Kim’s Story
In October last year, Kim shared some words about her personal journey with breast cancer on Facebook. Her heartfelt words highlighted the significance of breast cancer awareness and resonated deeply with our team at BCRC-WA.
Touched by her post, we extended an invitation to Kim to delve deeper into her experiences and share more about her journey. The following is what she sent to us.
Kim’s Story
Finding a lump while mundanely showering is one thing, anxiously shouting at your aging husband and demanding he ‘come feel this’ is darkly funny and jointly terrifying all at once.
In a remote village in Indonesia, when you know that lump isn’t right, your reality options are a simple choice. Do we leave our village home where health services are extremely limited and return to our home country today or ASAP?
Receiving a diagnosis of cancer really is life-changing, of course. And the rug really does get pulled out from under your feet. Life stops, momentum changes and voids open. But here’s the thing, freefalling into the unknown can kickstart life, change direction and open possibilities. This really is the pointy spear of our only shared commonality and finding your tribe in the Chemo Ward, Radiation Queue, Surgeons rooms and Oncology suites where that eye contact, those knowing nods and egoless chats are exactly what humans need and search for. Togetherness.
Compassion, empathy and selflessness are the comforting blankets that those amazing professionals wrap and cocoon us in.
It’s okay to be frightened and totally understandable to have anxiety. Worry and endless questions are unavoidable. This thing that has happened. This life-changing, life-stopping, life-ending thing cannot be natural, cannot be normal. But it is and you will begin a journey that will take you to places you would prefer to never revisit, meeting people who will challenge and enrich your existence and most importantly introduce you to yourself.
We are all individually unique and no one person’s reactions are the same as anyone else’s. But it’s the similarities that bind us and a bridge that joins and if we are given the chance to reach out and step forward when our instincts and nerve endings are screaming to run, then there we can find hope, support, camaraderie.
There are no right ways to do this, we have never done it before. There are no benchmarks to look for or previous experience(s) to draw upon. This really is alone time.
In that time, you will face it all and it will physically show in your face, bald head, weight gained body and reside invisibly in your emotions. The path really is for the brave, never ever forget that. It is also an opportunity, every moment, every day, for you to let those who are starting up those steps know, that it’s OK to feel, whatever they are feeling.
Accepting, adjusting, recovering, and living with, all with the reality of a future that most probably is not what you had planned is a very sobering experience. But things do realign, in many cases in oddly familiar ways with unfamiliar results. The diagnoses, treatments, side effects and resultant outcomes do bring the fragility of life into very sharp focus. No one can tell you how to deal with reality, but they can offer you a most precious gift. To just listen, to simply be there.
Humour and hope are exquisitely intertwined when faced with cancer and end-of-life possibilities. It really is ok to be terrified and to feel it all and it’s ok to continue, begin and start living while we are all dying.
I am so grateful to the incredibly skilled Dr Bindu Kunjuraman, the amazing Professor Arlene Chan and the numerous very kind and very gentle Breast Cancer Nurses and Counsellors. Thank you so much to the Breast Cancer Research Centre – WA who provided a soft and very supportive landing. We are fortunate to have such gifted healthcare professionals that are accessible through our healthcare system.
This is life ❤
Share Your Story
Are you a patient of the PBCI and would like to share your story with breast cancer as part of our Stories of Hope series on our website and Newsletter?
We love hearing our patient’s stories and sharing them with others at the very beginning of theirs. For more information on how to be involved, contact us.
