defining success

Well then, 

I didn’t think I’d be back here, and certainly not like this. However, as many of you will already know, in September 2019, I was re-diagnosed, with secondary breast cancer, five years almost to the day from my original breast cancer diagnosis. This meant that my breast cancer had both returned, but also made its sneaky way into other parts of my body. For me, at first, this was my chest wall and my liver. This meant that my cancer was now classed as incurable, but treatable. Incurable because once cells in other areas had started malfunctioning and growing into tumours, it would be impossible to eliminate the cancer. Yes, we could have cut out a bit of my liver in 2019, but the problem would appear elsewhere now that this "malignant switch" had starting being flicked in certain cells, and we wouldn't know which it would be next. My original cell malfunction, which caused the cancer, you'll recall, was in my breast tissue. So all my tumours are breast cancer, wherever they appear in my body. I don't have liver cancer now, but breast cancer, in my liver.  

It’s almost impossible to accurately describe how the moment that I heard this news felt, but my best attempt to try is to tell you that upon being told, I was incredulous, and then sobbing, and then imploring my lovely surgeon with my eyes to tell me this wasn’t true. That I wasn’t unfixable this time round. My stomach dropped as his eyes welled and he told me that he was sorry. Then it was explained to me that my treatment would be done by the oncology team at The Christie now. My cancer could be treated there, managed but never got rid of. This had become a condition that I could live with. In time, in my head I imagined it to be more like diabetes. But with a much worse life expectancy. In that initial moment however, my world collapsed; tumbled down in flames around me, and every other cliche you've heard, because they're often true.

The flames abated, the big machine started working, and I found my place within the cogs once more, whilst continuing working for a very short period of time. Then I retired from teaching. Then someone asked me if I was going to do any writing. Then another person asked me the same question. Then someone else said that I should write a book. I felt more than a little lost as to how to reply, as I was very unsure what I would say that hadn’t already been said. What could I write that was worthy of being read?

I was unsure of whether I wanted to spend my remaining days tapping away on the laptop keys. Writing has always been important to me, but not my only creative output. I make music, I make things. I type words sometimes. 

I did not start writing.

Approximately 18 months ago, I had something of a breakthrough, as I realised that I could create something with words, which would encompass the breadth of the things I like to write. Not a book that I’d seen before, but a collection of pieces, short stories, essays, poetry, lists, whatever I fancied and felt right to me. I’d never seen it but I could imagine it.

I even came up with a working title - 

“How to live well with incurable cancer without 

changing the world, starting a charity, or writing a book”

I began to write. 

A plan for what was to be included, then an essay here, a poem there, away I went.

I’m afraid that this isn’t a sales pitch, a pre-release plea. I stopped writing. I stopped writing long before there were enough things to make up a book. I didn’t look for a publisher. I had never planned to be self published, as that felt more than a bit self-indulgent.

Now, as my time on this planet grows increasingly limited, I’ll be putting those writings here, all those I’ve done, and as many as I can complete whilst wryly smiling and knowing that, according to my own terms, I have succeeded, and met my three "without" criterion.