Cancer Doesn't Give a Shit About Your Processing Timeline

Temporary Freak Outs Only Permitted

I used to pride myself on my ability to calmly weigh up my options in times of trouble, even if it was a bit overthinky at times. I’d give myself time to allow feelings and thoughts to percolate, to make sense of things and get advice from sage friends before doing anything.

Cancer has cured me of needing time, because it doesn’t come with a ‘buy now, decide how you feel about it in a week’ clauses. Cancer means freak outs can only be very brief and temporary because delay could be fatal, and decisiveness and action are your best weapon. Cancer doesn’t care what you feel, only what you are going to do about it.

I reckon getting bad news like ‘sorry but you have cancer again’ goes something like this:

1) What the actual fuck is unfolding now. Aka: are you serious?! Initial shock phase enters dramatically, swiftly followed by all the emotions, upset, denial, annoyance, ignore it for a bit, return to thinking about it when you have the bandwidth. Cue calling besties, late night whatsapps, tears and the horrible ‘it’s too soon to tell the children’ bit where I have to pretend at home that everything is normal when it is very much not fucking normal.

2) Resistance is futile. This is the big where I make sense of it and come to terms with the news and the new normal, journal, meditate, talk to people, leading to…

3) White flag. Acceptance. Surrender to how it is even if I don’t like it. No one likes having cancer obviously, NO ONE. Surrender is quite French, isn’t it, perhaps it would sound more fun if it was called le surrender, waving your petit drapeau blanc. This bit is where you have to get good at accepting while also at times being full of fear and rage.

4) Big girl pants. Since I have to do this thing, let’s get doing. Solutions, action, put stuff in place, get help, get busy.

Taking a moment here to recognise that for some people there is also the ostrich phase where you pretend it isn’t happening or acknowledge it, but pretend you’re completely fine. You know the kind of fine I mean, the one where you say ‘I’m fine’ in quite a shrill voice that tells everyone you are not in any way fine but that you do NOT want to talk any more about it thank you very much. Ostrich phase has options like escapism, numbing out or other less than healthy coping mechanisms like keeping insanely busy so you don’t have to feel. I have the awards from doing this before, but not anymore, because of how completely fruitless and unhelpful it is..don’t you just love a lesson learnt the hard way?! I might sometimes distract myself in a loving way, but this isn’t the same as denial, abandoning myself or numbing out.

Back to the exciting (!) process from WTAF to big girl pants. Under normal circumstances, there is space for each stage to unfold, for emotional marinading, for messiness, for the acceptance and surrender to arrive when its ready without it all being forced.

Cancer is not gracious or patient. The medical people needing decisions or to do stuff to do stuff to you need and want you to show up asap with the right answer. The surrender has to come really fast either willingly, or be dragged through the steps at breakneck speed by the reality that is showing up right now. Bad luck if you don’t want whatever is happening, it’s here, it’s happening, get over it and deal with it.

If I was talking to a coaching client or close friend, I’d tell them that the most loving and painless path is the quick surrender. I’d reassure them that surrender means to go over to the winning side, it doesn’t mean being humiliated, dominated, beaten up or whatever. Oh shush all you kinksters who find those words exciting, this is not the time.

Hair falling out is one of the developments where there wasn’t time to process at all as it happened. It was a mass panic exodus like the passengers of the Titanic as the ship went down, without anyone giving a shit about how neatly they lined up or what order they got into the lifeboats, they just wanted off the ship as fast as possible. I remember looking in the mirror and seeing my beautiful curls vanishing, my hairline changing rapidly, and feeling a deep panic and distress that couldn’t really be allowed out for fear of drowning in it. And because oh look, here’s another handful you need to pull out carefully and then just chuck in the bin, never to be seen again, as if it hadn’t up until that moment been a loved and important part of you.

No matter how many leaflets you get or conversations with well-meaning people, nothing prepares you for what the initial rapid hair shed WTF few days are actually like. I went from ‘some is starting to fall out, maybe I’ll get it cut short at the weekend’ to ‘it has to be all cut off right now’ in about 4 hours. The sudden extremely rapid shedding and extensive fistfuls coming out forced the situation. No time to weigh up options, no time to be ready to have the shortest hair of my lifetime, not really time to say goodbye either.

Having to have a port fitted pre chemo was another one of those things, one day they said it would help a lot of have it but I wasn’t sure yet, the next day they said they could do it tomorrow, and I suddenly I was in hospital having it under sedation. Welcome to months of having the medical equivalent of a USB port visible living under your skin, where nothing but lifesaving toxic shit that will make you feel terrible will enter and it will hurt like hell every time they access it. It feels like someone jabbing a thick needle into a bruise that never heals, while you smile politely, take a deep breath and pretend this is normal human behavior, or at least something you should be grateful for…eye roll.

Both times and at every chemo appointment, thank goodness for people close to me being there to help, show up, and share the experience. The supportive effect of having people to do this with is immeasurable, and I cannot imagine what it must be like for people going through this sort of thing without lots of lovely people around them. If you do nothing else in times of crisis, get your good people around you.

Each cycle is a masterclass of rapid-fire survival, new symptoms, surrender and just do whatever it takes to get through it without fighting any of it.

Under normal circumstanced I’m PhD level accomplished at processing what’s going on in life, hell I’ve even given dozens of ‘Emotional Wellbeing and Resilience’ masterclasses in corporates over the years and helped thousands to get good at it too. I know the danger of just doing and never being still, never completely feeling, acknowledging or adjusting. I normally welcome the gains in facing things head on to move through them instead of around them, in releasing the unnecessary and properly taking on board any lessons. Crisis mode doesn’t actually come with a built-in feelings journal though, which is rude and obviously unhelpful.

So where has all the processing gone these past nearly 6 months? Is it really true that I haven’t been processing it all, or have I just become a pro at rapid fire adjustment?

The truth is, it really has been a game of survival. Nausea, exhaustion, being in pain, feeling upset and frustrated, just getting through the next hour is where it’s at, no luxury floating around in deeper analysis.

Sometimes it makes me feel far better to not get over serious about it all and to be with the bonkers side of it. There’s my new and amazingly hilarious cheap wig collection for example – why not take silly selfies look like a mermaid, a stripper or Uma Therman in Pulp Fiction and send them to my nearest and dearest for giggles, we’d all always rather laugh than cry.

I have been here before after all, this is my second time with cancer. It still feels unreal, and after all, I never signed up for this but here we are, it’s here and has to be dealt with somehow. The younger version of me who has done something like this before both with cancer and the major and life-threatening car accident coincidentally almost exactly 2 years ago, is gently trying to remind me in the less survival-y moments to stop a little, be with it, feel it, process it. The pragmatic me dealing with my current reality is saying yes of course, but not bloody now while it’s all so hardcore. Mañana.

The best ways I’ve found to process life are conversations, journaling and an embodiment, somatic process called non-linear movement. Journaling is for the mind, NLM is for the body so it can finally stop keeping score.

I haven’t been in the mood to journal at all for months, clearly I’m not ready to let my thoughts spill out even privately. That’s ok. Within this horrible time, the last thing I’m going to do is give myself a hard time for not journaling! Last week I did manage some NLM, very nourishing, returning to a deep embodied connection and dialogue with my physical self in the moment. So this is my chosen way forward for now, to try to feel, to try to listen deeply to my body, and not to worry too much about the thinking bit.

I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong way to do this, or to get through any difficult life situation. We’re all just doing our best with the resources we have in any given moment. The main thing is not to abandon yourself, knowing you can come back to things when you’re ready. That’s what I’m planning to do.

There’s going to be space for the survival to shift into processing, slowness and softness, and for the new quick surrender skills to come in handy too. They can all co-exist as they need to, when the time is right.

And there’s still that little voice that sometimes asks angrily ‘why the fuck have I had to get so good at surviving through crisis? Why me? Why cancer?’ There’s the fearful whisper soon after that, that has forgotten this treatment is preventative and will secure the long-term, that asks ‘how much longer do I really have’, and ‘will I get to be old?’

The universe seems to think I need advanced degrees in surviving impossible shit. I'm ready to graduate now, thanks, and crack on with normality.

I was never asked permission for yet another almighty life interruption, and although I’m walking through the fire, I’m absolutely ready for a life where I don’t have to keep fighting, licking my wounds and keeping going after a horrible battle.

So if you want to send good vibes, send the calm and easy life from now on vibes, not the ‘getting through hard time easily’ wishes. Let’s manifest a boring Thursday where my biggest worries are what’s for dinner and whether the British rain is going to frizz up my newly washed hair, with a vague annoyance about the kids leaving their usual mess in the kitchen. I promise never to complain again about the weather messing up my curls again!