Going to be guilt free by Five Year Clear Party

I had my routine follow up appointment on Monday. It’s now just over four-and-a-half years since I was diagnosed with multi-focal breast cancer, but going for check ups just doesn’t seem to get any easier. I am a jangling bag of nerves for the week preceding it.

I did a radio interview about breast cancer last Friday, and the presenter asked if he could be invited to my ‘Five Year Clear Party’. Obviously I said “of course” in a suitably chirpy voice, but cracked as soon as I came off air. I simply don’t know how I would cope if I had to have all that surgery and treatment for a second time. I can’t bear the thought of putting my family through it again, either. Worse than the thought of a second primary would be to find I have metastatic disease, obviously. But, strangely, being perfectly fit and well, which I am - thank you - still bears an odd psychological curse. My best friend’s sister-in-law died of breast cancer on New Year’s Eve, leaving a husband, and a nine-year-old daughter. There’s a bit of me going: “How awful, that could have been me”, then the part that goes “thank god it isn’t me”, then I feel bad for being OK.

I didn’t have a name for this until yesterday. I texted a friend who had her mastectomy on the same day as me, and we met when we were having chemo at the same three weekly intervals. She’d had her check up on Tuesday, and I wanted to make sure that she was all right. I got this as a response: “Hi. Yeh, all good. My aunty has only a few weeks max to live and I have had the worst survivor guilt you can imagine then this morning read about that little girl who sang for Simon Cowell on Saturday and died yesterday of brain tumour. I spent an hour in starbucks this morning in floods of tears and have struggled to hold it together all day! F**king pathetic.” Lyn didn’t use the asterisks.

Survivor guilt, so that’s what it’s called. I rang Lyn. “Look, we’ve had our shit, and just because our shit’s not been as bad as other people’s shit, doesn’t mean it wasn’t shit for us, so we can’t feel shit about still being here.”

“It was shit wasn’t it?” she replied.

So we are going to hold a joint party in November. I know that the five years clear thing doesn’t really hold true for breast cancer, but stuff it. Any excuse for a party, and we’ll raise a glass to those who didn’t make it.

Tags: Cancer