Lump: a story about breast cancer.
3.5 years ago, when I first got diagnosed with breast cancer my impulse was to try and pin down some of the emotional turmoil I was going through. I ended up reaching for a pen (ok a keyboard) and I started to write. Once I started, I couldn’t stop, and the words poured out. Angry, scared, shocked, confused but most of all I guess, they were honest. I just wanted to talk to myself and my partner, David, about the blunt reality of what that cancer diagnosis felt like from the inside. Many, many thousands of words later we discussed making the private more public in the hope that it might help others so, quietly, somewhat covertly, I put it up as a blog, kind of hoping it would never be found. It was found and the comments from its many readers found a mixed response in me. I was delighted that my words seemed to hit the mark for so many people whilst at the same time being profoundly sad that so many others were going through similar emotional turbulence for whatever reason in their lives. I may not have intentionally written for anyone else, but it seemed I had anyway.
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Now, 2 years down the line, we’ve decided to turn the blog into a podcast. Writing for the spoken word has always been my natural habitat so it does seem the obvious next step but how would it feel to step back in time, not just to re-read all those emotional outpourings but actually give them a voice, my voice? Would it open up too many wounds? It has been emotional and sad but at the same time, there’s nothing quite like stepping into your old footprints to realise just how far you’ve walked since you made them. I was a bit anxious about the recordings too, concerned how I’d cope with doing them on my own or if I’d need a hand to hold. In the end I decided to just go it alone and in practise it hasn’t perhaps been quite as bad as I thought it might, although with hindsight it would have been a kindness to Dave and Johnny at The Music Shed studios in Inverness to actually tell them what I was going to be talking about before we started recording! Over the course of several hours together and many shared tears, they’ve become firm friends and I’ve now added them to the legion of amazing people cancer has brought me into contact with.
Among them, although our friendship started before cancer formed an unfortunate overlap between us, is Ali McRitchie, Salon Director of The Head Gardener in Inverness. When we took a gentle walk together, discussing Ali’s own recent cancer recovery and I told her of our plan to create LUMP, a podcast from the blog, she immediately offered her sponsorship and support. With Ali on board suddenly LUMP felt real and most importantly, the right thing to do. I’d been nervous of our teaming up with a sponsor, concerned about finding the right fit for something at times so dark and difficult but Ali ‘gets’ every word I’ve written. The ethos at the salon is one which directly aligns with my own and Ali’s relentless fundraising and support for cancer charities, married with her first-hand knowledge of the challenges of diagnosis, felt like the perfect fit.
So now, all that’s left to do is to launch LUMP and push it out into the big wide world. The plan is to have the first 4 episodes drop on Friday 11th August then we’ll publish a fresh episode every Friday morning across the year ahead. The accompanying original blog will be re-published here. While I’ve been itching to noodle with them, on the most part I’ve stayed true to the original words I chose. They were how I felt at the time, so I’ve tried to stay true. That also means what you’ll hear and read is unapologetically sweary.
So, please do subscribe, comment, rate it, review it and share it with anyone and everyone who you know who has ever been touched by cancer.
Pen June 2023 x
PEN’S NOTES ON EVERY EPISODE HERE ↓
Ep.52: And finally
I’m sitting at the breakfast bar in The Byre kitchen. This is where I perch most days to work, the heart of our home. In daylight I can look across to the rusty red of Aldourie Castle the other side of my beloved loch (she’s become my loch over the course of the past year).
Ep.51: On reflection
Today I have my first year check up since my op. I’ll go to the hospital, have a mammogram on my good breast and my onconoplastic surgeon will look at my reconstruction and assess what more can be done. Easy.
Ep.50: Bruised
In a landscape that offers up no end of breathtaking days today is a jewel in the crown. I walk down to the loch side, standing to squint as the sunlight catches on the snow-covered stones lining the shore.
Ep.49: This is my church
This morning the air is so cold each breath feels thick on my tongue and catches the back of my throat as we pick our way along the icy track to the shore. We pause to admire the perfect paw prints of a badger in the crisp snow.
Ep.48: F**k normal
This week I’ve been snagged by the word ‘normal’, kind of a dull, grey, word at best. Normal doesn’t sound like she’d stay out all night, doing drugs and shagging random strangers, no, Normal sounds more like she'd curl up with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit (probably a custard cream).
Ep.46: Bored with this now
I’ve been quiet for a few weeks. Struggling to write. Until this point the words have just poured out but just now, I can't quite work out how to wrestle what I need to say onto the page, and I suspect the problem is this.
Ep.45: Underwired
I need to throw away my old bras. I’ve known this for some time but maybe that turn of the year, spring clean thing, is kicking in. It suddenly feels pressing. But it’s a spikey, gnarly, tear stain of a decision.
Ep.44: Snow globe
B was beyond mortified as we all slipped off our shoes but David is particularly persuasive when he’s being silly so there was no way either B or me were going to escape being caught up in this festive daftness.
Ep.43: The art of gingerbread
A year ago today I found the lump in my left breast. The 14th December 2019. Strange how your world can spin on one split second, a fraction of a point in time. One moment I was one person, the next, another. Just like that.
Ep.42: A uniform to conform
I’m nervous about getting the bus on my own, I never have before, there’s lots to trip me up, single me out. Standing on the pavement outside our house I’m exposed, vulnerable.
Ep.40: Jealous
I lie back on the bedroom floor, covering my face with my hands. I’m wearing a tatty old pair of thermal cycling tights, one bright pink sports sock and a crop top. Tears leak out from round my fingers, eventually the frustration is too much and I repeatedly thump the floor with my fists, surprised at the size of the sound.
Ep.39: Chosen
There’s a rough track that leads above our house and the others on the croft, it weaves up through scrubby gorse and rubble from the new build, takes you besides the burn, over a single remaining strand of a wire fence and into thick pine forest.
Ep.38: I want to be known
Hearing Father Roddy Johnston’s voice always makes me smile and a call from him, out of the blue, to wish me well, feels as warming as a dram. Every conversation with Roddy is chewy, thick with thought, rich and rewarding. I can’t fail but come away digesting everything we’ve talked about.
Ep.37: What do you do?
10 days after my BBC exit my good friend Deirdre, another ex-BBC radio producer, comes to visit. On an achingly perfect late autumn day we clamber up the hill above The Byre and pick our way through the woods to badgerlands where we sit amongst amber leaves and rusty bracken to gaze at the loch, comparing notes.
Ep.36 Exit
It’s weeks since I’ve swum in the loch, the weather has been wild and the water choppy and uninviting, I seem to have lost my appetite for it. The grey slide towards Highland winter echos my slide towards redundancy but I’ve promised myself this slow motion tumble will stop as soon as I stop work, I promise myself on the day after I leave the BBC, regardless of the weather, I will climb into my wetsuit and wander back down the track to the shore and swim. Re-set.
Ep.35 Back in the saddle
It’s an early, soft, pale grey Saturday when we raise the e-bike on top of the car alongside David’s road bike for the short drive to Drumnadrochit from where we’ve marked a flattish route – well, flat but for one pretty major hill but you can’t really live in the Highlands and avoid hills, they come with the territory.
Ep.34: Half life
I’m standing at a cliff edge leaning out, rocking gently backwards and forwards onto my toes, finding my balance. A salty, sharp breeze lifts my hair suddenly and a metallic taste rises up from my stomach, dry and unfamiliar, a small hard knot of fear, like a marble, pushes at the underside of my tongue.