A signal of strength
When someone says to you, “You have breast cancer”, you might expect to respond with a gasp, or an influx of questions, or just general babbling to make sense of the news. For me, I was quiet and sat gently.
The visit to the doctor was a formality. I had an inkling a diagnosis was impending as the radiologist had found irregularities in my left breast, and a biopsy had been performed on a lump in my right. I was not visiting with my regular doctor, and despite the lack of a prior relationship, she was kind and laid a reassuring foundation, “I am sorry this is happening, but you will be fine. Treatments are excellent these days.” I listened to the next course of action, smiled, and said “thank you” as I left the room.
As I walked through the medical centre and out into the street, a strange, intense sense of exhilaration stirred within me. It was a surreal experience and at odds with the news I’d just received. The feeling was overwhelming; it was a frisson, a flaring, swirling ball of energy in the pit of my being. . It was as if I were holding something electric, and now I needed to figure out who to tell, without giving them a shock.
There was an obvious feeling of disbelief at play, and I didn’t feel scared. In this moment, I felt separated from everything and everyone I knew, weirdly composed and optimistic. Standing on the pavement, time stood still. I was in an obscure mental state with short, sharp dialogue coursing through me in overdrive, and slow-motion running in parallel. Who do I tell and how, and who first? What words do I use? I was suspended in these thoughts. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Do I go left or right? Do I just walk around? Who should I call? Do I go home? Do I sit for a bit? It was a lot.
My immediate go-to people were out of the picture. My partner Rowly was in Singapore working and would only be available later in the day, and my adult children were both at work, and I didn’t want to disrupt their day. I started talking out loud to myself to figure out the next move. Ok, get to the car. I started crossing the road, *BEEP*, fuck, concentrate, don’t get hit by a bus, you’ve got to deal with cancer first... cancer, fuck, WOW.
On this exceptional day, the word ‘fuck’ in all its intonations surfaced as a powerful and cathartic mechanism to process and respond to the rush of thoughts pinballing around my mind. In talking to myself, there were a lot of incredulous fucks, jolts of what-the-fuck?, fuuuuck!!, staccato fuck, fuck, fuck; and how the fuck did I get here?
For the remainder of the day, things became oddly practical. I sat for a moment in the car, hands primed on the steering wheel, letting the surge pass through me. The world carried on as normal, with traffic, people talking, grocery shopping, and dinner preparations. I was comforted by the cadence of an ordinary weekday. I was still part of life, though no longer seeing it in the same way.
Nearly two years on from that day, I return to that moment as the starting point of what I want to express in this re-cataloguing of my life. Thinking back, I am so grateful for the incredible visceral sensory activation I experienced. It was only later, after reading The XX Brain by Dr Lisa Mosconi and a chapter on stress, that I connected the vivid sense of exhilaration and tightening of anticipation with adrenaline and the primal fight or flight instinct. In those moments, my body had already begun its work, calibrating, mobilising, and preparing before my mind had time to catch up. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. This was no fear response. It was readiness.