I'm a lot better dealing with facts and information than with feelings. That's why I am finding it hard to say how I feel, because in all honestly I don't really know myself. I think today is the first time I have properly felt down about all of this.
Anybody who knows me can testify that I am not prone to self-pity, and I don't allow things like illness to affect me. I've been known to work a 16-hour day with occasional bathroom breaks to vomit when I've had food poisoning. So my emotions today have taken me by surprise.
When the results came through on Tuesday, I was a little bit tearful but I went out that night with friends to watch a Derren Brown show and had a great time. Today is the first day since then that I've not had work or social things to distract me. And I feel really depressed and a little bit angry and tired of other people. I've just got back from having lunch with my best friend; usually a great pick-me-up. But I didn't enjoy it and left as soon as I could. It doesn't help everybody seems to be complaining about trivial things. My friend's shoe was rubbing him and he has a blister. My husband (currently in Austria for two weeks) has a cold and feels rotten. Every shitting person on Facebook is at it too: tree pollen gives me headaches, my ears are blocked, wah wah wah.
Part of me wants to yell, boo hoo, I sodding well wish a blister or a cold or tree pollen was the only thing I have to worry about. Even when the infection had set into my burst stitches and my leg wouldn't stop bleeding and I was in so much pain I had to go downstairs on my arse, even then I didn't moan the way some people do. But, I will not be that person who always brings cancer up and makes people feel bad about it. I resent myself for even writing this whiny crap but I promised myself when I started this blog that I wouldn't edit out the bits I didn't like, or edit it to put myself in a favourable light. My feelings are my problem and I need to find a way to get over them without putting them onto other people.
To make myself feel better, ironically, I started working out some statistics but they ended up just made me feel worse because it was there in black and white what crappy luck I have had so far:
(Stats from various sources)
11,000 melanoma cases are diagnosed each year in the UK. Of those, around 5,000 are intermediate-depth (1-3mm thick) and suitable for sentinel lymph node biopsy. Of those 5,000, around 850 will come back positive for cancer cells in the lymph node. I am one of those 850 people. In a country of 62 million people, that is some pretty shitty luck. I've never even sunbathed. There is no reason for this to be happening other than just being one of those things. I have nothing to blame.
On the bright side, there is a 5% chance that any of the other lymph nodes contain cancer, and I feel fine physically. I am not ill, don't feel ill, don't look ill. To many cancer patients, I AM the person with the blister or the cold so I need to stop feeling down and start counting my blessings. I've been so far away in my head today that my usually excellent driving has been atrocious. I realised at one point I was doing 105mph on the motorway without noticing. I need to pull myself together.
Cancer is a problem that needs to be fixed so I can move on to the next thing, that is all.
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