Today I read a blog shared on facebook by a friend and WOW it really did echo exactly how I have been feeling lately. (Just click on the highlighted text and you will be taken there).
On Monday morning, following a pretty traumatic weekend with my teenage autistic son, I had the misfortune of seeing Victoria Derbyshires video diary being advertised on breakfast news. She is 47 and has just had a mastectomy. Shes decided to make this diary and share it everywhere to prove..... prove what???
Do you know what that diary did to me? It made me cry and it made me feel like a complete failure. I went out that morning and thank God for my horse and dog walking because I felt as though I had lost my fight against cancer, that I had lost every ounce of strength I had in me...... Yes Victoria I said my fight against cancer and NOT me being treated for cancer!!!
These celebrities in their glass houses really should put their brains into gear before they decide to spout off about their experiences.
Did she get chucked out of hospital 24 hours after surgery?
Did her husband have to empty and monitor both of the drains for 2 weeks?
Did her husband have to inject her in her stomach every day?
Did her husband have to change dressings with gangrene and rotting flesh?
Does she struggle with bone pain due to cancer drugs and treatment. Painful scars and reduced mobility? Are her hands inflamed so she has lost her grip? Do her insides feel as though acid had been thrown down them? Has she lost years of her children's lives because she has been busy getting poisoned in order to live?
Yep, you can tell I am pretty upset!
Its not just her diary though its everything relating to cancer.
Brave the Shave for example..... PLEASE do not trivialise hair loss through cancer treatment. If you CHOOSE (important word here being choose) to shave your head, then its your choice. You don't experience the sensations of crawling flesh as each hair follicle dies, and the soreness that comes with it. The nakedness of suddenly being exposed as a cancer patient. Not a choice anymore.
Then there are the parties. I get that people are trying to help raise money and awareness and that's brilliant, its great but excuse me if I don't attend or buy tickets for that function because it doesn't sit right with me at the moment. Having fun in the name of cancer.
You might have guessed that I am in a bad place at the moment emotionally. I think I am still processing all that I have experienced, the disfigurement and the losses I have had forced on me by the disease.
I think its great that people are talking about the disease but lets be careful not to trivialise it or to get drawn in to media driven publicity
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