When celebrities are affected by cancer, there is, inevitably, a lot of publicity. Today, the news headlines are filled with accounts of the death of the reality TV personality, Jade Goody at the age of 27. Since this young woman was first diagnosed with cervical cancer, vast numbers of words have been expended on her story, and this made me think of my own. I was affected by endometrial cancer; I was lucky as this is one of the cancers that shows itself relatively early and, because my diagnosis came before the cancer had spread, my outlook is good. However, much of Jade's story resonated with me. Like me, she had to fight to get anyone to recognise that something was seriously wrong. Like me, when she received her diagnosis, she wasn't afraid of death, though she desperately didn't want to leave her loved ones. Unlike me, though, she said that she wasn't angry that her cancer had been diagnosed too late to make a difference. Instead, she encouraged women of all ages to go for regular tests to detect precancerous changes in the cervix. She wasn't afraid to talk about cancer and, although she has been criticised for living out her last days publicly, she showed what cancer can do and was not embarrassed to do so; that was a brave and important step to take. Her story has led to a great increase in the number of women booking appointments, and her legacy will be that because of what happened to her, many women's lives will be saved.
I've been thinking about Jade's magnanimity in the light of her extremely late diagnosis. I can understand that when she was diagnosed, she accepted that diagnosis; I did, too. When you're told you have cancer, you really only have two choices - fall apart or accept it. Falling apart isn't a great deal of help, so why bother? At first, I wasn't angry about the difficulty I had in obtaining a diagnosis. As time has passed though, I have become increasingly upset and angry that I - and so many others - have to make a nuisance of ourselves to get anyone to listen. Maybe if I'd been told my case was terminal, I wouldn't feel this way; looking death in the face is a great way to learn patience and humility, as I found. However, now that I'm well again, I am angry, not so much for myself but for the fact that so many others will go down the same route of having to risk being branded "depressed" or "attention seeking" or to have other such epithets applied to them. I don't have the influence that fame, however fleeting, brings but it saddens me to see that even fame can't get you taken seriously when you present with symptoms that could well be cancer...
I've said it before in this blog, but it bears repeating; it's all very well and good to research the causes of and cures for cancer, but what about improving early diagnosis, too? After all, one in three of us will suffer from some form of cancer at some point in our lives - why is it so hard to make our voices heard?
I've been thinking about Jade's magnanimity in the light of her extremely late diagnosis. I can understand that when she was diagnosed, she accepted that diagnosis; I did, too. When you're told you have cancer, you really only have two choices - fall apart or accept it. Falling apart isn't a great deal of help, so why bother? At first, I wasn't angry about the difficulty I had in obtaining a diagnosis. As time has passed though, I have become increasingly upset and angry that I - and so many others - have to make a nuisance of ourselves to get anyone to listen. Maybe if I'd been told my case was terminal, I wouldn't feel this way; looking death in the face is a great way to learn patience and humility, as I found. However, now that I'm well again, I am angry, not so much for myself but for the fact that so many others will go down the same route of having to risk being branded "depressed" or "attention seeking" or to have other such epithets applied to them. I don't have the influence that fame, however fleeting, brings but it saddens me to see that even fame can't get you taken seriously when you present with symptoms that could well be cancer...
I've said it before in this blog, but it bears repeating; it's all very well and good to research the causes of and cures for cancer, but what about improving early diagnosis, too? After all, one in three of us will suffer from some form of cancer at some point in our lives - why is it so hard to make our voices heard?
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