October to November 2024
The warmth of the October sunshine beating down as I walked down a wide street in Barcelona much warmer than an English summer.
I was excited to be going to the patient experience colloquium to present Seth’s story and some of the professional work that I’d done around storytelling in an NHS England I had a wonderful few days and returned home to a dark damp autumn in the UK.
On my first night back, I went to collect my wonderful little dog Gertie from her stepfamily with whom she had stayed. When we got home, I settled down on the sofa with a cup of tea, and she proceeded to do fast zoomies around the living room. A sign that she was incredibly happy to be back and on one of her laps of the living room she launched towards me and landed heavily squarely and strongly on my chest so much so that she took my breath away.
Later that evening did feel quite bruised and battered by her zealous over enthusiasm for life and over the next week I was really sore across my sternum.
I thought I could feel a ridge on my right-hand side up towards my clavicle and I thought it was just a hematoma from Gerties over enthusiastic welcome home.
But something nagged me it didn’t feel quite right. So, on the 1st of November I made an appointment with the GP to get it checked out he too thought it would be a hematoma but sent me to the breast clinic for a mammogram and ultrasound just to check it out.
I went there on the 8th of November they did the mammogram they sent me for an ultrasound and told me that I needed to come back for a biopsy because it was too late in the afternoon to do one on the day and that there were some calcifications in my right breast. I waited for an appointment which came through for mid-November and in the meantime, I went off to present at a conference on stories in Limerick and on my way across Ireland went to see my sister-in-law in Dublin.
I have a great visit and a lovely time visiting some childhood sites from years before when I had visited Eire as a child and teenager and I tried my very best to put the worry from my mind and think that whatever investigations came they would discover a hematoma and that it wouldn’t be anything sinister.
I returned to the UK and went for a biopsy there were a number of samples taken this was the 16th of November.
A few days later on the 20th I stood up in front of a large in person audience at Keele university Chapel and an online audience and presented Seths legacy conference. The conference culminated in months of preparation and planning covering pancreatic cancer, its biology, its challenges, the support, research with presentations from surgeon’s nurses’ dietitians, people with lived experience and researchers.
Screenshot
The day started with the most wonderful performance of Holding On a contemporary dance co-produced by people with lived experience of the death of someone from pancreatic cancer with the fabulous Rachel lines and frontline dance interpreting grief and loss through contemporary dance.
The whole of this wonderful conference I was consumed by worry of breast cancer and the thought I would be doing this work in 2026.
All the time all I could think of was” I’m sure I have breast cancer “and you might be able to imagine the worry, distress, and uncertainty for the future.
