‘Cancer has a funny way of showing you what’s important...’
Tracey Brown, 33, has spent the past year battling breast cancer
Dear Tracey,
Remember when you’d lie in bed at 2am, staring at the ceiling and worrying about work? You were always staying late, working longer hours than your colleagues. You wanted to impress the boss and hoped they’d notice your hard work.
An events administrator for a university, you were spinning so many plates and trying to please so many people that you worked yourself into the ground.
But all of that changed in July 2016, when you were diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer. A 9cm tumour was removed and you went through chemotherapy, radiotherapy, a lumpectomy and mastectomy. The hospital became your second home.
Cancer has a funny way of showing you what’s important. Family, not work. Worrying less, smiling more. Leaving work at the same time as everyone else. Sleeping better, eating well, listening to your body.
Christmas 2016, halfway through chemotherapy, was miserable. Your son, Kieran, seven, didn’t get to see Santa in a grotto and you didn’t go to any night markets. All you could think was that this might be your last Christmas.
The statistics for this, the deadliest form of breast cancer, are frightening. Only 30 per cent of patients achieve eradication of cancer cells, and most relapse in two years. If you make it to five years after diagnosis, you’re very lucky.
But, while this year has been all about fatigue and hospital appointments, hot sweats and paranoia, next year things are going to be different.
It’s hard not to be consumed by fear, but remember you’ve just had the one-year all-clear. You’re having check-ups, rather than treatment, now. It’s still early days, but you’re not dying. You’re still living.
Here’s a trick. When you’re at the beach near your Hartlepool home with Kieran and your partner, Steven, 34, say, ‘ WOW! Look at me, I’m not in hospital. Yippee!’
Go shopping. Meet friends. You’ve got your new ‘chemo sisters’. Christine, Louise, Peggy and Rachele are all in the same boat. They’ve been your lifeline in the darkest hours and they’ll be part of your life for ever.
Don’t live in fear. Appreciate the life you nearly lost. After years of saying it was too expensive to get married, you’re planning to do it! And there’s the new baby to look forward to. Yes, a new baby due in the summer! If cancer has taught you anything, it’s that there is no time to delay life’s great events.
Notice how beautiful the world is. Be happy. Turn your phone off. Leave work at 5pm. Have date nights. Take your dog, Harley, for long walks over the sand dunes, even in the rain. Even rain is wonderful now.
This Christmas, do everything you saw everyone else do on Facebook while you couldn’t. Take Kieran to see Santa. Hopefully, this Christmas is the first of many more to come.
Remember Kieran saying he was so glad Mummy was alive? Still makes you smile just to think of that, doesn’t it?
You’re alive, Tracey. You have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have you.