Christmas 2017. Oh Lord. I had not long finished chemo and was due to start Radiotherapy the day after boxing day. I was destroyed. I naively thought though the worst was behind me, that chemotherapy was the worth thing I would experience. I got through Christmas and started the new year with a smugness. I was invincible after all.

Christmas 2018. I was truly broken. I was a fraud. I wasn’t brave, I wasn’t strong enough to smash this and I wasn’t fighting. I was merely breathing with is completely involuntary by the way. I laughed and smiled and drank from the cup of Human Kindness. I was like Tiny Tim trying to fill everyone with joy but in reality everyone just felt immense sadness. To live is to live with cancer and that is scary.

Christmas 2019. I am healing. I would be lying if I said I have made my peace with this. I am not a liar. Life is no longer a game of Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I do not live in fight mode. Secondary Breast Cancer isn’t a fight I can win because it isn’t a fight. Cancer isn’t a fight. Cancer is a bespoke disease that learns and mutates accordingly. It perfectly corrupts and kills without rhyme or reason. It doesn’t care about gender or age. Its wild and savage and unfair. It was once unstoppable, incurable. You couldn’t live if you had cancer. Cancer is clever but we are cleverer. People can be cured, people ARE cured. Some people die but some of us live. Live with cancer. Live with strict medical routines of medicines, scans, side effects, fear, anxiety……

As they say in Star Trek ‘It’s life Jim but not as we know it’