It was almost a week to the day after being sent home from Hospital I got a call from Angel back at Colorectal. The results from my surgery were in. Everything that I had kept swallowed and silent as I worked like a dog to allow my body to heal was about to blow out as I answered that call. The first words I heard were
I have good news.
It had been a long time since I had heard words like that. The good news I was being told was that I was Cancer-Free. The aggressive cancer, the Xenomorph, had been isolated to the area of my colon that had been cut away on the operating table and had not metastised, it had not worked it’s way into those lymph nodes or spread to any other part of my body. All that had been there was now gone and no further treatment was needed. The looming clouds of weeks of Chemo and the assault on my body that went with it were instantly dispersed.
I couldn’t quite believe it.. All of those months speculating and worrying and waiting for the worst, seeing nothing ahead of me but a black hole of pain and danger and uncertainty, had all come to this, to hearing those words. And suddenly with those words, it was all over. All that was left was for me to recover. To rebuild. To perhaps make something of my body and my life that I had felt had been shattered beyond repair.
It was over. I was safe. I was… Alive.
After a few moments just making sure what I was hearing was actually true, I screamed. So. Damn. Loud. I probably deafened poor Angel at the other end of the phone, frightened my Cats, startled David in the other room, disturbed the neighbours. The final bout of energy that my entire horror story had to give came out of me in that scream. I was injured and exhausted and my body was using every ounce of its energy to rebuild itself and figure out what the hell had happened, but I wasn’t ill anymore. I wasn’t contaminated. I felt clean for the first time in nearly two years.
I was told I was in “Remission” and I vaguely remember from my Mum’s experiences of surviving Cancer that being in Remission means being under strict observations for the next five to seven years, to make sure the damn thing doesn’t come back and if it does it can be spotted and stopped in it’s nasty tracks before it does any significant damage. So while I still have years of scary hospital visits, awful colonoscopies and dread-time spent waiting on results, it was a small price to pay for the euphoria of that present moment. I would be arranging my health check ups instead of my funeral.
I asked then if I had made the right decision having the surgery, or whether they had wasted their time and I had sacrificed my normal back end and a life of normal, comfortable toileting for nothing. I was told it was very likely that had I not had the surgery I would have gone on to have other bowel problems and the Xenomorph would likely have made a very ugly comeback, even more aggressive and maybe even impossible to treat. I suddenly got echoes of something Mr Ansell had said to me not long before I was sent home the previous week..that he had been beside people who had made the decision to refuse surgery and had gone on to die from colorectal cancer when other treatment had failed, and that he never wanted to see me go down that road as death from colorectal cancer was a terrible way to go. They had gone for a cure with the surgery and it had paid off. I had been cured.
What is still unknown is what the hell had caused it. Despite the very broken brain I was an otherwise healthy young-ish person, certainly too young to be considered to have Cancer in any expected way. It is a big possibility that the writing was on the wall straight from my birth, that it had been in my genetic makeup and was only a matter of time before it raised its ugly head. If that is the case, I will likely have medical checks for the rest of my life due to the higher risk of it coming back in some way or another.
That day, six days since getting home, it was early days recovery business as usual. Still on painkillers, still bending my brain trying to work out how best to tend to the new Stoma and get some kind of predictable routine out of it, still stabbing myself in the belly with a needle to prevent any blood clotting, still furious that my size hadn’t gone down and I still couldn’t wear proper Knickers let alone actual clothes. That night though, I made dinner for the first time post op. I made a salmon and lemon pasta while David was out shopping. It was hard standing over the hob and I was straight back to lying on my side propped up when I went to eat, but all I could see was the gates burst open and nothing ahead of me but open fields of sunlight. My road to recovery was still long. It was still going to be complicated and hard work and frustrating and painful and mostly to be managed by myself, but the biggest weight bearing down on me had been lifted. The death sentence I believed was around my neck was gone.
The effect of the good news was profound. So much felt suddenly easier to manage, easier to cope, it even seemed to provide a natural painkiller. My sleep that night and into my seventh day home was far more peaceful, restful and less disturbed. Even though the surgical wound was still swollen it was a little less angry and painful and the weeping had calmed down a little, a sign that the antibiotics were finally starting to take effect. Recovery from this point finally began to get easier and I could use my time and energy to do more productive, creative things rather than linger in bed trying to hold on to my sanity by binge watching subscriptions, and even those I could begin to enjoy more than cling onto for distraction from dead, anxious hours.
From this post I am no longer writing as a Cancer sufferer, a victim. I am writing as a Survivor of Cancer, and embarking on a new purpose to record and share in my words – to give my body and the people who saved it the thank you it and they deserve. To turn around 30 years of Damage that has claimed every which part of me there was to claim.
This was not how my story ended, as I had so hopelessly believed. My story as a victim came to a close and my story as a Survivor, as an Ostomate – as The Gothstomate – began.
Cancer, you won the battle but lost the War. It was a fight to the death, but I chose not to let my opponent win. I chose life despite everything you threw at me. I know you might one day choose a different battlefield, but for now I have reclaimed from you what is mine.
The Gothstomate 