I’m Jules and I was diagnosed with HER2 positive breast cancer in May 2014. Cancer has meant for me that life isn’t a given.
Getting that awful diagnosis and having to actually say the words to my consultants ‘it’s cancer isn’t it?’ was a sentence I never thought I’d have to say, but there it is, I said it and she replied ‘Yes, yes it is’.
Meeting your mortality face on isn’t pleasant, my heart was racing and I started to feel sick when I realised my hubby was nearly passing out next to me and I had to catch him from falling off his chair! Hold on a minute mate, what are you doing, it’s me that’s got cancer, it’s me that’s ill not you! This is what being told you have something you’ve spent your life hoping it’ll ever happen to you does to you.
My mind is racing with questions, the tears start to flow and the fear sets in. You have a 10-minute consultation in which to take all this information in, and arrange your operations and treatment and then go home.
My emotions are high and in the beginning, I felt incredibly guilty, guilty that I’d ruined our future and all our plans, not just for us but for our whole family. Guilt eventually turned to ‘why me’, I classed myself as pretty healthy, always kept myself fit. How the hell did this happen and why me when there are so many people out there who haven’t looked after themselves as well as I did and there they are walking down the street happy as larry and here I am with cancer, that was a bitter pill to swallow.
So I shook myself down (not for the first time in my life) pulled up my positive pants and said ok cancer, I’m going to meet you head-on and I’m going to beat you, you’re not having me.
So here I am six years on, loving the life I live and live it I do! I fit in as much as I can do and enjoy every minute. I feel lucky that the lump I found was only a cyst but underneath it lurked a very nasty tumour and if I hadn’t checked myself and found that cyst, goodness knows what my story would be.
Morale of my story, check your tatties.
