Would
you like to know something that boils my piss? It may sound trivial to you or
you may think I’m being over sensitive, but as an official inhabitant of ‘CancerLand’
AND speaking for many others in my position that feel the same, that it really
grips my tit that when I die, you will call me a loser.
I
know! Aren’t you an awful person?!
You would
never do that. Would you? But I can confirm muggles everywhere do it so often
it’s become as common as wiping one’s arse. What kind of asshat calls a loved one
that’s died a loser? And yet when someone dies from Cancer, the typical cliché
that’s stapled onto their Facebook status is ‘They lost their battle with Cancer’.
Maybe
I’m being hard on you because of course, I don’t really know what you’d say if
you had to discuss a Cancer persons death. I’m chucking you in a box, aren’t I?
With all the other sheep out there... in fact I was probably once in that box
too.... in the corner eating a double decker and googling ‘Puss-Porn.’
I
just can’t fathom this ‘losing a battle’ crap and why it seems synonymous with
Cancer folk. Imagine breaking the news on Facebook that someone you love had
died in a car accident? Would you write ‘I’m sorry to tell you Dave has
died...he was hit by a bus whilst crossing the road...he lost his fight with
the 359’. Poor Dave. He couldn’t bloody help it. I’m sure he didn’t just lie
down and bleed to death at the side of the road, I bet he was desperate to keep
breathing but he had no control. And not only has he died, you’re calling him a
loser. Christ on a bike!
When
you’re diagnosed with secondary cancer like me, (cancer that has spread to a
distant sight from the original place) you are incurable and can spend the rest
of your life knowing that whatever you do you will end up a loser. The
writings on the wall. At some point you’ll die and not only is being dead a bit
shit, you’re now also a loser. And it doesn’t matter how long you live for
beyond that diagnosis. You are still a loser.
I
catch infections quite often due to lower immunity from the drugs and rather
than a bit of Savlon and plasters, I can wind up in hospital for a week on a
rotation of intravenous anti-biotics and paracetamol without the energy to lift
my head off the pillow accept to watch ‘Love Island.’ I will throw up, be
prodded with needles and stuck in a ward with my fellow cancer patients
munching on unidentifiable food, listening to people fill their commodes.
I
remember a stay last year when I was in a ward with four others. The lady in the
next bed appeared uncomfortable but lucid. In the morning her husband came into
visit and later the Dr turned up. He pulled the curtain around them as if this
magical cotton cloth had evolved itself to become sound proof, and he delivered
the news. ‘Maud you’re not doing so well on these chemo tablets and therefore I
think it’s time we withdrew them. That reduces the time to about 7 days. Have
you given any thought to what you’d like to do? Would you like to go home?’
Wow. Home, I thought. Lucky Maud.
But
Maud was being asked where she would like to die. She had a week left.
Now
I don’t know Maud, but I know when you get to this point you’ve been through
every drug available and there is nothing left to try. You’ve run out of
options. Maud will have endured years of treatments, appointments, scans,
injections, blood tests, vomiting, the shits, nights sweets, baldness,
nosebleeds, dental issues, nail loss, sympathy stares, discrimination, loss of
friends, emotional trauma, mobility issues and now she is going to die. And to
top it all off, when she does die she will be branded a loser! Fucking hell!
Whilst
enduring all the things that Cancer has to offer she could also have raised awareness,
fundraised thousands for charity, inspired countless people, travelled the
world, raised her grandkids, fought for drugs for others, reconnected with
what’s important, taken time for herself, loved very deeply, spent more time
with her friends, smiled constantly, reinvented her life and although she had Cancer
and it caused her death she died a hero! Maybe not your hero, but her own or
her families.
She
is most defiantly not a loser. Just because you die it doesn’t mean you
lost. It’s what you do in life that defines you, not your death. No one lives forever.
She
didn’t lose her battle with Cancer, she chose to live her life the way she wanted,
and she won. She won in her life. It
may have been shorter than she would have chosen and she couldn’t control her
death but if you find anyone that can... pass me their email.
So,
I’m asking for me and maybe a few others, please don’t say we lost. Say
whatever else you like but just not that. We go to hell and back, enduring
years of being poisoned, burned and chopped up. Dealing with emotions about
death, wondering how to say goodbye to people when the time comes and all other
manner of horrors, but we still laugh our way through it and live our lives
just like you. If that isn’t winning, I don’t know what is.
And
if I find any of you writing the word ‘lost’ about me I’ll be so raging I’ll
haunt you.
If I
could have a wish it would be to live until 100 and beyond. But I can only live
now. Just like you. We are no different. We all die.
If
you outlive me... and you find yourself typing the words ‘lost’ into your
phones when announcing my death.... stop and remember this blog and copy and
paste the following:
‘Heidi’s
goal was to live her life the way she chose. And she won.’
