February 4th 2021 will be a day that’s forever etched into my brain. That was the day my world came crashing down for the second time – when I was told I had cancer again. When the doctor told me, I laughed. I couldn’t believe it was happening again. Only nine years before I had been diagnosed with a sarcoma in my ankle, which initially presented as a soft tissue lump that I only discovered because my favourite boots were uncomfortable. After months of investigation, I was told it was cancer and I would be operated on within a week. While having routine check-ups to ensure my sarcoma hadn’t returned, the doctors found something completely different – it looked like I had Lymphoma this time. After undergoing biopsies, scans and blood tests it was confirmed I had stage 3b . The crazy thing is this has nothing to do with my original cancer. Just amazingly bad luck!
Being a young mum to my two beautiful kiddies, wife, sister, friend and employee, this one hit me hard. Last time I ‘just’ had surgery. This time they were saying I would need intensive chemotherapy. That terrified me. I watched my mum go through it and lose her battle with cancer and it was horrific. Chemo made it so much more of a ‘real’ cancer to me. The benefit of me being young was that they could hit me hard and fast with some really strong drugs. Benefit is the obvious cancer killing. Detriment, I was really bloody sick.
During this time, I tried to document, and I hate this term, my journey on my social media. It was actually my easy way of keeping loved ones informed. Individual text messages and calls were just too much for me, so this way I could get it over and done with quickly. I am so lucky to have that many people in my life that care about me. My brilliant sister went between her job as a nurse unit manager in one of the state’s busiest Emergency Departments during a pandemic and my personal nurse. She came to every appointment and every chemo session. We both kept saying I was going to “kick it in the dick” so naturally the hashtag followed. We posted all the chemo appointments and treatments, hospital admissions, bad days, good days, everything with #kickingitinthedick
We had a lot of loved ones following on, keeping up to date with what was happening with me and my little family. I started to notice a trend though. On days when I was honest about it being hard, I would get a lot of comments saying, “be positive”. Although this was ALWAYS said with love, there was something about it that just didn’t sit well. As the months wore on it really started to upset me more and more and after discussing it with my husband and sister, we came across the term toxic positivity. This was it! It had a name! This is extremely common in the cancer world and is, as it’s named, toxic. I can’t stress enough that everyone who did this never meant to upset me and only did so out of love, but when you’re in the absolute thick of it “being positive” doesn’t work. When I couldn’t move through the debilitating nausea, stay awake long enough for my little boy to do his home readers with me or concentrate on a conversation with my husband, positivity is not what I needed. What I needed was empathy. What I needed to hear was, “Sorry Ally, this is really shit!”
I am totally guilty of doing this as well. As a society we don’t deal well with sadness, sickness and negativity. We brush it away to make room for the sparkles. But not all days are sparkly, cancer or not. Some days are just shit and that’s okay. We shouldn’t always need to feel it’s our job to cheer someone up. While it has beautiful sentiments it’s just not realistic. I was a 37-year-old young mother to two kids trying to live through a pandemic, home learning and cancer treatments. Constant positivity was, and is, unrealistic. I found the people that didn’t fall into that trap were ones that had gone through some form of medical trauma themselves. They held my hand and cried with me, swore with me and just generally admitted how screwed up the situation was. This helped immensely.
Ally and her family. Source: Supplied
I guess my advice would be when you’re next faced with a loved one telling you something horrific, just respond with empathy. Empathy is the key, and always remember that sometimes it’s just shit, and it’s allowed to be.
