I first started writing about my experiences as a patient with cancer nearly six years ago. At the time, I had a lot to write about, and no real concept of an audience or who might be interested in what I had to say. It was merely a way of getting the mixed-up thoughts out of my head, and it saved multiple repetitions of stories/updates/results/news via text or phonecall. (I hate phonecalls). There was a liberty to it, a freedom to say what I liked, and I wasn’t particularly careful about altering the details to make it less identifiable. So most people who read my words knew which hospital I was in and which city I was writing from, and I did not feel the need to edit myself too much.
As time went on, though, I realised that more and more people were following my story. It dawned on me that perhaps some of the people I was writing about, those who were caring for me or otherwise inhabited my story, would recognise themselves in it and understandably be sensitive to what I was saying about them. I also discovered that occasionally some people mistakenly believed themselves to be the focus of a particular rant or negative observation that I was making. And there were others again who were beginning to get a bit miffed that they weren’t, as far as they could tell, getting any mention at all. Now, that left me in a sticky dilemma. Do I continue writing, but alter the story to make it anonymous? “I have a friend with, umm, ovarian cancer who is attending a hospital in, eh, a medium-sized inland county, where they serve Lyons Tea and recognise that Dublin is of course the real capital of Ireland…” I don’t think I could have pulled that off.
Is this why people write fiction? To tell the stories of their own lives without offending anyone else?
I now have a few different outlets for my writing, with some of it being published in a traditional sense, but to a limited medical audience, and some of it occasionally overspilling from my blog into local or national media. I have also recently started writing academically again, for a postgraduate diploma. I generally decide in advance which piece is going where, but sometimes they get muddled up and then my brain feels funny.
I feel better for having written all that down, though.
Thanks everyone. You're all great.
