Aug 16 2019

I wasn’t going to write about something so private for so many reasons, but then I realised that all this online guff has ever been about is our personal ride anyway, so why not? This blog has been a sporadic, creative exercise in memory-making, primarily for my amusement, but also so that we could look back in one place and remember the good stuff. The bonus is that over the past ten years we’ve been able to share where we are at with our family and friends no matter how distant they are. So here goes with a complete public overshare.

We had no bloody idea where the winds would really take us, or for how long when we first set off from Brisbane to live in Argentina almost a decade ago. All I know now is that life has always felt wildly unpredictable and best approached with a sense of open uncertainty and cautious surrender.

While I’ve been working in the Cancer Services Team for almost two years as a Hospital Social Worker, nothing could actually make me any more prepared than anyone else while I waited anxiously for results of a recent biopsy. A bit of a weird mole-ish type lump on my arm that had been there a while was checked routinely at the skin cancer clinic, and this time the Doctor thought it might be worth taking a chunk out to see what was up.

Fast forward a few sleepless weeks and I am diagnosed with some rare, weird-arse, pleomorphic dermal sarcoma, or soft tissue cancer. Not a skin cancer at all. I hear the word aggressive. I hear: We don’t know much about this one, it’s a bit special – but I know it’s not in a good way. I understand the language, I know all of the worst-case scenarios immediately, all leading me to oscillate wildly between inappropriate tumour jokes in an Arnie accent and sheer panic. All of the fears and worries I had listened to from patients over the past two years were suddenly un-welcomingly relatable, but at the same time eerily comforting.

But what a perfect time to get cancer? Seriously, how fortunate am I to be diagnosed when I am finally working in a role where I am surrounded by medical experts and a solid team of exceptionally compassionate social workers. I am humbled daily through my work by the incredible resilience, humility and selflessness of people dealing with advanced cancer, who are sometimes given only short months to live at the point of diagnosis. Of course, not everyone handles a diagnosis with calm bravado, plenty of people absolutely, and rightly so, lose their shit (the side I was leaning drastically to – at first).

If I am honest though, I often speak to people and think: There is no way I could ever be as strong as you, or Thank God that’s not me! But somehow, now it is me (kind of), and like all of us, I have to deal. Best advice, hands down from my Dad, was that “we all have to face our own illnesses and death at some time – you are ready for this, no matter what happens, hold you’re head up high and treat everyone with kindness”.

And so it is, about a week since surgeons sliced a huge chunk out of my upper arm that I am officially cancer-free! I won’t be stepping out in an off-the-shoulder number any day soon, but I’ve had all the scans to rule out metastatic disease and I am not needing any additional treatment. Woohoo!

The negative flip side is that I’m gaining a sense of that looming shadow I’ve heard about, that rational fear that there might be a recurrence of disease popping up somewhere else in my body before too long. It may be somewhere that can’t be so easily eradicated under anaesthetic and why I’ll need scans every few months for the next couple of years.

It’s not lost on me that the original tone of our blog was to ‘squeeze the most out of life’. I have never been able to imagine that I would live well into old age; a thought that always drove me to spend my money on travel like I had limited time to live, with no thought for the future. While I can honestly say that I have no regrets, the dirty bloody C-word has reminded me of just how fucking grateful I am for all the other stuff; the sitting quietly in nature, the people I love, a job that I am passionate about, and the health that I now hold even more preciously close.

The huge upside to this experience is the insight I can now bring to my work, even though I feel I have had the cheaters version of cancer without the gruelling chemo or radiation routine. I now appreciate the nausea-inducing wait for results and the physically painful thought of leaving the people you love behind. Being able to empathise differently from a limited, individual experience now feels like a gift.

All of this to say, if there is something weird going on in your body, a lump, an ache, something, anything, GO and get it checked out! Early detection means more options for a cure and even though it’s scary, sitting with the fear of something feeling not right is way more agonising than putting on your brave undies and finding out. As humans, no matter how rich or poor, or how well you have looked after yourself, how genetically blessed, we all have to appreciate that something has eventually got to give. The kicker is that you don’t have to do it alone.

This weekend Andrés and I are celebrating ten years on ‘the ride’ together and while I am not up for wildness, we are aiming to sit close to the ocean, watch the moon rise and hang on to the hope that we’ll be squeezing a bit more out of the next few years yet!

Kris

HUGE thanks to family, friends and workmates that made sure I didn’t quite technically lose my shit over the past few months. And if anyone is going through their own health rollercoaster and needs someone to talk to, please get in touch with me privately and I promise I will listen or at least try to point you in the right direction.