Wendy’s personal story

Surviving cancer - Wendy’s personal story

“I was diagnosed with cancer for the first time in March 1999.  It was a diagnosis as slow in coming as it was to pin down. I was not in the right ‘slot’ for the Hodgkin Lymphoma that was suspected, being either too old or too young. But widespread Hodgkin it was. ‘The best one to get’, I was cheerfully told.

We had waited so long for the definite diagnosis that I did at least have some time to get used to the idea-as far as any of us ever ‘get used to the idea’. Ideas denote inspiration-and there is little that is inspirational about a diagnosis of cancer. Or perhaps, strangely, there is-at least more than we might imagine at the very beginning.

At the time, I remembered that only a few weeks before my diagnosis I had naively had the unspoken thought that as my life didn’t contain any risk factors, cancer was something that I would probably not have to face. I had never smoked; I drank moderately, had no family history of cancer and lived a positive and active lifestyle. My supermarket shopping list read like a ‘What to Eat to Avoid Cancer’ feature-however sceptical I was about such advice.

Then several unrelated incidents almost seemed to prepare me. The wife of one of my husband’s business colleagues died quite suddenly of cancer (I later found out that it was the same ‘best one’ as mine); I read John Diamond’s account of his own illness in The Times on a weekly basis, full of fear and admiration for him and his family; and I had several long conversations related to cancer in different contexts.
It was as if I was unknowingly being ‘primed’.

Upon diagnosis I was assigned to the most senior haematologist in the hospital, a Scotsman with the driest, blackest wit. Perfect for me! He was also more determined in action and nature than any medic I had ever met. If I was my cancer, I thought, I would be scared of this guy! He later admitted- and I will remember his softly spoken Scottish assessment for ever- that I faced him that first morning as ‘a very sick young woman indeed.’ But he told me that we would ‘sort it’ together. A few days after the original diagnosis, a revised assessment pinpointed just how aggressive this ‘best one to get’ was. The scenario suddenly wasn’t quite so cheerful.

I entered a clinical trial which randomly picked one of two good treatment options. The choice, said my consultant, was the one he would have made given the choice. Six months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy ‘should have it licked’.
Eighteen months later we were still licking.

I had hauled myself through six cycles of weekly chemotherapy- dozens of treatments in all- as well as the radiotherapy that was supposed to ‘mop up the debris’. When scans weren’t sure about the effects of that ‘mop up’ I embarked on weeks of stem cell growth and harvest for a stem cell transplant, spending several weeks in isolation throughout the lovely sunny June and July of 2000. Blasted with chemo and knocked to rock bottom, it was the most harrowing few weeks of my life.

I couldn’t keep anything down - not even water - and was constantly sick. I became weaker and weaker, and although I managed to avoid any significant infections just walking backwards and forwards to my tiny toilet and bathroom was like climbing Everest. Finally my blood count itself climbed and I was allowed ‘out’.

The bath I had that morning - with a plastic bag over my Hickman line ( a tube inserted into a central vein in my chest to administer drugs and withdraw blood) was the best of my life!

Weeks later there was still a ‘patch’ showing on the scan just behind my heart.
‘It could be scarring’, I was told, or something else we’d rather it wasn’t. Time would tell. All I could do was wait. So I waited-for five years. I even wrote a book as I waited called The Art of Waiting!

Then, in Spring 2005  I was able to tell friends and relatives with some sense of jubilation that my consultant had said that I would be ‘very unlucky indeed’ if the lymphoma came back - and that he didn’t expect it to.

My life was back at last.

Just two months later, I was showering in a hotel room while on a special trip away with my teenage daughter when I discovered a huge lump in my breast. So large - the size of a pickled onion - that I couldn’t believe I had missed it before.

90% of breast lumps are benign - and I knew that. But I also knew, with an instinct unfathomable, that this was cancer - and I was right.  It was a new, totally unconnected mucinous carcinoma bearing no relation to the first. I ‘just got unlucky’ said my breast care consultant.

This time around fear and bewilderment was largely replaced by anger and an odd blasé attitude: how dare it get me again!

A lumpectomy followed, and radiotherapy. I turned down chemotherapy. Statistics told me it would make little difference as this time the prognosis was good. Nevertheless, I was told that a second primary cancer under 45 was very rare. The ‘why’? question surfaced and ,as ever, remained unanswered. The stoical, plod through, ‘me’ that got me graciously through last time was nowhere to be found most days. This one fought and kicked and screamed and refused to give in. I would not be a willing cancer patient yet again.

I went ahead with my pre second cancer plan of setting up a personal development and communications business, primarily to support cancer survivors. I got on with this book and networked with those who shared my vision for positive life-changing survivorship. I became all the more determined to ‘walk the talk’-as much as I hate that phrase- and live life to the full.

Not knowing is always difficult to live with. I don’t know what lies ahead. As I write I have just completed six weeks of radiotherapy. The odds are good, but not being a betting girl I have learned not to take the odds too seriously. Two primary cancers in six years were against those odds. I want to live despite them.

As cancer survivors once, twice or six times over - we do have a changed perspective on our saved life.

You have one life, I ask myself - what are you going to do with it?”