Why the sad face?

Because fucking cancer, that’s why. This week I have been sad. Morose in fact. As the December date of diagnosis self-murder approaches, (and incidentally I can’t decide whether I should be celebrating this first cancerversary or locking myself in the cellar with a bottle of vodka and a knife), I find I am sad about what Nate and I have lost. Not angry. Not depressed and unable to cope. Just. Fucking. Sad.

We were going to try for a baby from last Christmas, and we would probably have one by now. We’d have been under no pressure, just having a baby like people who have babies. It’s fun trying, if you don’t conceive – oh well, more fun next month right? By rights we should currently be doing the 2am rocking-pace of madness, trying to get a squalling new born to accept that the dark times are for sleeping, not screaming and head bobbing for a nipple.

This has been a year of babies amongst my friends. Never at any point has this made me feel sad or jealous. I love those babies with their little personalities and their snuffling and their shuffling about in a helpless fashion. I love watching them develop from that tiny just born thing to something – someone – responsive and interactive. 

It’s not the babies around me making me feel sad, it’s that we lost the chance to do that. I may have reclaimed my right to still have a baby if we want to from under the umbrella of cancer treatment, but then it became a race against time, a constant reminder of the disease. While I was looking forward, being positive and telling myself once I got through treatment we could try for a baby, and everything would go back to normal, cancer was laying root it’s legacy. There is no carefree any more. We’re not trying for a baby, we’re racing to beat the cancer clock, when presumably the hands strike midnight, one of my shoes falls off, and the fairy oncologist sends me back to manual labour with some tamoxifen and zoladex for comfort. 

So I’m sad that Nate and I lost the chance to have a baby like other people do in a normal, natural way, and are instead facing a looming deadline. If you don’t think that puts pressure on you directly after a miscarriage, give it a try. The deadline is next month. But I am well and truly of sick of hearing my inner voice scream that at me in panic. I’m fairly sure Nate must be sick of it too, even though he is lucky enough to be one step removed and can only hear my inner voice through my actions.

Fuck the deadline. Fuck cancer for taking away what we wanted to do last year. Fuck panicking. Six months was an arbitrary figure my oncologist pulled out of thin air when I announced to her that I would not be taking part in her latest research into FEC chemotherapy. My type of cancer has a higher chance of a recurrence between 5 and 8 years. The fact is, they don’t know what risk I’m taking – if any – in trying to have a baby now because no one does this. They don’t know if I’m in the 60% who will never get a recurrence, whether I have a baby, chop my tits off or mainline tamoxifen. There are no answers. There is really just hope and the luck of the draw and whether my body decides to fight off another round of mutant DNA if it happens, or lets it grow again.

I saw a story in the media recently about a woman who had a similar type of breast cancer to me, and after she’d had a double mastectomy she refused any further treatment – chemo, rads and tamoxifen. Some people were heralding her as brave, while others in the comments sections were saying she was a selfish cow because she has a child and she should do everything she can for the sake of her child. Many of the comments I read didn’t take into account the possible ramifications of those treatments, just that she should do them, because she has a child. Choice of treatment for cancer is a very personal thing. As is the individual response to being diagnosed with the C word. I’d say 85% of the time I have a very solid ‘Fuck cancer’ attitude, while the other 15% is a rollercoaster of sadness, despair, abject terror, acceptance of impending death, grief and loss. The same people who judged that women as selfish for not having treatment will be judging me as selfish for trying to have a baby after a cancer diagnosis, when I might not be in the 60%. Well, fuck you cancer, and fuck you judges. Throughout our lives, statistically, one in two of us will develop cancer. With those odds, no one should have children. EVER. If it’s selfish of her not to have treatment when she has a child, if it’s selfish of me to go on to have a child after treatment, then surely it’s selfish of anyone who could be in the 50% of people who will get cancer. Everyone get sterilised, quick.

Or just get on with your life. As Ferris told me when I was young and impressionable, ‘Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.’ It does move pretty fast. And it might end any second with that bus you didn’t see coming, or that fish bone you didn’t notice, or that broken electric lead or that faulty DNA in that one cell. You get a choice of how you respond to that. I’m choosing to take back some time, eradicate that deadline, and have another moment in my oncologist’s office next month where I tell her I’m going to do what feels right for me again and take her drugs when I’m ready to, not at fake deadline o’clock.

Me and Nate need a bit of carefree back in our lives. What is the point of bothering to fight cancer if you’re then going to let it overshadow everything?