Living with cancer is hard, but early diagnosis can make a huge difference
This #WorldCancerDay James Walsh talks about his mum’s cancer journey - and the importance of early diagnosis.
Mum was 40 — three years younger than I am now — when the optician spotted a shadow behind her eye.
It was my sister’s 18th birthday in 1996 when, after a few weeks of experiencing “dark spots” in the vision of her right eye, they went to get it checked out. My sister still recalls the sense of unreality and the fear they both felt walking back to the car afterwards on that late summer’s day. For all of us — mum, dad, my younger brother and sister — it was the beginning of nearly two decades living with cancer and all that comes with it.
And it’s the “all that comes with it” that I would like to talk about in this #WorldCancerDay blog because, once you get past the uncertainty, the fear and the horror of the new life you’re thrown into, you plough on and deal with it. You have to adapt; you have to learn about cancer treatments, different parts of the health service, how to get information, find out what the hell the quarterly MRI brain scans are showing — has it grown? Has it shrunk? What part of the brain is affected? How will mum change? What can we do to help?
It’s a relentlessly scary and frustrating time, and everyone deals with it differently.
Dad, as Dad has always done, shouldered as much of the burden as he could; putting on a brave face, a strength inherited from my tough grandad, a fostering a sense of “it will be all right” to the three of us.
I responded by burying my head in the sand, ignoring it as much as possible and focusing on university. Helping mum where I could, but not thinking too much about the quarterly scans or what they might show.
My brother and sister dealt with it in their own ways too but, however we coped individually and as a family, we all had a similar toll to pay in the end.
Repayment would begin in April 2012 when mum died and the years of stress, uncertainty, fear and grief had to be sorted out and dealt with. It’s a process which is still ongoing, though lightening for all of us with each passing year.
That’s just part of what cancer does and it’s tough.But there were also lots of good times with mum too and, you will recall, she lived nearly two decades after diagnosis. She didn’t let it beat her and — through her example — we didn’t let it beat us either. She had enough time to see all but two of her grandchildren born, to learn to ski, to continue to be the lovely, warm person she was and to show us all what strength and inner beauty in adversity really means.
“That extra time, in large part, was due to the help she got from the NHS between 1996 and 2012.”
It wasn’t all plan sailing, but I can’t emphasise enough the importance of early diagnosis, integrated support and clinical trials in the fight against cancer– and the NHS and wider healthcare system delivered. From the optician who spotted the tumour to the doctors and surgeons at the Royal Marsden who guided mum and dad through the treatment process and clinical trials, the system worked for us. Mum had an oligodendroglioma — one of the rarest brain tumours — and she was one of the first to trial the drug Temozolomide. It is very likely that she gained years of life because of this clinical trial — and these were the years that meant so much to us and provided her with an almost-perfect quality of life until very near the end.
Living with cancer is hard — there’s no sugar-coating that — but getting an early diagnosis and finding out from the NHS what options are available can make a huge and meaningful difference.
James Walsh is a Senior Communications Manager in the NHS London communications team, working on parliamentary and public affairs. A former councillor at Slough Borough Council, he was the Cabinet member for health and wellbeing in the Berkshire town between 2011–2014. He is currently a borough councillor in Guildford.
