Young, fit and healthy

Since last I wrote I have mostly been reflecting on being young, fit and healthy. Let me explain.

I first heard the phrase ‘young fit and healthy’ being applied to me at my initial Breast Care Clinic referral appointment. The context was that even though I was only 39, and even though I didn’t have any significant risk factors for breast cancer, and even though I was otherwise fit and well, all the indications were that the lump in my right breast was suspicious nevertheless.

It was a phrase I would hear again and again in the weeks that followed and I came to resent it. It made me furious. It made me want to shout and scream and rage because if I was so young fit and healthy WHAT IN THE NAME OF ALL THE HOLY THINGS was I doing sitting in an oncologists office? Why did I need a CT scan? Why did I need blood test after blood test after blood test? What was all this chemotherapy nonsense about?

chemo suite

Every time a doctor or nurse commented on how young fit and healthy I was it just reminded me what a bum deal I thought I had been dealt and I raged all the more.

I raged because despite breast cancer being the UK’s most common cancer, with over 55,000 women being diagnosed every year, only 2,200 of them (or 4 percent of the total) are aged 39 or younger like me. I raged because triple negative breast cancer is similarly uncommon – only around 15 percent of breast cancers are ‘triple negative’. I raged because it wasn’t fair, because it wasn’t my fault and because there was nothing I could do about it.

And then, of course, I stopped raging. The thing about raging is that it you have to stop eventually – either you run out of rage, or you run out of things to rage against. I suppose it stared to occur to me that, quite aside from everything else, it really wasn’t doing any good being furious with myself for having cancer, or for being young fit and healthy with it.

Here’s the thing. I am, at least as far as cancer goes, quite young. I also am reasonably fit and reasonably healthy and whilst you will NEVER hear me say that anything about my situation is lucky, I do have to concede that there are scenarios where things could have been a whole lot worse for me. The fact that I am young gives me a bright future to keep my eye on. The fact that I am fit gives me reserves to call on as I make my way through the more gruelling side effects of chemotherapy. The fact that I am healthy means we’ve been able to pursue the optimum, most likely to save my life treatment, (basically kick this thing super long and double hard with chemo before surgery) because I am healthy enough to tolerate it.

I’m a big believer in looking on the bright side – not in the impossibly optimistic sense, just in the sense that there’s always a tiny chink of light. I’ve got cancer and that is all kinds of rubbish but I’m young, fit and healthy and so far, I’m living with it well. And that isn’t rubbish at all.