Anne Alcock
Anne Alcock shares how she faced the challenge of a breast cancer diagnosis
My bra is getting to me. I am wriggling with discomfort. Finding that loosening the band, or adjusting the cup, isn’t changing things. There is a sharp jab on my right side, going on for some days now like a burning, under my breast.
But it is early spring, I’ve had a little break, relaxing, walking, eating, of course I must have ‘put on’ a bit, so no longer fit my bra. Surely? Yet the stinging pain is distracting me. That bra has to come off, and straight away I see the bright red band marks under my breast, very inflamed on the right side – and an obvious lump.
Then I remember that weeks ago I did notice a ‘dent’ under my right breast, which wasn’t under the left one. A dent? Like a thumb had pressed deep under a rib. Didn’t look like dimpling. So I noticed one dent, and dismissed it. Easy.
GP visit
I decide to see my doctor, but no rush. Things have settled down. The wired bra is off, the sports top is on, and the redness has gone. However it is the occasional pulling and tweaking from near, or within, the now much paler lump that makes me phone for an appointment.
“Oh, just a general check-up. Friday week will do.” Friday week comes, I am called in, and truthfully I can say “Never better!” when asked, “except that I found a lump.” Palpating the area, my doctor confirms this. “Yes. You have a lump. Very hard, isn’t it?” We look at each other. He makes the face I am probably making too, and sets up a referral.
How do I feel? I feel suspended but calm. Like facing an inevitability, also expectant, curious, in a knowing kind of way. And now begins the first day of probably many days of ‘wait-ings’.
First consultation
I am on my way to the hospital. I didn’t sleep well last night. Nerves. I think this lump could be malignant. Or at least it is something that should not be there. Fingers crossed. I feel a bit sick.
I don’t have a car, and the bus seems to be crawling through the morning traffic, dropping me at the hospital just three minutes before the appointment time.
I was tense anyway, but now I am on high alert, noticing details – the chairs are wipe-clean comfortable, there is a water cooler in the corner, the radio is chattering away – like my mind.
There is no way and nowhere to hide. Yes, that is my name, loud and clear. I am escorted to the consulting room. Lying on the examination couch, arms above head. I sense I am in a safe pair of hands. These fingers are very experienced. A preliminary assessment, and then “Is there anything you want to ask me?”
Her calm tone infers that there is all the time in the world. I am hugely reassured, and have only to speak, and yet my mouth is suddenly dry, and it is in a husky whisper, unable to swallow, that I reply, “I don’t know what to ask”.
Mammogram
I once tried to describe the ‘Mammogram Experience’ to a friend. He visibly winced. This is a most appropriate response, no matter how useful and valuable and necessary the procedure. Today I am in the cheerful care of two nurses, who put me into a cotton gown, and have a good laugh when they hear that my only allergy is wine.
“How unfortunate!” says one, while the other stands me close against a shiny, white mammogram machine and manoeuvres me into the most unlikely positions; arms clasping the machine, shoulders down, bum out, hips turned sideways, legs placed like a sprinter on the blocks.
Then, truthfully: “This will be a little bit of a squeeze …” and I take a sharp intake of breath, as scooped-up flesh squashes between a flat ‘plate’ and a ‘paddle.’ (Who makes these names up?) But immediately that brief pressure eases, and the release is instant.
I breathe out. It’s okay. It’s manageable. And those nurses were the best.
Ultrasound
I am transported into a world of consoles, transducers and gels and awesome, incomprehensible technology. This is ultrasound territory.
Flat on my back and in a blue gown, I get a sideways glimpse of my breast’s measured and incomprehensible secrets – on screen. I am reminded of compass-markings, which I equally don’t understand.
Inaudible pulses convert into images, and I am fascinated by the explanations and the expertise. Then soft wads of paper wipe down gel-sticky skin and my right breast prepares itself for its core-biopsy moment.
A topical anaesthetic numbs the skin, and a nurse stands quietly poised, with a small dressing, ready for when, with a decisive click, the biopsy needle painlessly bites out its allotted portion of tissue.
Living with dying
Today I visited an undertakers, in a spirit of enquiry – rather like shopping – and raised the sort of questions I have only ever asked about someone else. How much for a grave plot? How much for a coffin? Wicker, wood or willow?
What about organ donation? Or is mine a whole-body donation organised through an anatomical gift programme?
Well, I made my choice for that interface between two worlds, perhaps ‘before time’, but precisely to allow time to live well for the remainder of my time, in this world.
As Carl Jung said: “You cannot live well, unless you can die well.”
Diagnosis day
I am early, so I wander into the nearby church. It is warm and quiet. There won’t be a big surprise about today’s diagnosis. The strange little tweaks and jabs in my right breast are saying something loud and clear.
Once in the clinic, all is quiet. I drink some cold water from the dispenser, and my eyes follow the staff padding to and fro, until I am taken into the consulting room.
The surgeon has my file, and with a steady gaze, she says the words that she must say many times every week. “Well, it’s cancer,” she says.
With a thud of stunning truth in my chest, I feel instantly conveyed into a huge human sisterhood. So it is breast cancer. There was no beating about the bush. I like that.
Treatment and tests will follow, the surgical options proposed. Finally, I am given a positive recommendation for the meantime. “Don’t go and change anything; exercise, live your life and don’t go and diet! People go and start juicing and all sorts of things, and they just get weak, and don’t heal.”
Tweaking those healthy recommendations ever so slightly, I meet a friend and we indulge in some guilt-free carrot cake, with cream-cheese topping, in a garden centre. I buy some plants, and a little ceramic duck for my garden. I realise later this is a sitting duck. Gulp!
All change!
“This is what is called an adventure.” These words energise me. It was a woman speaking to her child, years ago, a rail strike coincided with a dustbin-strike and everyone stood stranded in Waterloo station with luggage and rubbish all around.
This is what is called an adventure? Am I embarking on my own kind of adventure? The MRI test is back. All change. A different adventure. The tumour site is ‘awkward’, so surgery is not an option at the moment.
The tumour must first be shrunk; so, chemotherapy. Life will change for some time. That is the new story. “It is not good news, but it’s a journey, and you just go through with it, and you come out the other end.”
Well, I choose to embark on this journey as my own adventure. Amen.
Extract from Cancer – A Circle of Seasons published by Columba Press.