25 years

25 years ago today I woke up with a 3cm tumour in the lower right quadrant of my right breast. It had not been there the night before. That morning I was going to BBC radio to talk about the Charlie’s Angels movie on Woman’s Hour. While I was out, my wife made an appointment with the GP, there followed six weeks of tests, all very slow, the lump had come up overnight, with no breast cancer in my matrilineal family there was an assumption it couldn’t be cancer, everyone I saw assured me it couldn’t be breast cancer. Then in late February it all changed, the medics agreed with my aleady-certain sense that it was cancer.

That year I had surgery followed by six months of chemo and two months of radiotherapy. Things were different back then, not only were the drugs different and the order of treatment, but I was offered no psychotherapeutic support. I also wasn’t allowed to have my now wife, then my partner of ten years, listed as my next of kin. So much has changed.

We were trying to have children at the time, had spent the past year working things out with our babyfather, and although I had five embryos made before chemo, three years later when I was well enough to try with them, those embryos died in me one by one. The chemo and the hormone treatment I was given (to try to protect my fertility) immediately made me menopausal. No one was talking about the menopause of women in their 40s and 50s, let alone 30s, it was all terrifying and lonely and brand-new.

14 years later I was again diagnosed with breast cancer, same breast, millimetres from the original surgery. Not officially a recurrence because it was over ten years later, and yet …

This time there were more surgeries. And this time after 18 months of coping too well (ie. not-coping at all, overworking and pushing on), I asked for some psychological support and was offered 8 sessions of therapy with an existential therapist specialising in cancer and palliative work. It was this support that changed my life, and opened the possibility of beginning my own journey to become a therapist.

The costs of surviving cancer are enormous for many of us. I have lived with chronic pain for decades. I have arthritis in most major joints, have had knee and hip replacements. 18 months ago I had a ruptured brain aneurysm; although there is no causation with cancer/chemo, there are some studies that suggest correlation. I live with the ongoing fear of recurrence – some days more strongly than others. At no point in the last 25 years have I been able to take my life for granted.

And this is where I can also find the benefits of my major illnesses in the great difficulties that accompany survival. I have been extremely ill three times but/and…

I know how immensely fortunate it is to be alive. Our dear friend Sam who died some months ago, after surviving over a decade with a brain tumour that was initially diagnosed as likely to kill him within 18 months, used to say that those of us who survive are not the lucky ones. The lucky ones are those who have never had a cancer diagnosis. And while I always agreed with him, I have also been able to find the fortune in what I now know.

I know that each day is precious, and I also know that as time passes from a diagnosis, that awareness will recede and my days will become ordinary again, it will be scanxiety or recurrence fear that reminds me of the preciousness of everyday life.

I know that every single body is different in both health and illness.

I know that my body is strong, and I also know that it is just another body, fallible, as likely to break down as anyone else.

I know that I have been enormously fortunate to have a partner with me throughout all of my illnesses, in my living with chronic pain, my being well and happy, my being unwell and unhappy. I very much understand that illness is harder for people who do not have the support I do.

There are many things that cancer took from me, and the main one was my ability to become a mother. Not only had I always assumed it would be part of my life, but it was something I wanted, and was actively choosing with my wife when I had my first cancer. But/and the learning I gained from not becoming a mother, the learning I gained from choosing to value a different life instead, has also been hugely important.

There is an existential idea of eternal recurrence, it is a beautiful piece of writing by Nietzsche in The Gay Science, and it asks could we choose every moment of this life again. Because of what I understand now, because of where and how I am now, I am able to answer yes. I would not have been able to say yes ten or fifteen or even thirty years ago, but I can say it now. Everything I have lived and learned from both cancer diagnoses, including my infertility, and all the difficult and ongoing stuff around my brain aneurysm are things I would choose again. The life I am living now, born of all the things I have lived, brutal and glorious, is a life I would choose time after the time.

I put in a lot of work to get here. Last year I finished seven years of therapy with a therapist who will remain enormously important to me throughout my life, however much life I have left. I had two lots of therapy earlier in my life, in my 20s and in my 30s after infertility. I value therapy enormously as precious time and place to take myself seriously.

And now I am a therapist, teaching will-be therapists, learning from my clients and from the work of every day. All my previous performance, directing, theatremaking, improvising, writing work comes together in this.

I have no idea what is coming, but these days I am far more skilled at enjoying what is. And for this, I have huge gratitude.