Apologies for any tears or boredom that may ensue.
August 2025
So this might be the day.
The day when all the whens and what ifs disappear, and it becomes right now.
The countdown begins.
The list of buckets.
The meticulous planning and foresighting and preparing and micromanaging.
The grieving. The breath-stopping grieving.
The wondering. The hoping. The accepting.
The crying.
I thought it would be a different day, but I sensed it might not be too far away.
If it is today, then we better get started.
I’d like to be at home as much as possible, but I want to feel comfortable about going to hospital too.
I am not against the concept of Marymount.
I would have liked to have had a head of white hair.
I would have liked to have grandchildren.
I would have liked to have travelled around Europe in our camper trailer while all of my children were happily making their own futures.
I wouldn’t have liked to get dementia.
I wouldn’t have liked to have people shout at me on the bus.
I wouldn’t have liked to be lonely.
I would have died if one of my children died before me.
I feel bad to leave them, but I am so thrilled that they have their lives ahead of them, and they will be wonderful human beings. And now they’ll have a great back-story if they ever go on TV. Instant sympathy. Rose of Tralee, here they come.
I want people to watch dying happen. Call the Deathwife. Come Die With Me. MasterDeath. The Great British Die-Off.
I still don’t know if today is the day to get started with the ending.
You will be alive the day after I die. And the day after that.
You will walk out into the world. Go to the shops. Have a nice lunch. Try on new clothes.
There is nothing wrong with that.
That is how it should be.
I will be with you through all of it.
You can blame me when you buy ugly trousers by mistake.
I’m thinking about dying.
I think I probably will. I am not sure when. I don’t know exactly where.
But I do think I’ll get to it in the next while.
I am very good at procrastinating, but I also get bothered if a task is hanging over me.
What a strange thing to have on a To-Do list.
Plant a tree for me.
An oak.
I was dying there for a while, but I seem to have got over it.
There is a stranger in my mirror.
Bad things happen to people all the time.
Fathers drive over their toddler children in their own driveways.
Mothers watch their sons murder their daughters then kill themselves.
Things happen to children that I cannot even begin to think about.
Dying of natural causes is one of the least worse things that can happen.
I miss:
High heels
Jeans
Touching my toes
Putting on my shoes without grunting
Brushing my hair
Pony tails
Champagne
Running up the stairs
Sleeping on my left side
Assuming I will be alive in five or ten years’ time
I should write some words each day as I drain.
Drain words.
Drainwards.
Draindrops.
Drainbows.
That didn’t last.
But I do.
I persist, inexplicably.
At what point does it get embarrassing?
Apologising for being alive, and not even metaphorically.
January was a struggle.
I can see the fluffy buds on the trees now.
The tiny shoots in a green that can only be seen at the very start of the year. Like the fluffy hair on a newborn’s neck. So precious and rare. And then gone.
I worry I may cry each time I see a snowdrop or a daffodil.
What will I be like if I get to see the roses?
March is Next Month now. 12th, 18th birthdays. Seventh WiMIN conference.
Then Easter. Cape Clear.
If I can just stretch out my fingertips….
Maybe I will live long enough to see a TV cop show where the detective’s spouse is fully aware that the job will always be more important than them, instead of flouncing out in a huff every time a murder interrupts their romantic dinner.
Maybe I will live long enough to watch a football match in a pub and not hear a single derogatory comment about the female pundit/match official/player.
Maybe I will live long enough to be sure that rapists and racists will have to keep quiet about their bigotry, rather than getting elected because of it.
The most precious things
I have held in my hands:
My babies.
Smaller than most.
Cupping their bottoms in one hand.
The sound smell sparkle of the waves in South Harbour.
The daffodil that I planted without hope.
The card sent in the post from someone I don’t really know.
The plant pot left on my doorstep.
The top of the rippling wave.
The cardigan-cushion full of memories of love and tenacity.
I get angry.
Not with having cancer, or “being sick”.
I am irritated by people who think cancer is special, and makes them special.
It is boringly common.
Yes, some people die from it.
We all die of something, you dopes.
To my darling gorgeous daughter on her 18th birthday.
You were very small
When you were taken out of me.
We didn’t know what to do
Except stare at you
Because you were so perfect.
You started smiling then
And we just smiled back all the time
Because you were so gorgeous.
Then you started making funny faces.
Surprised!
Cross.
Scared
Tired…
Excited!!
We spent hours playing that game.
When you started to chat, all bets were off.
Funny
Clever
Kind
Curious
Impatient
Stubborn
Determined
Laughing and laughing and laughing
Suddenly very sad.
And quiet.
And then giggling so hard we had tears coming down our faces.
Never dull or boring.
Never not thinking.
Quick and wise and smart and thoughtful.
You are a perfect adult and we cannot believe we made one of those.
Nothing Special (published in Medical Independent, May 2026)
Why are cancer patients so special? The Pink Runs, the White Ribbons, the GoFundMe pages. The fluffy blankets, the overpriced commercial “care packages”, the cooing podcasts.
“God, aren’t you amazing? You’re so brave.”
“You’re an inspiration.”
“Anything you need, just ask.”
I think all of this stems from the lingering terror that we have inherited when it comes to the Big C. The inevitable painful death that caused everyone to whisper the word, in case saying it out loud would make it contagious. Despite the fact that there have always been plenty of other fatal illnesses around, which were actually contagious. Obviously, TB carried huge stigma and was cloaked in euphemism and denial, but the advent of effective treatments seems to have erased those ghosts. I don’t think that someone diagnosed with tuberculosis today gets the same head-tilt/sad-face reaction as a cancerhead, and they certainly don’t get the same level of saccharine sympathy.
Cancer causes one third of all deaths, and affects every family. But there are plenty of other illnesses that cause equal suffering and are far more likely to kill you in the short term. I am finding it harder and harder to understand how we can live alongside people with significant metabolic disease, or brittle asthma, or severe neurological disorders and fail to empathise with them as much as we do with people living with cancer. Their risk of waking up dead, as they say, is actually significantly higher than those with malignant disease.
I have friends with much greater life challenges than me, and yet they feel the need to apologise for discussing their problems, because “sure it’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through”. There is a diminution of all other illnesses when cancer is around. It is at the top of the sympathy food chain, and soaks up much of the public discourse around illness and distress.
I have moved, for the moment, from being someone with “terminal” cancer to someone with a chronic illness. (The quotation marks are mine; I meet all the criteria for terminal cancer, I just happen to disagree with the classification). I no longer attend the oncology ward every two weeks, with its gorgeous hand-painted mural and fancy reclining chairs. No more free coffee and fresh scones, no more avid attention to my skin/bowels/urine/platelet count. I now attend a clinic staffed by equally kind and skilful professionals, but which serves a cohort of patients who are not traditionally offered the fluffy blankets. There are no daffodils in the Hepatology OPD. Instead, there is a rather grim display of fake livers at varying degrees of cirrhotic change, with an unspoken but loudly-heard “told-you-so” vibe to them. I cannot help but feel the need to tell everyone in the waiting room that I am here because of my Cancer (await hushed murmurs of sympathy) and not because I ate or drank too much. MY cirrhosis is caused by all the treatments I have had over the years, not all the treats.
And so I am also falling into the trap of considering cancer to be a special case, a free pass to access all the positive vibes and gushing good wishes. I intermittently bemoan the fact that I haven’t actually milked my diagnosis enough; there are freebies I haven’t cashed in, Late Late Toy Show tickets I haven’t inveigled, expensive trips I haven’t been #gifted. But I cannot stop myself from thinking about all those terrible life experiences that people go through that the world either blithely ignores, or else downright denigrates the person for finding themselves in that position.
Bad things happen to people all the time.
Fathers drive over their toddler children in their own driveways.
Mothers watch their sons murder their daughters, then kill themselves.
Things happen to children that I cannot even begin to think about.
Living with (and even dying from) cancer is potentially one of the least worse things that can happen, and yet we have elevated it to some supreme serene space where all sins are forgiven and no sympathy is spared. I am not sure that is actually helpful, either to the cancer patients or to everyone struggling with other ongoing serious illnesses. We are feeding into an outdated myth, that cancer is a death sentence and being diagnosed with it is everyone’s worst nightmare. No wonder the fear and silence around it continues, despite the significant life-changing progress that has been made in its treatment in recent decades.
I accept that this is not going to be a popular opinion, and selling a “cancer isn’t that bad” story will never be easy, but I think it is worth considering the spiral of doom that we are perpetuating by continuing to tilt our heads.
I’ve been unwell.
My organs don’t work like they used to.
These are tricky conversations.
“But what are they going to do? What’s the plan? How will they fix you?”
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
This is the wild west of chronic illness, where everything is a bit try-it-and-see.
This is how most people with ongoing conditions live their lives. There is a vague plan, but not a Regime with lovely NCCP guidelines.
We’ll change this tablet and see what happens. We’ll try and sort out that side effect.
Cancer is full of uncertainty but now I almost miss the head-tilts, the special charity-funded couches and fancy coffee.
People look at me expectantly, waiting for me to tell them how I really am, what’s really going on.
I don’t know.
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