White Rabbit

It has now been one week since I first heard the mention of the C word. In hindsight, I would say I had known for a while by this stage. I knew when I asked my dentist to look at my tonsil and I could tell by her reaction that this wasn’t going away on its own. I knew when the consultant said he was ‘a little worried’ about the tumour. I knew when Dr Google revealed that asymmetrical tonsils are almost always cancer (word of warning: Dr Google is not generally a reliable source of medical information, and I was fully aware of this, but who can resist the lure of self-diagnosis?!).

The funny thing is, I haven’t yet been formally diagnosed with cancer. No one has taken me to a room, sat me down and told me, yet I know I have cancer. It’s funny how quickly you get used to the word. And how that word would have once filled me with terror, but when you know that’s what you’re dealing with, you change gears and move into a different universe. It becomes not about the word itself anymore. You know you have cancer – okay, got that part. But there are so many types and stages and grades, so many different prognoses, so it becomes about the extent of it and all of the million meanings – and emotions - within it. Any cancer sufferer or survivor will tell you that the stages, grades, types - all of those things, huge entities within themselves, lie underneath the word cancer. And that is what keeps you awake at night, wondering what will happen, how bad is it, will you live to see next year, how are you going to tell your kids, what if it comes back…and all of the agonising things that go through your mind 24/7 so that sleeping and eating and just existing become things that have to be worked on, because they no longer come naturally.

The waiting is debilitating. It takes all your energy. It takes over your life. I’m at home with two children who I haven’t yet told yet because I’m waiting to know what the prognosis is and what my treatment plan looks like, so I can at least tell them what we know with certainty. Telling your child ‘Mummy has cancer’ is brutal. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. There is no ‘good’ way to be able to tell them. But if you can say it with some conviction about what type/stage etc. then it can be easier, because children like facts. But we are not there yet – we still don’t know enough about my cancer to be able to tell the children. I am finding it so hard to hold it together in front of them. Having cancer is bad enough, but having to keep it a secret in my own house and dance about the kitchen smiling and laughing and pretending everything is okay is just torture.

Maybe it’s a positive thing that I am not able to wallow in self-pity. If I allow myself to go down that rabbit hole, I fear I may never re-emerge, unless the White Rabbit could give me a ‘drink me’ bottle to make everything better. Preferably full of Dom Perignon. The inevitable question everyone must ask when they are told they have cancer is ‘why me?’ Why does this have to happen to me? I have just got through the hardest year of my entire life, and now this new ‘gift’ has come my way. Talk about kicking a dog while it’s down (isn’t that a horrible saying?!). Apparently only 450 people in the UK are diagnosed tonsil cancer each year. I think my chances of winning the lottery are higher. How different life could be if I had won the actual lottery rather than the cancer lottery. But I keep going, the girls oblivious, Rich busy at work, and I try to act as normally as possible. One thing I know for sure is that I will do everything to fight this. I will fight it with every ounce of my being. And I know I need to take it one day at a time, which is not easy for a control-freak planner extraordinaire like me. So perhaps I also need a personality transplant while I am getting through this - or a trip to Wonderland.