Ep.13: This tribe

A parcel arrived today and it contained the most exquisite picture of birches from my friend Kenris.  Kenris has the most extraordinary talent for stitching trees and making them breathe on the cloth canvas she uses.  Her art is amazing and now she’s created this beautiful, delicate and intricate stitched picture of birch trees in summer leaf just for me and I love it so much it hurts.   I keep looking at it and running my fingers over the raised relief of the bark and leaves.  I think of all the weight and significance this small picture carries and of how, no matter what the future holds, the fact that it will always contain the essence of this precise moment in my life and my shared pain with Kenris, my ‘bad boob buddy’.   Kenris told me of her own breast cancer diagnosis and treatment before Christmas and I’d been shocked and saddened by the news.  When my own diagnosis followed a few weeks later our lives aligned and the binds of our friendship immediately tightened and we gravitated towards each other to entwine our shared misfortune like the branches she captures so well. 

It’s strange, in the past I’ve wondered how I’d react if I ever heard I’d got cancer and in my mind I’d pictured myself as telling no one, locking the knowledge away inside my body and actively avoiding anyone else who was similarly afflicted.  I couldn’t imagine myself lining up to join some kind of cancer tribe, that’s not how I’d roll I’d told myself.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.   I find myself open and relaxed in sharing the fact I have cancer, I want those around me to be at ease with discussing it, asking about it, and I’ve found myself naturally gravitating towards other cancer sufferers, warriors, survivors, friends.  It’s not that I need to hear their success stories in order to believe in mine, all our stories are unique, rather it’s that only someone else who’s gone through this truly knows this.  Relief and respite sits within that shared knowing.  None of my cancer tribe will tell me ‘you’ll be fine’ or constantly share stories of people they know who’ve come through it.  My cancer tribe just know.  Know what it is to see your life flash before your eyes; know what it is to see the pain you put everyone else through; know the exquisite agony of waiting on results and the sense that you’re careering out of control; know what it’s like to wake up and silently scream your way into another day; know how fucking beautiful life is when you’re suddenly standing on the outside looking in. 

So as I wade further into this river of tests and results and grades and stages more and more I find myself holding on to this new and resilient group. Along with the brilliantly talented Kenris there’s Jane, an elegant, considered and fiercely intelligent woman half way through months of chemo to hold pancreatic cancer in check.  She texts every few days, never lingering on her own hell, always deeply concerned for mine.  Each morning I wake to messages from the eccentric Susannah, one of my oldest and best friends, who dresses like an exotic bird and has become a passionate cancer warrior and spokesperson following a prolonged spell of chemo then a recent double mastectomy in her Australian home.  Susannah sends books and insights, her approach is academic and evidence based, she drills down into cancer, demands to know it better then shares her finds.  I find the books upset me, I’m not ready to look at survival statistics and side effects of treatments but I love that she cares about me this much.  Susan, my comedian friend, has documented her own fight with invasive lobular breast cancer, a double mastectomy and then colorectal cancer, on facebook.  I admire her bold, brazen and irreverent posts and although I have no desire to document my own experiences through social media, her no bullshit, you can do this attitude speaks to me.   Susan is perhaps closest to where I would like to position myself as a cancer warrior.  Al has a rare and incurable cancer of the blood which has stolen the wilder extremes of his outdoor career but can’t steal his love of life and calm, solid, reflective approach to living while keeping his horizons close.  I turn to Al to seek answers on remaining present even when it feels like the cancer is gnawing away at the core of who I am.   There's Roy who always makes me smile with his wry Glaswegian wit but he’s also generous in sharing his wisdom following his own recent fight with cancer of the tonsils.  Its Roy that helps me keep work in perspective. And finally there’s Alison, an unwavering powerhouse of energy and positivity who relentlessly raises money for cancer charities following losing her dad and her sister before facing up to the horror of her own recent breast cancer diagnosis. 

None of these people are new in my life but before this point in time I’d never brought them together.  Suddenly I’m non-plussed by just how many people close to me are going through their own cancer battles.  Why didn’t I notice this before now?  It feels like when you’re pregnant and suddenly everywhere you look is another pregnant woman, now everywhere I look a see this fucking cunt of a disease.  And while I hate the brutality of those inelegant words on the page I can’t find a more fitting description.  All these precious, intelligent, caring, giving, talented, important people are being eaten up by cancer and the thought makes me flinch back with anger.  Because even if you’re cancer clear you are never clear of cancer’s scars on your body and mind.  ‘It never goes away’, Roy shares, ‘you’re changed forever’.   And my reaching out to this new tribe is as much my want to wrap them up in love and protect them from some of the pain I now know cancer inflicts as it is to have them sooth me.  I want to lick their wounds because only now can I begin to understand what they’ve been living with.

My tribe line up silently alongside me in the darker moments.  Kenris links arms with me as I face another trip to hospital and I feel her there, holding me up when my legs buckle.  And a part of me wonders how long this comradeship will remain.  How long will we remain bound by this cancerous connection or will we each in turn drift away from this disease and each other?  Will it ever recede enough into the background to allow us to forget for a while.  I can’t decide whether I do or don’t want it to, at the moment I need my tribe too much to consider life without them alongside.