The Diagnosis

The photo above is ironically me at the gym, "the picture of health" the morning I had my appointment to receive my results.

The mole had been removed and aside from the soreness of the stitches, the whole ordeal was at the back of the mind. I was swamped at work and in the throes of making "what we need" and "what we want baby lists," so a call from the hospital's dermatology department to receive my results wasn't a big deal. After all, if it was cancerous, it's just skin cancer and they cut it out and all is good in the world again, right? It was also a few days away from my favourite holiday, Halloween, and I had a stash of candy corn ready to dig into, so I was as happy as a clam. Well it wasn't a big deal until the receptionist said "we recommend you bring someone with you in case the results aren't good, but your results may be fine-it's just a general recommendation." I had a sneaking suspicion she was lying and had my file right in front of her and knew my results. Whether she did or didn't I guess is a moot point, and if she had told me it wasn't good news, would that have been better? Regardless, looking back now, I wish I could savour that worry-free moment before I answered the phone. Yes, I was worried about work deadlines, buying baby stuff, choosing a name, digging up my dahlias before the first frost , forgetting to order Maddie's tablets (the list goes on!) but they were trivial worries in comparison to what I could never foresee coming. I wish so very much I could go back to that day. The unfortunate reality of being diagnosed with cancer, particularly one as aggressive as melanoma, is that even if you are given the "all clear," there will always be the bi-annual scans, the holding your breath for the results, and the constant nagging worry in the back of your mind whether it's festering inside you and you just don't know it yet. Gary and I met with the dermatologist who informed us the mole was in fact melanoma and asked me "we're these the results I expected?" Actually, Dr. A, I left the house this morning, went to the gym, dashed from a work meeting to the hospital, all whilst thinking 'I bet today's the day I'll be told I have cancer.' She seemed genuinely upset for me, explaining the next steps and introducing me to a Macmillan support nurse who aside from having a poor grasp of English, immediately asked me to fill out a questionnaire about how I've been feeling and how I feel about the diagnosis. She also kept saying "that I was handling it really well" and she was "surprised I wasn't crying." I really think this woman wanted me to cry because she kept saying it, despite seeing me getting more upset with each time she said it. (Maybe she only knew how to support people who cried?!?) I left the hospital feeling a bit down, but quickly recovered after throwing myself back into work and everyday life. After all, it's just skin cancer. It's cut out now, I'll have a meeting to get staged and I guess they just monitor me, right? I told my parents, who of course were upset as cancer is a scary word, but I think we were all pretty non-chalant about it. It seemed that it was caught early and I wasn't being rushed into any treatment, so the prognosis couldn't be that bad. Over the next few days we began googling "stages of melanoma" and yes stages 3 and 4 looked pretty bad, but the from the results we had in front of us it looked like a Stage 2a. Okay, it wasn't stage 0 or 1, and Stage 2a wasn't ideal, but it was manageable (as opposed to when I googled before, such as a 14 day-long cold and was convinced I was dying!) I had an appointment early the following week to meet with my 'skin cancer team' to discuss the next steps. Granted, I don't like hospitals and they do in still a sense of unease in most people, but I was trying to be optimistic that this meeting was just routine. We left the appointment with the confirmation that it was Stage . I couldn't explain in words what I felt leaving the hospital. This wasn't JUST skin cancer. This was serious. As we walked to London Bridge station I was silent. I could hear the sounds of people talking around me, the general noise of a city, but couldn't process it. I saw people and cars clearly, but somehow they were blurred images my head. I was in a haze. I looked at people on the train home, looked at the window and the world and people rushing about seemed so insignificant. I felt so isolated even though my husband was sitting next to me holding my hand. As I said before I'm not a writer or blogger by trade, but someone who is put what I was feeling that day and the days that followed rather eloquently in his book "From the waiting room on the 10th floor of the oncology building, I remember looking down at people in the street--distant and oblivious, going about their everyday life. I had been cast out of that life, separated from its goal-oriented busyness as from its promises of joy, by the prospect of a probable early death."