Zoe Richardson

There’s a famous Buddhist quote which says, ‘pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.’ Until I joined the ‘cancer club,’ I had never really appreciated the power of that, but it still resonates with me now. We can choose how we respond to challenges and my experience has shifted a few things for me, which I am now grateful for.

 

Looking back, physically I felt absolutely the best I had been in a long time as a result of a dedicated weight loss programme and nailing the couch to 5km running app. I was turning 50 in June and I wanted to mark the occasion in style and not have to look back at pictures with regret! I got to enjoy several celebrations and I took stock of it all and felt blessed to have so many lovely friends and family who cared for me. Little did we know then that they would become my back-up crew when navigating cancer just a month later.

 

In July, I found the tiniest lump in my right breast. It was mobile, nothing flashy and given I have quite ‘lumpy’ breasts I didn’t think much of it. A month later, I could still feel it and almost as an afterthought, I pinged a message to my GP to check it out. A few months before, I had just started HRT so I assumed it was linked to that and I’d be on my way. Fast tracked through (quite alarming in itself), I was examined within 24 hours of sending that message and I can still remember the air being sucked out of my lungs as she said ‘yep, I can feel what you can feel. Let’s sort this.’ I hadn’t imagined it. I kept telling myself that it might be nothing, but a voice in my head kept saying ‘it could be something and that something could be that scary ‘C’ word.’ How can that be when I am so fit and healthy?

 

The next few weeks were a surreal blur and it seemed counterintuitive that I would turn up to appointments feeling well and leave feeling worse! Yet it is amazing how quickly you don’t care who sees your most intimate bits. It was a carousel of ultrasounds, clips, mammograms (my first as I had not reached an age to be called up) and in my case - dramatic haematomas… I was a bleeder! Nobody said the diagnosis during this stage, but I just knew. Endless tests, heads huddled together looking at the screen and talking in quiet whispers but then a dislocating cheery, breezy tone when talking to me.

 

Getting the biopsy results confirming breast cancer was one of those moments where it felt like I was almost hovering outside of my body. As I walked in, I spotted the Macmillan nurse slipping inside the room with a bundle of leaflets in her hand. There was a tactically placed box of tissues and I remember thinking this isn’t looking good! It transpired that I had to have a skin-sparing mastectomy but because I caught it early, I escaped radiotherapy and chemotherapy. I really felt like one of the lucky ones. There were moments when I realised how odd it was to think - losing my boob - what a winner! However, my world quickly shifted within this new reality.

 

I opted for my own tissue diep flap reconstruction and although those early days were a fog of fear and tangle of drains and dressings - I am so proud to have come through that nine hour operation in style thanks to the incredible care I received. I met two other ladies in the ward having the same procedure and we are still in touch. We set up a mobile disco on the ward using our phones and would play ‘burn baby burn, disco inferno’ when someone had a painful procedure being carried out. We would sing at the top of our lungs to distract ourselves from the reality of the situation. We also giggled at the range of new nipples we could sport and could not stop flashing our new cleavages.

 

Cancer brings so much kindness to your door. It gives you space to look around you with fresh eyes and decide how you are going to move forward. I chose ironic laughter, to lean into friends and to hold my family that bit tighter. It’s been humbling and hard at times, but pain passes. Even on the darker days, I looked for the sun. I am now at ease with not scurrying quite so manically on the hamster wheel of life, I have accepted my new body and no longer feel guilty scheduling self-care moments for myself. Above all, I have realised that cancer doesn’t have to be the death sentence it once was. Modern medicine gives us cures and a second stab at shaping what we want in our life.