The Quiet Panic Of Returning To Life After Cancer
The headlines that read: 'Princess Kate Makes Her First Appearance Since Cancer Diagnosis' was a statement, an announcement, a formality. Nine simple words signposted that what we were about to witness was like no other royal balcony sighting that we’d seen before, and prepared us for an image that would, surely, shed some light on the mysteries of late. It’s strange, and a little crass, to ready yourself into making a judgement on the severity of a stranger’s health. And yet, there society was, collectively tapping into photos and watching snippets of film, with tilted heads, in search of the answer: just how sick is Kate Middleton?
She was immaculate, as she infamously is. She smiled, she waved, she stood and she watched. She projected life in the midst of disease, leaving a tidal wave of opinions behind her. The speculation that has followed since has taken its form in – typically polarising – public exclamations of relief, confusion, suspicion and even accusation. There’s something about both the royal family and cancer that cannot escape extreme emotional reaction, so it’s unsurprising that the marriage of the two has evoked such depths of feeling. As Kate emerged from a period of critical privacy, a picture was painted and pinned up for all to interpret – not only for herself, but for other sickness survivors stepping over the line into ‘normality’, too.
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At one time, long ago, that same line lay before me. The first punch of cancer struck my neck, lungs and stomach as a teenager, and a diagnosis of Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma Disease quickly followed. Nothing can prepare you for such words, and no one but the hospital corridors witnessed the deep grief in the sobs that me and my mother briefly burst out after they were declared that day. When you are deteriorating, there’s no time to dwell, and the fight ensues with very little pause. You are immediately at the mercy of doctors, operations and chemotherapy in a concoction of appointments that suffocates you almost as violently as the illness itself – within the whirlwind of cancer, it’s impossible to decipher what’s more exhausting: dying or trying not to.
As Kate recently said 'there are good days and there are bad days', and then there are the days that you dare to emerge. My balcony was a school gate, which I walked towards with a tightness of chest and an out-of-body surreality (a feeling that had become a faithful, yet unwelcome, companion over the months). As I came into contact with others, my cheeks grew hotter, their eyes grew wider and a dance of painfully awkward interactions began. I’ve never been asked so many questions without words. A sea of frowns, gasps, teary eyes and forced smiles interrogated my frail existence as my peers joined the dots on my unexplained absence – and I began to drown. The response from most was tender, of course, with huge amounts of care and concern, but no amount of kindness could mask the truth that in each pair of eyes that I caught that afternoon, I saw their fear and they saw my death.
One of the hardest things about cancer is how visible it can make you. There’s no corners to hide in when you step out gauntly, with little colour in your face and no hair on your head. As I continued to re-enter everyday spaces, I observed how my presence evoked waves of anxiety, associations and dread in those around me. If the first battle is beating cancer, the second is not becoming it. This feeling of a subverted identity is one that has endured the longest, and most intensely, as I have wrestled with the impact of life after cancer, and then life after that. Seventeen years after I was given the all-clear, I still wake each morning with the lies of an aftermath to rebuke: I am strong, I am well, I am deserving of joy and I am not cancer.
There is an unusual ambiguity to this disease. One word holds hundreds of expressions of location, seriousness and stages in its hands. At the sound of ‘cancer’, catastrophising is provoked and the worst is assumed – and yet, in line with its unruly persona – it cannot be neatly defined. Just as no two people are the same, experiences of cancer cannot and should not ever be compared, and the same applies when one is integrating themself back into the ‘real world’. Like the rest of us, I don’t know the ins and outs of Kate Middleton’s cancer, I don’t know the details of her diagnosis or the extent of the treatment she’s already been through. However, what I do know, is that opening the door when you’ve been shut away in the darkness of cancer elicits a quiet panic so visceral that your mind, body and soul trembles in a way that you didn’t know was possible. There may be smiles, waves and nods of assurance, but under the surface of appearances, disconcertment shakes the survivor – princess, or not.
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