‘I was diagnosed with breast cancer during lockdown’
Just when she thought that life was challenging enough, Esther Shaw was thrown another curveball
Idon’t think April 2020 was easy for anyone, but just when I thought that trying to care for an 11-month-old baby, home school a four-year-old, and squeeze in some writing where possible during lockdown was enough of an ask, I found a lump. When I first felt that raised, odd-shaped area on my left breast I almost laughed. What a ridiculous twist of fate it would be if, on top of everything, I was about to find out I had cancer.
That same evening, I spoke to a GP friend who lives close to us in Battersea, south-west London, and she agreed to jog down to see me informally the next day. She was relaxed, and thought the lump could be sport-related, but insisted I get it checked out.
My husband Rob has private medical insurance through work, so I saw a consultant pretty quickly. I attended that first appointment in a central London clinic on my own feeling relatively invincible. I’m just 41 and a lifetime of regular exercise, never smoking, and not having eaten meat since I was nine was supposed to count for something, right?
But as I got ushered through the clinic, from mammogram to ultrasound, with biopsies along the way, I started to get the feeling I wasn’t going to get the outcome I’d been expecting.
Soon after, at 11am on April 9, my consultant dropped the bombshell: it could be a tumour. With those lifechanging words pounding around my head, I walked out into the eerily silent streets of lockdown London, feeling as though I’d been hit by a bus.
The remainder of April was one long blur of appointments, scans, phone calls, and a constant ricocheting between extreme emotions. But I somehow made it through to my diagnosis meeting on April 16, and the upshot is this: I have grade-three triple negative breast cancer.
I have a rock of a husband, utterly devoted parents and sister, and unbelievable friends, all of whom are going to get me through this.
I’m fit and healthy, and I’ve been running just about every day during lockdown. While I’ve certainly had plenty of self-pitying and “why me?” moments, what I’m having to face up to is the fact that getting cancer is just bad luck.
Without doubt, embarking upon active chemo at this point in time is going to have its challenges.
When I first felt that raised, odd-shaped area on my breast I almost laughed
For starters, I’ve officially joined the “extremely vulnerable to coronavirus” list, meaning I’m entering into a minimum six months of uber-isolation with my husband and little ones, just at the point when others are starting to come out of lockdown.
I haven’t been able to take anyone to chemo with me. All I can say is thank God for nurse Brian who was on the receiving end of my pent-up tears at my first five-and-a-half hour session on May 1. Not only did he take the brunt of my blubbing, but he also managed to turn my tears into screaming laughter (behind our paper masks, of course).
I don’t want to be too down on any of this, as I realise a lot of women are getting their breast cancer treatment changed or delayed at present to reduce the risk from Covid-19, and that this is causing many a lot of additional stress and worry.
While Rob and I are doing our best to take one day at a time, we are also trying to work through some potentially pretty tough decisions that lie on the road ahead. This includes thinking about whether I should, when the schools go back, move out of the family home for the remainder of the summer term, to give Jess the chance to go back to her classes, see her friends, and live some sort of normalcy.
The good news is, none of those decisions need to be made today. For now, my focus is just on getting on with life.
It has certainly been a learning curve, but then again, so are most things in life right now. I’m not going to pretend I’m a superwoman, I’m not. I’m also not going to pretend I never crumple in a mess, as I do. Quite frequently.
I also fully acknowledge that I’m right at the start of the journey and I’m in this for the long haul, with six months of chemo ahead of me and an operation (and potential mastectomy) towards the end of the year, and maybe radiotherapy to follow that.
Right now, I don’t know what lies around the corner. But then again, I don’t suppose any of us do. April 2020 has changed my life forever. It has changed all our lives.
But I need to concentrate on dealing with this Covid/cancer/chemo curveball that life has thrown at me, and on getting out the other side and on with my life.