How Does the Word Cancer Make You Feel?
Cancer.
What does that word make you feel? Afraid? Sad? Empowered? (Yes, there are many cancer survivors, who at the sound of that word, puff their chest out and say “I beat you sucker!”).
I have met many cancer survivors, those who have been both healed miraculously, and those who have overcome with treatment. However, the feelings that come to me when I hear the word, aren’t fleeting “feelings”. They are pictures. I see my mum looking at me in bewilderment because I got a smack as a kid, and was so excited I didn’t cry, I started jumping up and down laughing, yelling “Yes I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry!”. I see my mum with her guitar, laughing and playing me songs. I see her sitting at her piano practicing scales and singing along. I see her laying in a hospital bed, me as a four year old, sitting on the bed next to her, and telling her my neck is sore from looking up the TV…..and I wish for just a moment I had some idea that she was dying, and didn’t have the audacity to complain that my neck was sore. She’d just had half her intestine removed.
I have a school friend who I’ve kept up with on and off over the years. A few years ago I got to see her in person in Sydney, she’d come along to a gig I was playing at the Basement. She is an air hostess and always flying around the world, living between one beautiful city and another. It was lovely to see her. I was so touched she’d made the effort to come. She’s the kind of girl you think, if we only lived in the same state, we’d be hanging out all the time for sure.
Last year she told me she had cancer.
Breast cancer.
She isn’t afraid. She is actually more positive than your average WELL person. When I saw her last month in QLD, she said, “Well its the best kind of cancer to get, the best of a bad thing so I’m happy for that”. She started a blog to journey her treatment, as this was easier than replying to everyones emails, calls, questions and answered the questions of many others who were too afraid to ask.
I have found her blog fascinating. I’ve cried, I’ve laughed, I’ve been inspired.
Whatever the feeling that the word CANCER brings to you, I recommend this first hand account.
Em x