We kept his cancer a secret
Emma McDonald explains why she has hidden her husband’s diagnosis for five years
Few sounds make me panic more than hearing my husband James’s key in the lock when I’m not expecting him. Instantly, I’m back to the bitterly cold November afternoon he arrived home without warning to tell me he’d been diagnosed with cancer. It was, as you can imagine, the worst day of my life.
I was 37 and on maternity leave, our daughter Lucy was only three months old. James, who’s the same age as me, sat down next to us and cried as he explained the bruises on his legs, the ones we’d casually dismissed as a sign of anaemia, were in fact symptom of a rare form of leukaemia. In that moment our world began to spin on a different axis.
An element of secrecy was there from the start: he had been to see our GP alone to have the bruises assessed; the next day he was referred for a blood test at our local hospital and still didn’t tell me; 24 hours after that he sat unaccompanied in a specialist cancer unit near our London home as his diagnosis was confirmed.
When my shock subsided enough to ask him why he’d kept this to himself, he said he didn’t want to worry me until he knew for sure. I understood that – James is taciturn by nature – but I was stunned when he said he wanted the secrecy to continue.
James was adamant that he didn’t want anyone beyond our immediate family and closest friends to know. Five years on, friends and relatives beyond that inner circle are still unaware that he’s been seriously ill.
I’ve struggled to accept his approach. This is an age where every facet of life is shared online and for many cancer patients, social media can also be a life-saver: sharing fears helps dilute them and the public outpouring of goodwill received in return incredibly uplifting.
But James didn’t want to be treated differently because he had cancer. He didn’t want to deal with the inevitable questions or have to give progress reports every time he logged onto Facebook. He wanted to go to the pub as normal, go to dinner as usual, chat about anything other than his illness. He didn’t want to have to manage other people’s distress on top of his own.
He’s not alone. A study carried out by Bupa has revealed a quarter of women and nearly a fifth of men diagnosed with cancer said they had considered not telling their close family, including parents and spouses, in order to protect them.
There is something faintly oldfashioned about not mentioning you have cancer. It’s the epitome of British stoicism. In James’s case it helped that he was never hospitalised, nor did he experience any physical side effects from his treatment such as hair loss. His particular type of leukaemia can only be treated with oral chemotherapy, in tablet form, which he could take at home. It was easy for him to conceal his condition.
I respected his wish to keep quiet but occasionally I cracked: I confided in a few trusted colleagues and I once told an acquaintance who had been widowed at a young age because it helped to talk to someone who knew how terrified I was at the prospect of losing James.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, keeping such an immense secret has taken its toll. Last year I was treated for anxiety-induced panic attacks and my counsellor said it was a delayed reaction to bottling up my feelings. Talking freely to her about James’s cancer felt like a weight lifted and my anxiety has since abated.
I don’t blame James, because I appreciate there is a downside to broadcasting every blood test, every symptom, your prognosis highs and lows. It’s all too easy to become defined by your cancer, which is what happened to a friend who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer around the same time as James. She began blogging about “her journey” and it’s all anyone associates her with now – her personal and professional achievements are all eclipsed by her illness.
Keeping quiet also means we’ve been able to protect our daughter, now five. James responded well to his treatment in the crucial first six months and had achieved full remission within three years. He does, however, have to take medication to suppress the cancer for the rest of his life and we’ve decided not to burden her while she’s still too young to fully understand. She’s a sensitive child and we fear it would cause her unnecessary anguish. If all our friends knew, we would have the additional worry of one of them, or their children, accidentally blurting it out in front of her.
There are also other valid reasons to keep a cancer diagnosis under wraps. Under the Equality Act 2010, cancer patients returning to work are protected, but a survey by Macmillan Cancer Support in 2013 found more than a third of them felt discriminated against because their employer presumed the illness would return.
James never had that worry – his boss at the time was one of his closest friends and therefore in the loop. But it was fear of being unemployable that prompted screenwriter Nora Ephron to keep her 2006 diagnosis a secret. She was concerned no insurance company would sign off on any film she tried to make if they knew she had acute myeloid leukaemia: when she died in 2012, her closest friends had no idea she’d been ill.
At some point, James may relent and tell the rest of our friends. They may be upset that he chose not to confide in them earlier but hopefully they should understand his reasons. It may seem more selfish than self-protecting to others, but it’s his cancer, his narrative. I understand now, how he chooses to chronicle it is up to him.