Chronicle

I have just posted three extracts from a treatment chronicle I began about a year ago in order to try and make sense of (or impose some kind of order on through the medium of words) my diagnosis and life-changing new status as Person Living With Secondary Breast Cancer. I have survived this treatment, and this disease, for more than three years since my 'official' diagnosis in March 05, because I let the lump fester a good three months before finally plucking up the courage to visit my GP after a 'fortifying' sojurn in a Budapest spa (see Crab and Fishes 1....). All I can say on this point is, Go, go, go to the doctor - whatever your fears, whatever your circumstances, because it was really my circumstances, rather than fear, that prevented me taking that first step onto what I already recognised as my road to Compiegne. Except, unlike poor queen Marie-Antoinette, I kept my head and lived to tell the tale. In fact, once war has been declared on it, cancer is a strangely fearless condition, really. The fear, in my case, was all for my daughter. She was just ten then, and I could not bear the spectre of social services coming in to take her away from me if I needed to go into hospital. But I needn't have feared that. It was all sorted out in the end.

So, in case anyone is interested, or might like to take some heart from my experience, the retrospective postings of this journey on this blog are:

Crab and Fishes 1
The Regimen
Hair and Other Losses