‘I am strong, but I am not invincible’
Lloyd Oughton, 21, from Havant found out he has a cancerous tumour in 2020. The shock of this diagnosis has changed his outlook on life and, therapeutically, he wrote down what he was feeling on his blog, Compulsively Human.
Here, Lloyd, who works for Southern Co-op, has documented his story.
Today I feel amazing. I feel healthy, strong – like I could slice a watermelon into two perfect halves, just by looking at it. Nothing shall stop me today – it daren't even try. Today I will not fall.
Most people in the world walk around every day like we wear a cape and force shield. We feel like god created the world in six days and on the seventh, he created me because I'm so special; kissing me on the cheek and wrapping me tightly in cotton wool. Then we nosedive like a seagull that's just been shot and freefall without a parachute, plummeting perilously to the bottom.
It's so ridiculous, it's almost funny. We all have this hero complex etched into our minds that we are great and powerful. It keeps us motivated to keep fighting; to achieve our goals and never accept failure. But as in everything in life, there is a cost, and it's this unwavering belief in our invincibility that makes us forget that it's because we are human that we have these limitations, and so we develop arrogance; becoming stubborn to the idea that nothing will ever defeat us.
'I'm too strong to get ill.'
'I won't catch Covid, I'm too healthy.'
'They won't sack me from my job because I'm always late, I'm too valuable.'
'I won't die from excessive drinking, I'm too young.'
'She won't leave me because I'm a cheat, she needs me too much.'
You see, each of us goes about our ways with this false sense of invincibility that we are immune to all of life's trials and tribulations – that we can walk through the fire and come away completely unscathed. But we aren't, we won't and we can't.
Some of the greatest figures in history did not make it. Socrates was poisoned. Jesus was hanged on a cross. Emily Davison was run over by a horse. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash. David Bowie died of cancer. Despite their strength and determination, none of them made it – what makes you think that you are any different?
I, too, thought that I could escape it. I'm healthy, I go to the gym, I have a balanced diet, I am nice to people. I thought I was the modern-day Jesus or something – and I had the hairstyle to go with it.
Then one afternoon, in October, 2020, I answered a call from an anonymous number. It was my doctor – I was expecting a call that week. I had a ‘minor operation’ to remove what was thought to be a cyst the month before, but mid-operation, my doctor decided it was likely a lipoma – harmless fatty tissue that grows under the skin and forms a lump, and he wanted to send it off for a biopsy to get it examined due to the nature of its purple discolouration. I was told not to worry about it, as it was ‘highly unlikely to be anything dangerous’.
‘Oh, hey Doc, what's up?’ I said, attempting to soften the conversation as I braced myself for whatever news I was about to receive. I remember the next part vividly.
‘Listen, Lloyd, we have your results. We have found evidence of some fatty tissue there, but there is also something else... You have a sarcoma – a very rare type of tumour. It is cancerous. I'm really sorry, I know this isn't the news that you wanted to hear.’ In that moment, my whole world began to collapse as if it were made of straw. Everything that I had held to be true about myself had failed me, and I felt like I was losing. The skin cancer I was diagnosed with is called DFSP, which stands for dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans – it’s a very rare cancer which only one to five people per million in the world get.
'So that's it then', I thought. 'This is how it ends, in cruel irony. What have I done to deserve this? I'm 21. Not me – I’m different. I'm... special.'
That day I learned an important lesson: that the world didn’t care about me, who I was or what I stood for.
It didn’t care that I was a 'good person' or that I had a family. I had a disease – and I was forced to accept it. It never occurred to me that I would be the one that got unlucky. You hear people’s stories about how they got cancer from smoking, alcohol, poor diet, maybe they used too many sun
My whole world began to collapse as if it were made of straw
beds. But you never consider that it will happen to you, purely from bad luck. Suddenly it was true: I wasn't special. I wasn't 'invincible'.
I returned to work two days later – a bit of an emotional mess. For the most part, I had to bottle it up, determined to maintain all the normality that I could. I had to ask customers how they were doing, knowing full well that social etiquette dictated that same question be returned.
‘I'm good, thanks,’ I would say, donning a coy smile. But in spite of my uncertain future, one week later I was setting personal bests at the gym and I started to recognise the things that I still had to live for.
It was paradoxical: the acceptance of my mortality had made me stronger, and realising this means we will live a better quality, more meaningful life.
I am now in recovery, having had surgery on December 2 to remove the tumour, after a positive MRI scan that showed that my skin cancer was local and had not spread; that was not ‘benign', but ‘almost benign’, and if left further would cause me more grief. I got lucky and I’m going to be okay, albeit with a shark-bite for a scar .
But my struggle taught me that it is not possible to avoid the pains of life and to delude yourself into believing that you are bulletproof. Something out there, one day, will take me – and it will take you too, no matter what you do.
So maybe you valiantly run into a road to save a hedgehog from a car but get sideswiped by a bus. Maybe a computer monitor flies out of a threestory building and lands directly on you as you were passing by. Or maybe the sand in our life-glass eventually just sinks to the bottom. In the end, it's not about being invincible, but being humble enough to accept the inevitability that you will go; to take on all the hardship and suffering that life throws at you and be stronger, and live better because of it.
Let life come at you and let it give you scars. One day you will fall – you are not invincible – but strong enough to float until you reach the very bottom, and only then, will you have truly fallen.