MY HEALTH EXPERIENCE:Cancer was diagnosed after MARIE RECKfound a lump in her breast
I HAD a life plan. I’m a neat freak and a fitness fanatic. I’ve worked in a gym for years and I like my body symmetrical. My life plan changed the day I was told I would have to have treatment for breast cancer. Me, fit freak, Marie, who never sat down for a moment in her life, who had never been sick a day in her life, who had a degree in super high heels . . . here I was, ill. Sick with cancer.
I found a lump in my breast in March last year and I went to a family planning clinic. I was told it was nothing to worry about, but I was referred onto the breast clinic in Tallaght Hospital. I waited two months for my appointment. I wasn’t too worried; lots of young women have lumps and they turn out to be benign. I was about to go on holiday.
“Have you got holiday insurance?” they asked me.
“Why,” I wanted to know, “is it cancer?”
“Could be,” I was told. “It’s 50:50, the glass is half full.” The doctor tried to reassure me.
I went on holiday, but spent most of my time crying my eyes out. Why me? How can all those people be so happy on their holidays and my life is falling apart. The world had stopped for me. I didn’t know then the journey I would go on for the next year.
I came home and had the biopsy, then waited a week for the results. The fear and dread and horrible anxiety left me a wreck. I couldn’t sleep, eat and yet I was trying to get on with things as normal, to put one foot in front of the other. I hated to think of my poor mam and dad worrying about me.
The doctor sat me down and told me I needed a lumpectomy and lymph nodes removed. It was a grade 2 tumour on my left breast. I went home, sat in the garden and cried with all my family around me. I’m a twin – they say people come into this world alone, but I hadn’t, I’d never been alone. My twin lives down the road from me, but I felt so, so alone in this.
When I went to hospital for my operation, I burst into tears when I saw my name over my bed. This was too much reality, I was no longer in control and had to let the doctors and nurses take over my life. I didn’t want to bond with the hospital environment, I wanted to be operated on and then get out. Fast. I hadn’t felt sick till these people told me I was.
When I came out of the operation I was very positive – I had my prayer, Angel cards, healing crystals and my family and good friends. It’s gone, I was told. Twenty-one lymph nodes had been removed and my consultant was sure she had removed all the cancer.
I was discharged and went to get my hair done every day as I knew I’d soon lose it.
Then came worse. My test results showed they would have to remove the entire breast. All faith went out the window. I will never get too cocky over anything again.
I prepared myself for more hospital stuff. There is a lot of negative energy in hospitals and I decided I wouldn’t soak it up. So I went walking, up and down the corridors. Now I walk outdoors in the green gym, outside in the fresh air up the mountains near where I live. I started praying again. I could get busy dying or get busy living.
After my second operation my twin brother brought me in DVDs: Fawlty Towers, Little House on the Prairie, anything to put a smile to my face, but I just cried. The worst was when my mam came in and saw her previously active daughter back to being a child in that bed.
When they removed my breast I felt they had taken away my womanhood, my self-image crumbled. Visitors would sit around me – it’s amazing some people lack emotional intelligence and they would talk over my head about chemo and radiation. But I was like a newborn, taking baby steps. They didn’t understand how delicate I was.
I got discharged and tried to move on. You go inside and look at yourself. Cancer strips you of your previous existence.
I started my chemotherapy treatment. My best friend Patricia called around and I handed her the shaver and said, “Go for it”. I had done my crying by then. She came with me for the wig fitting and we called her Joy as I was determined to rediscover the happiness in my life. Joy would bring it back.
I had been addicted to being busy and now I found other things. I found yoga and t’ai chi, meditation.
One day I was looking at Angel Cards and the study card popped out. I decided to learn a new way of life. I learned a four-step plan in Grove Health Spa, Co Cork – juicing, pure water, power foods and safe toiletries. I have discovered new ways of eating and how to relax.
In all I had six cycles of chemo. My twin brother’s wife came with me. We brought laughter and light into the chemo ward. People wanted to sit near the “Glamour Hammers”, me tottering in on platform heels. Joy came too. I sometimes got frightened with other people’s pain, but self-hypnosis brought me through.
Then I had radium in St Luke’s, 28 days in a row. It’s daunting looking at beanies and bandanas. I started knitting and knit little egg cosies for fellow passengers on this journey. It created laughter and chat and took our minds off radium. I got to know people’s stories and shared mine. Sharing the experience helps.
Between the treatments I went to food seminars and cooking lessons, wellbeing for life, anatomy, physiology. I wanted to take my power back. I removed all toxins from my life, chemicals and toxic people, people who brought me down.
I walk every day in the fresh air – oxygen kills cancer, sugar feeds it. Sugar is poison for people. I start the day with a shot of wheatgrass from my juicer and am learning to sprout my own seeds.
When my new hair grew again, I got Patricia to shave it off. It was full of chemo chemicals and I want to be free of them. Now my hair is growing back again.
The day I finished I found a little feather. I believe the hardest work is behind me. I want to learn more, then I want to work at helping others survive this.
In conversation with Ailish Connelly
