I said I’m popular? Well, I knew that I wouldn’t be at work for a while, but I’m very sociable and wanted to go out and keep active. I didn’t want people to see me, when my hair was gone, if I looked rough (which undoubtably I would at times) and give me the sideways glance. I wanted this to feel as natural as possible, no awkward hushed questions about what was wrong with me. After all, nobody usually looks twice when I enter a room. I wanted people to already know, and I hoped, just be glad to see me. To tell all those people, for every situation that I might go to, would have taken me ages, but by announcing it, people told each other, like a phone tree system for emergencies and snow days at school. 

It was by far the best thing I did. 

Yes, it has meant that I’m still talking about it 4 years later. Yes, it has meant that friends who are worried because they’ve found a lump have contacted me and asked for a heads up about what the one stop clinic entails. Yes, I’ve got stuff that comes up on my Facebook in my memories that is occasionally uncomfortable to revisit. However, in the moment, when things were grim. it provided me with a huge outpouring of support, both virtual and real life. It’s made the topic a little bit less taboo* and that’s got to be good.  It allowed me to keep in touch with people and the “big moments” of my treatment in a  way which I could manage, and then not worry about having to keep talking about being ill. It’s given me the overarching structure for my book, relating those big key moments. Are there things that you’d like to see me talk about here? I do have a schedule but I’d love to know what you’d like to hear about!

*I typed this initially as taboob and it really made me chuckle, if we coin it now, do you think it’ll make next years OED?