I vividly recall saying as I sat waiting to go in for the Endoscopy “I am not frightened of the procedure, I am frightened of the results.” I went in with the knowledge that they were looking for possible Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, or IBD. I was mostly ok with that. I had been diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome back in 2007 so I thought it would be logical for it to have perhaps advanced into one of these chronic bowel conditions. They weren’t pleasant, but by no means impossible to live with and definitely not capable of killing me. Up until this point the biggest threat to my life were my Mental Health conditions, which had seen me admitted to hospital for attempted suicide on several occasions over the last ten years. Besides, I had learned to live with this uncomfortable, bloody mass for the last nearly 2 years with it effecting little more than my daily visits to the bathroom. However, there had always been stuffed into the least reachable corners of my mind the idea that I just might be carrying something far more serious, but I knew that if I dared convince myself it was that serious I would not have made it through everything else that was going on at the time, balancing the Pandemic and its fallout against my fragile Mental Health.
When they told me I needed my partner with me, I knew this was it. They told me they had found something and I couldn’t hear or process anything else after that. All that rang through my brain was “It’s Cancer.. I’ve had it.”
I always knew that one day I would have Cancer. Ever since my Mum’s diagnosis in 2004 I knew it was just a matter of time before my turn came round. I saw one of my close friends at University succumb to Leukaemia at just 20 years old in 2006, my ex partner’s mother from Sarcoma in 2010, and my Aunt just before the Pandemic in 2020, from a Cancer that was so well hidden it couldn’t be detected until there was nothing that could be done to save her. Now that day had finally caught up with me, and I had left it far too late. 18 months too late. I was being sentenced to death at just 35 years old, and with absolutely nothing to show for having been on this earth.
I held it in waiting for the bus from the hospital and the long journey back home but as I approached the front door to my Flat my phone started ringing, it was GP. She said how shocked she was at the diagnosis and that ripped away the wall of denial I had quickly thrown together, that maybe I had misheard something and I had jumped, as my mind often did, to a fictional worst case scenario. I instantly broke down. I felt everything inside of me instantly dissolve,and every familiarity of life froze. I am dying, and because of my own prudish stupidity.
My thoughts instantly turned to Sarah Harding, dead from incurable breast cancer at barely forty years old. Jade Goody in just her twenties. I discovered the Radio 1 DJ Adele Roberts had been diagnosed with Bowel Cancer almost on the same day as me. I even dwelled on the irony of it all, that these last ten years, wasted on fighting my Mental Health and the stigma towards it, had begun with a Hospital Admission for passing blood and strange bowel activities, and the resulting trauma had led to my first mental health diagnosis and my eventual resignation from the world of work. That all those years I had been having problems with my bowels and I put it down to my IBS diagnosis from 2007, when in fact I may have been carrying this killer inside me for the best part of an entire decade. I became suspicious of every single sting of pain in my body. That it was the cancer and it had already spread. To my stomach. My chest. My brain. My blood.
They ran the MRI and CT scans and the Colonoscopy all within days of each other. In fact, I demanded they did it all with as little time to spare as possible. I couldn’t cope with being left in limbo. I couldn’t sleep with not knowing. I couldn’t wake without instant stabbing terror. I couldn’t function with my brain being taken over with thoughts of a long, drawn out and painful death. The original date for the Colonoscopy was not until November, but I wanted everything done before even Halloween came round. I’m not cut out for the waiting room of the unknown.
Within three days I was back at Hospital to start the process of investigation. MRI scan. CT scan. There is a nightmare I can remember vividly from childhood, where I was stuck lying on my back in a tunnel made of clay. It was barely wide enough to allow the span of my shoulders and the ceiling almost touched my nose. There was no way for me to turn over or turn around and I had to claw my way out backwards until my fingers and palms bled. Lying inside the tube of the MRI brought all of that back in clearest detail. They had given me headphones and put a radio station on, but the music was too quiet to drown out the sound of the machine, constantly searching me for 30 long minutes, looking for what was trying to kill me. The CT was a little less invasive, but I was so traumatised by the MRI I was barely able to concentrate by the time they called me in again. I only recall being warned that the scanning dye was going to give me a urinating sensation, but it didn’t. Instead it felt like fiery pines needles being dropped into my lap.
I did the Bowel preparation between the Sunday and Monday morning. Not eating was no challenge as Anxiety had killed my desire to eat days earlier already, but taking the formula to empty my insides was a situation of sensory hell. The taste made me gag. It nearly made me sick several times, and because I had to take it over 2 days with a night’s sleep in between, I was so frightened of having a night time accident that I barely slept.
The current rules due to the Covid Pandemic meant that I had to go into the waiting area for the Colonoscopy alone. Once I was alone, even with whatever distraction I could find, the terror built up until I burst. I started gasping and feeling dizzy. I started to get tunnel vision. I went into a full panic attack. They decided at that point to sedate me. I was given my first ever Cannula and all feeling was drained out of me. I don’t remember the procedure at all. All I remember was lying in the recovery ward, wondering if my last moments were going to feel like this – Semi conscious, aware of my surroundings and situation but too foggy and too exhausted to care.
And it was no exhaustion I had ever known before. A kind of exhaustion that could only be reserved for the terminally ill. Too tired to concentrate, to watch or read, or even to look out of the window or fuss the cats or hold someone. Too tired to think. Too tired to pray. Too tired to be frightened anymore. That all I will want is sleep, a sleep without dreams where I won’t have to wake up to this awful reality anymore. Nothing will matter anymore. Not how fat or skinny I look, what has been said or done or what has not, no petty squabbles, no fights, no achievements, no bucket list experiences. All that will matter is to be comfortable and go to sleep.
I returned for the Test Results on the following Wednesday, two days after the Colonoscopy. I nearly ran away when the appointment time came up and no one had called for me. I couldn’t bear hearing myself being told how long I had left to live. My fiance David and a receptionist had to coax me back into the Colorectal Department before I went tearing off down the corridor in terror. A Colorectal nurse called Angel and a specialist called Jared finally came into the room. They told me they couldn’t confirm Cancer. My Blood tests had come back normal. The MRI and CT scans didn’t pick anything up that was out of the ordinary. The Colonoscopy didn’t find anything beyond what had already been identified, and the Biopsies performed on the growth didn’t detect anything either. So they said what I had was a polyp, likely benign or an early cancer that was undetectable to the simpler Biopsies. It was able to be removed by surgery. A bigger biopsy on the polyp would then confirm cancer or not. The relief was immense, and wholly undescribable. My life suddenly opened back up. All I had to do was prepare for the surgery, go through it, recuperate and get back to something resembling normality. I was settled again, the nightmare was over.
The Gothstomate 