“Nothing, Compared to Cancer”
By: Jenni Elbourne
Tags: Mental Health, Lockdown, Personal, Cancer

I’ll never say that I’m glad I had cancer, but the momentum that I got from a personal crisis is what’s carrying me through these globally tough times. So many others have nothing.

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

“It’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through” is a sentence I’ve heard countless times of late. From friends whose family disagreements have been compounded by Covid-19, or who’ve been unable to introduce their new-born to his grandparents, or “just” been furloughed and stuck at home for months on end. But also from people whose mental health has hit rock bottom; who’ve lost their hard-won independence and feel forgotten by the government; who’ve been made redundant because the profession they trained hard for is now deemed ‘unviable.’

‘What I’ve been through’, as followers of my personal blog will know, is a rather extreme ‘life detour’ involving a surprise diagnosis of leukaemia, five months of chemo and a stem cell transplant at the height of the pandemic — undoubtedly a more dramatic 12 months than I had planned. Recovering against the backdrop of Covid-19, I’ve sometimes felt like there should be a full orchestral movie soundtrack accompanying every step I take. But as the global crisis drags on, and my physical health improves, I’m beginning to feel like the music in my head is keeping me going, and that many others are facing hard times right now without the momentum that you get when the universe decides to snatch your life back from the edge of the abyss.

From the moment I was diagnosed with leukaemia, I promised myself I would never look back and say I was glad it happened. To do so would feel like a betrayal of myself in that moment, and an insult to others who right now are learning how it feels to be told you have cancer. It feels bad, and scary, and unfair — because it is all of those things. This hasn’t changed, and I’m lucky that nobody ever tried to force me to be more positive or to actively seek out silver linings. But, weirdly enough, it’s that recognition of the legitimacy of my experience, which, in comparison to the many other crises people are facing right now, is itself the silver lining.

The truth is, nobody really knows what I’ve been through, but people build up an idea based on general knowledge, and the things that I tell them. While some popular ideas about cancer are outdated or overgeneralised, there are also many good sources of information, and it’s well understood that treatment can have an all-encompassing physical and psychological effect. This is also reflected in the available support services. Over the last 12 months I’ve had access to a Clinical Nurse Specialist, a counsellor, a benefits advisor, a dietician, physio, a free online exercise programme and some excellent online support groups. In addition to a brilliant network of family and friends, since joining the ‘cancer club’ I’ve felt like I have a safety net of experts around me, ready to catch me whichever way I fall.

Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash

This safety net is rare and precious, and many people in difficult situations right now simply don’t have one. Hospital appointments, which were absolutely terrifying back in April, have become a thing that I look forward to because they get me out of the house and allow me to talk face to face with people I don’t live with (the fact they may be sticking a needle in my arm at the time is a small price to pay). Those who’ve been shielding without the need for such check-ups, or on behalf of a vulnerable relative, have nothing to break up their week. As the UK enters its second national lockdown, people facing financial hardship and career crises find themselves stuck at home wondering how much longer this perpetual inertia can go on for. When friends tell me their problems are ‘nothing’ compared to mine, I wonder if nothingness itself might be the worst problem of all.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that a life does not need to be physically threatened for a problem to cause real hardship. Lives are for living, and anything that stands in our way of feeling able to do that need not be something that we apologise for talking about. Personal wellbeing isn’t a game of Top Trumps, and one person’s ‘doing ok’ can be another person’s ‘seriously struggling.’ As we enter this next phase of a year that’s been unkind to so many, check up on your friends; the ones who’ve been through the worst of it, and the ones who’ve been through ‘nothing’ of the sort.