Staring at the Sun—My Cancer Story

When someone tells you it’s likely you have cancer I don’t think there’s much that can really prepare you for such news. Everything you’ve probably read or seen on TV, all those stories about the floor giving way, things going blurry, it not feeling real and being like a bad dream may sound cliché, but as I found out pretty quickly with cancer, all the clichés usually ring true. But there’s another side to it as well, and this is something else I learned very quickly; just like us, each cancer is different, and each of us reacts to it in a different way. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. So yes, the floor did give way and it was completely surreal to be given the news, but, and I guess this is the main reason for me wanting to tell the story of my illness; I knew something good was happening to me as well.

So if you are reading this trying to find some answers, help or just a bit of comfort, I hope it can do a bit of each. It is my story, from a roughly two and a half year period of just before, during and a year after my treatment ended. During this time, I kept a journal (sometimes regularly, other times not so much) and I’ve decided to include some excerpts from it along the way. I think they give a fairly good indication into my state of mind at the time.

Chapter One: It’s the way you tell ‘em.

In October 2015, and at the age of 36, I had left my job of ten years to study full time on the MA Fine Art course at Chelsea College of Art. I won a scholarship, got a part-time job in a bar and was ready to embark on a complete life change. I wasn’t diagnosed until the following January but what saved me was a day of extreme, rapidly increasing pain in my gut one Sunday in November. A trip to the hospital the next day and a scan showed nothing untoward, although the area was badly swollen. It was put down as something called diverticulitis, a disorder usually caused from a lack of fiber in the diet, but due to the swelling a proper examination would have to wait until it had decreased. I was told to rest and booked to come back in January.

It’s funny, but even when I first saw the doctor after that Sunday I knew what it was. Maybe you convince yourself of the worst in certain situations but I thought I knew. My doctor was on holiday, meaning his replacement, a former radiologist, sent me straight for a scan, something my usual doctor was honest enough to admit afterwards he probably wouldn’t have done.

And so January came, and by this time I wasn’t even giving a thought to it being cancer. The pain had completely subsided and I was back to what I thought was full fitness. My wife and I had spent Christmas and New Years with her family in Brazil, three weeks of sun, nature, bliss. For me now, it was just what they said it was, and this next round of checks in January after the swelling had reduced were merely a formality.

It was Monday 18th January. I’d had the camera probed into areas cameras shouldn’t be probing and was waiting on a bed for the sedatives to wear off and the results. My wife called, which was the first indication I had that it might be something more serious. Being of Latin temperament, she doesn’t hold back on emotion, and her razor sharp mind had already put two and two together; the doctor had called, she had to come to the hospital, why would they be phoning her if nothing was wrong?? Calm she was most certainly not.

The doctor told us what, in his opinion, was a malignant growth on the lining of the lower intestines. In other words, Bowel Cancer. He couldn’t be 100 percent sure and would need to see the results from a biopsy but in his opinion it looked like it was malignant. And so the clichés began—everything went weird. It felt just like information that had nothing to do with me. While I probably should have been trying to take in this news I remember just thinking how impressed I was with the way the doctor had broken it to us. While my wife was trying to hold it together for the both of us (something she spent the next two years heroically managing to do), I just kept thinking how well he had told us; with complete calm, professionalism and with empathy but also without remorse. So impressive it made me forget what he had told us.

Looking back, I think I was in shock for two days. My wife cried, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t real yet. After a couple of days of crying, she had started proactively researching online and calling people she knew who might be able to give us more information that would help us. It still was sitting on the surface for me, not really happening and by Wednesday I had slipped into a black hole. I don’t blame this on any inability to show my emotions. In fact, I cry very easily and, although I may have a more reserved English nature compared to the Brazilian side of my family, I rarely fail to show my emotions. No, this strange state of numbness I had slipped into was purely down to the situation I was possibly facing. We had just under a week to wait for the biopsy results.

Journal Entry: 18/01/15

‘I never thought I would be writing what I’m about to write when I woke up today but, as they say, such is life—I may have cancer. There’s a good chance I do have it but we won’t know for a few days at least...The truth is I’m scared. I can’t show it but I am. Maybe it’s the not knowing yet? I don’t really know what I’m feeling at the moment after that though. It’s a bit like being in limbo but you sort of expect the worst. The thing is..what’s the thing? The thing is..only time will tell. Until then, it must go on. It must always go on. To bed now, good night. One last thing—I don’t think it has sunk in yet. I don’t think it has at all.’

This story wont be a day-by-day account by any means but the first few days and weeks were the most worrying and had the biggest impact on me. A good friend of ours (and our guardian angel throughout my illness) who’d suffered with breast cancer a few years previously had told us, ‘this is the worst it will be.’ I’m not sure I had believed her at the time but she was right; mentally the first few days were by far the toughest, mainly because we didn’t know anything. Later in the story you’ll see how times seem like they get tougher, when I’m really struggling physically, but at those stages we knew more about my situation, we had all the information and were therefore more in control. It was the unknown that was the hardest thing to deal with.

I decided I needed to try and carry on as normal, go to school, try and immerse myself in my art work, for a week at least. I was preparing for a group exhibition with some of my classmates and after dropping off my work that was to be shown a friend had given me a lift to Camden, where I could walk back along the canal to home. It was a beautiful afternoon, the sun had broken through the earlier cloud and was beginning to set in front of me over the canal. It was Tuesday 19th January and the first day I really saw the sun.

Journal Entry: 21/01/15

'On Tuesday walking back from Camden along the canal I listened to "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers on repeat and couldn’t hold back the tears. It was good in an unusual, sensory way. The sun was incredible—it was like it was sharper, clearer, shining brighter. The orange light it bathed the flat in was other worldly. I know I am a sensitive man and it’s easy to get carried away with thinking things this week but walking home that day the sun hit my face at one point and I felt something I have no hope of being able to explain well enough with words. It was almost blinding, making everything a fuzzy warm orange hue and for a few seconds I felt untouchable.'

I believe, to this day, that it was a sign. That I had been shown something. ‘Seeing the light,’ ‘the meaning of life’ whatever it was, I’ve never felt anything so powerful before or since. It felt like a transcendental moment. I am not religious at all, but if I was I would probably say I saw God that day. And it was over in seconds. It probably didn’t even last seconds. I tried to get it back and a few times since when I’ve seen a strong sunset I’ve had the same feeling but it seems to be over even faster and I can never match it. Don’t worry, this isn’t going to be a story of me telling you to start worshiping the sun or anything like that, but what it did do was open my mind and my heart to try anything to cure whatever it was I had.