Powering on I’ve got cancer – but I still want to work
As Facebook boss Nicola Mendelsohn reveals she is fighting the disease, Brenda Trenowden explains why her career might just be a tonic
‘It has focused my mind. I don’t wish to wallow. I want to make the most of my time’
Until I was 49, I had almost never taken a sick day. Despite the all-consuming nature of my executive-level job in banking, I made time for lots of running and always ate well – so when I took up the offer of a routine medical check at work, I was simply interested to see how fit and healthy I was. The results were just as good as I’d expected.
The only thing nagging me was my slightly distended stomach. I’d attributed it to my stage of life, and having had two children, but given the amount of exercise I did, it was frustrating that I just couldn’t shift it.
It had been a while since my last smear test so when I was given the results of my medical, I accepted the suggestion that I have one. Upon examination, the nurse told me that my uterus felt a little enlarged, and duly sent me for an ultrasound.
Fibroids, I assumed. Or something like that. I wasn’t prepared for what came next: the scan revealed a huge mass that was pushing my womb forward. When I saw a gynaecologist the following week, he said the words no one ever wants to hear: “It’s cancer, and you’ll need major surgery.”
I was floored, of course, but I couldn’t quite take it in. I had a frantically busy day job as head of FIG Europe at ANZ Bank, besides which I had recently become the global chair of the 30% Club, which campaigns for at least 30per cent of FTSE board members and senior leaderships teams to be female (and feels like a full-time role itself). So when the diagnosis of pseudomyxoma peritonei, a rare form of cancer that usually starts in the appendix, came, I found myself thinking: “This is really inconvenient. I can’t be taking time out.” I’m sure that same thought crossed the mind of Nicola Mendelsohn, the head of Facebook in Europe who, since being diagnosed with another rare form of cancer, follicular lymphoma, in her mid-40s, has carried on working.
Facing a diagnosis of that kind is made all the worse when so little is known about it. “Even many doctors haven’t heard of it,” mine told me of the disease, of which there are 0.5-1 incidences per 100,000 people per year. “You should go home and Google it. Best of luck.”
I did not, however, go home. I went straight back into the meeting I had just excused myself from, albeit in a state of profound shock. There was nothing I could do at that moment that would make any difference to anything, I reasoned, so I may as well stay put.
There followed a week of terror and panic. Unmoored by this bombshell, and with no sense at all of what was to be done, I floundered. But I was calmed by a surgeon who told it to me straight: that my situation was grim, but that there was room for hope – and, crucially, a plan to get me through it. “It’s really serious,” he said. “You’re going to have horrendous surgery, and the recovery will be horrendous, too. But I think we can cure you.”
It may sound strange but I felt lucky: that they’d found this cancer that can be asymptomatic; that the one surgeon in the country who could deal with it was less than 70 miles from my home in Sevenoaks; and that my illness was curable.
I was told I’d need four months off work, and my employer was incredibly supportive. Strangely, there were four of us in my team battling cancer at that time. We wondered if it was something in the air, but our cancers were all very different, and tests assured everyone that there was no connection.
The surgery, on January 4 last year, was every bit as awful as they warned: in my 10 hours under the knife they took out my appendix, gall bladder, spleen, uterus, ovaries, part of my bowel and the outer lining of my liver. Yet two days later I was back on my feet, two weeks later I was out of hospital and four months later, in April, I was back at work again – easing myself back in gently on a part-time basis to begin with.
The company told me to take as long as I needed. But what I needed, too, was to work. To be resilient, you need a sense of purpose, and through work and the 30% Club and also, of course, my family – husband of 22 years Mark, son Teddy, 17, and daughter India, 15 – this was something I had. I was desperate to return to the equality campaign, which was really gaining momentum. And I didn’t want anyone writing me off, either: I threw myself into work and life with a renewed vigour born of my sudden confrontation with mortality.
I didn’t want to work merely to keep my mind off things so, by April, when it looked like the cancer had gone, my thoughts returned to career progression, hopeful that a new executive position might arrive with my 50th birthday.
But I was getting ahead of myself – I had my one-year scan early, and the result was another hard blow. The cancer had come back. So began chemotherapy – 12 cycles in total, which I’m currently halfway through. After the initial disappointment at having to fight this again came that original irritation: I just don’t have time for this. There are so many things I want to do, and I’m damned if I’m going to give up on them.
Quitting work was never an option. Instead, I work Monday and Tuesday, have chemo on Wednesday and, at first, I’d hide the chemo pump under my jacket and return to the office on Thursday and Friday. A side-effect of the treatment, however, is a bad reaction to the cold, so I work from home when necessary.
It works perfectly. I do conference calls from the house, and people can come and visit me here if they need to. At the weekends I crack on with my 30% Club work, as well as in evenings and lunchtimes. I tend to start early and do a long day, except when I’m having my chemo. I also jog and do pilates when possible – Mendelsohn, too, has taken up working out twice a week having “never exercised before” and says that, somewhat ironically, she feels “much healthier” now.
Of course, it’s not all been straightforward. Having a rare cancer comes with the added complication of having to explain it endlessly. Mendelsohn has grown an enormous follicular lymphoma network on Facebook, and through the site I’ve also connected with a group of survivors of the rare cancer strain I’ve got, but I’d love to have spoken to someone who’d had this before undergoing my surgery.
In some ways, things are worse for my husband. He’s frightened and angry that the cancer is back, and that I have to deal with it again. He gets tired of hearing it explained to all-comers. As for me, it has focused my mind. I don’t wish to wallow or be bitter.
I want to make the most of my time and spend it in ways that are meaningful; to do things that give me a purpose. And work is one of them.