Living the life

(23)

Time has marched on and I have now absorbed Metastatic Breast Cancer (MBC) into my life as though it's just a part of who I am.  I am no longer shocked, overwhelmed or even overly bothered by having this disease.  I'm not sure whether this is due to my innate personality or whether it's a normal phase once the shock value of the disease has worn off and life has settled into some sort of routine which encompasses it, but it does seem to me that MBC and I are at peace with each other.  We are no longer in competition with each other and I accept it as a lifestyle matter.

I have always looked at life differently from the way most other people seem to,  so I should have expected this, I guess.  I constantly see articles headed "My Fight With Breast Cancer", "Breast Cancer Warrior" and  similar analogies with a warlike state.  This isn't how I see it at all. I don't see myself in "the fight of my life",  as I've also seen it called.   I prefer to be at peace with my cancer, not at war.

My way of thinking about this is that constantly referring to it as a fight brings negative connotations and I never, ever think negatively about this disease which has, in fact, delivered me almost as many good things as  bad.   I know that sounds extremely strange but I'll come back to it and explain further into this post.  Firstly, I want to address my beliefs about seeing cancer as an enemy and why I don't see it as something I have to conquer.  This cancer didn't invade my body maliciously in order to ruin my life and I think that, by the talk about fighting, conquering and defeating it, we are giving it too much credit, almost as much credit as though it's a conscious entity  all on its own, separate from us.  It isn't.  Not to my way of thinking anyway!

Before I go on to enlarge upon this, though, I have to pay tribute to the many, many women with MBC who are not as fortunate as I have been.  My cancer spread to my bones and bones tend to "contain" the cancer for longer (I'm hoping forever), unlike metastases to other organs or the blood.  It had invaded twenty nine lymph nodes before my bones but they were all removed at operation.  As well as that, the type of breast cancer I have is the most treatable one.  It's hormonal in nature and is HER2 negative.  It's what is called the "good" breast cancer if you had to get breast cancer.  A lot of patients resent having their cancer called the good one but the facts are there.  This type is kinder to the patient in terms of treatment, especially if it is highly hormone positive like mine.  I see nothing wrong in having it called the "good" breast cancer because I have lost dear friends to the breast cancer types which are not labelled the good ones, such as HER2 positive, triple negative and Inflammatory Breast Cancer;  nasty and aggressive creatures which, especially the latter, don't give the patient a chance of any sort of quality of life, such is the treatment they have to be subjected to - chemotherapy and lots of it and the stronger cocktails of chemotherapy at that.  Here I stop to think about my dear friend Terri who was a victim of Inflammatory Breast Cancer, a beautiful soul who did not deserve what she went through until she eventually went to her rest.  I love you, Terri, and I always will.

This cancer happened to me for a reason and note the word "happened" because that's how I see it.  Just one of those things that happen to some of us just as everything else in life happens.  People fear cancer so much that they almost personify it.   They see it as something that is out to "get them" when, in fact, it's just a disease like all other diseases.  I realise that I may be belabouring this point but I genuinely don't understand why people fear cancer so much more than other diseases.  The nearest I can come to explaining that is that it's so common that people half expect to become a victim of it and, with statistics that one in two to three people will have cancer at some stage in their lifetime, they are right but there are so many other horrible diseases, such as Motor Neurone Disease, which claimed another dear friend of mine,  and the incidence of that is quite high yet people rarely speak of it; nor do they speak about the many other neurological diseases -  just one example I can think of off the top of my head.  Then there are multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia and various autoimmune diseases, just to name a few that come to me which also rob people of their enjoyment of life.

 I've also used another key word about cancer, i.e. "victim".  Cancer patients are seen as victims of the disease.  This, once again, is  not how I view myself.  I refuse to be a victim of anything and I always have, so why would I see myself as a victim of a disease process?   By thinking of myself as a victim I would, once again, be giving cancer lifelike characteristics and negative connotations and I'm just not going to live my life feeling ground down and undermined.  I have a very strong belief that I will be around for many, many years yet and I intend to make those years the best years of my life.  Cancer has taught me many things and one of those things is that we need to seek joy in every single facet of our lives every moment of our lives.  Does that sound unrealistic?  Probably, but it depends on your definition of joy.  The kind of joy I'm seeking is not the ecstatic, over-the-top, "rah rah rah" isn't life exciting? kind of joy.  It is the experience of peace of mind, grace, humility and love of our fellow humans that I call joy and I have been given every reason to see joy every day  by my fellow humans.

Friends:  when I think about my friends I immediately feel a smile creeping across my face.  My friends are the most wonderful people to inhabit this planet; I'm sure of that.  I have now clocked up two years and four months since my diagnosis.  One would expect that friends are by now starting to lose interest and slip away into the shadows, hoping I won't ask for help with anything.  A lot of people would think they have done enough by now and to have jumped onto another bandwagon or to at least have fallen off mine but no, there they are, all still in the bandwagon with me!  A more loyal group of people would be difficult to find.  What's more, they still have not grown tired of offering to help me because, although my health has improved, I still have serious back pain if I spend more than half to one hour on my feet and I'm banned from lifting anything heavier than a matchstick.  I exaggerate obviously (I also cheat and pick up things I probably shouldn't but, well, sometimes I want to move something and I don't want to wait for someone to call in).

Then, of course, there's my son who is rapidly becoming the most famous son of any young men I know of (she says, with her tongue in her cheek!), such is my constant refrain about his willingness to help me and keep me well  while also keeping me laughing and having fun.  And while I'm throwing bouquets there is my most longstanding friend, who works and has a large family to care for but who has never once shown impatience if I need to talk.  How she manages to fit in the number of visits she does I don't know but if she stopped I would be lost without her.  I don't want to name names but she will know who she is!

Because my family home is large and I was in the difficult situation of having so much further to walk just to go from the bedroom to the kitchen, I left and moved into a small apartment which is the best move I have ever made!  I love having my own place.  It's small and my health has improved out of sight since I moved in here.  I'm one of those people who likes to "nest" and I've been adding little touches to it ever since I moved in at the end of July, 2018.  The freedom of living alone and not having to consider someone else is so liberating that at times I'm almost euphoric.  I rarely feel lonely and if I do, it's just because I'm too lazy to pick up on one of the many projects I have on the go.  I'm writing my own life story.  I've written my parents' life story or sketched it out as much as is necessary, along with that of my maternal grandparents' story.

My moving out of the family home also freed up my son to move out at last because he was only staying on at home because that's where I was and so, as soon as I felt able to fend for myself some of the time, we both moved to apartments five minutes apart so that we could each have a life of our own but he's near enough in case I need him.  Our apartments are on the city fringe which means the convenience of being able to use Uber Eats for meals if we don't feel like cooking and I love the feeling of having my own peaceful haven in the midst of a living, breathing city instead of a suburb where the most exciting thing I saw all day was someone walking past with their dog!  There are sirens blaring throughout the night but I don't even hear them when I'm asleep and I like the thought that I'm in a building with a lot of other people; if I needed someone there are three other apartments on my floor, their front doors only a few metres from mine, so all in all, both physically and emotionally I'm in a good place at the moment and I intend to stay here in this good place as much I can  ~