When I was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer, the first thing I did was ask my friend and fellow sufferer, Caroline, for advice.
Two years after her diagnosis, she was on the other side, healed, positive and thriving. She wanted everything she had.
In addition to being brutally honest about the toll the treatment would take on my body, she told me that the kindness and generosity of some of my friends would move me to tears. She was right.
He also said that I would be surprised and angry at those who disappeared into a black hole. She also made a lot of money from it. A friend she had recently supported through an employment tribunal wrote me a long email, complete with bullet points, detailing all the reasons why she was going to have to “step away from our friendship”.
There was a small group of women who formed cliques, turned their illness into a competition, and made you feel judged for the decisions you made during treatment, writes the anonymous contributor.
The only thing Caroline said I was skeptical about was when she warned me to “be careful with the competitive cancer group.” According to her, there was a small group of women who formed cliques, turning their illness into a competition and making you feel judged for the decisions you make during treatment.
It seemed very unlikely to me; Surely we would be a group of sisters united in our support of each other as we fight this terrible disease? But it turns out she was right about that too.
My cancer was a type called “triple negative.” A less common and particularly aggressive strain, triple negative means that, unlike most breast cancers, it does not have receptors for estrogen, progesterone or the HER2 protein, making it particularly difficult to treat.
Little did I know that my nasty cancer would earn me additional cool points among some of the competitive anti-cancer cliques.
Shortly after my diagnosis, I joined a local breast cancer support group near my home in west London and met some incredibly inspiring women, with three in particular becoming a true blessing in my darkest moments. dark I’m still good friends with two of them. One, unfortunately, is no longer with us.
Among my friends from the cancer club was Adele. Her cancer was not aggressive, it had not spread to her lymph nodes, and her oncologist was confident she could treat it with a minor lumpectomy and without chemotherapy.
When Adele stopped coming to our weekly meetings, I called her to see if she was okay. She said she had decided to drop out because a handful of other women had made her feel unwelcome. It turned out that instead of being happy that her cancer wasn’t as bad as some of ours, they became resentful and suggested that she shouldn’t be in the group.
When I brought this up at our next meeting, one of Adele’s detractors doubled down and said, “It’s like going to a brain tumor support group with a headache.”
I must emphasize that the vast majority of the women I met were fantastic. But a small, tough core of cancer “mean girls” often upsets the balance.
Most of us were being treated at the same west London hospital, which also had a private wing attached. Talking about which oncologist we were with was a big topic. One particularly attractive consultant we had nicknamed Dr. Adonis was the oncologist everyone wanted, and not just because he was easy on the eyes.
He was helpful, understanding and answered emails and took phone calls outside of appointment hours. Receiving treatment on the NHS, I was lucky enough to be one of their patients, much to the fury of a member of the group who had been unable to secure their services privately.
‘How did you get it for free?’ she demanded.
When he later found out that I work in television production, he insisted that I should have promised him a job in television.
Having one of the deadliest types of cancer meant that, in their eyes, I had earned my place at meetings, but that didn’t stop them from digging into other things.
I’m divorced with no kids, and two different women told me that cancer was much “easier” for me because I didn’t have to give bad news to the kids or try to keep a household running throughout treatment.
No; It just meant that I had to work feeling like the living dead, because I had no one else to support me. It meant I often suffered alone because I felt too upset to ask my friends to help me with everyday things like shopping, cleaning or gardening.
After attending a few group meetings, it became clear that we were divided into two very different groups. There were the purists, those who saw their cancer as a wake-up call to reform their lives. They ate organically, were obsessed with juicing, avoided all chemicals in their beauty products, and practiced yoga and meditation.
Then there were the rest of us. They weren’t very big fans to begin with, we considered it bad luck to have cancer, and we’d be damned if we were going to make ourselves even more miserable by giving up wine and pizza.
Things came to a head during a group meal. We drinkers could feel the eyes of the purists boring into us every time we ordered another bottle of plonk. Finally, one of them spoke up and said that she thought we were being “disrespectful” to our doctors by drinking alcohol when it was known to be a contributing factor to breast cancer. If we’d been drinking like teenagers at Freshers’ Week, she might have been right, but we’re talking about a few glasses of chilled prosecco.
Nor was it just the local group where I found judgment.
My doctors decided they wanted to shrink my tumor with chemotherapy before surgery, and in hopes of keeping my hair as long as possible, I opted to wear a cold cap to prevent hair loss.
In my second chemotherapy session I found myself sitting next to a bald patient. We exchanged some polite small talk before she asked me why she was wearing the cap. I told him that my hair was my best feature and that I would like to try to keep it.
“Wow, that didn’t even occur to me, I just want to live,” he replied.
I wasn’t being overly sensitive; She clearly thought I was being vain for worrying about my appearance while I was ravaged by a deadly illness.
I told him I wanted to live too (I wouldn’t be sitting in that damn chair with chemo coursing through my veins if I didn’t!) but that if I could survive with a full head of hair, that would be a plus. Then I put on my headphones and ignored her.
During the course of my treatment I noticed that some women wore the side effects of cancer with pride, almost like a badge of honor. No wigs or microbladed eyebrows. Absolutely your choice, of course. However, a handful seemed to look down on those of us who don’t act the same way, those of us who raid the wig department at Selfridges and pay fortunes to get our eyebrows tattooed.
Tests revealed that I did not carry breast cancer genes 1 or 2, meaning I did not need to undergo a preventive double mastectomy. In fact, Dr. Adonis was so pleased with the way nuclear chemotherapy had shrunk the tumor that he said he did not have to go ahead with the originally proposed unilateral mastectomy unless he wanted to.
Instead, I could save my cancer-affected breast by removing my shrunken tumor and filling the remaining space with fat from my abdomen.
Four years later, I am cancer-free, happy and healthy, and my fury over the competitive fight against cancer has become a source of amusement, survivor writes (file photo)
Maintain my breasts and lose some belly fat? Bright! Or so I thought.
‘Why are you doing that?’ asked a horrified chemotherapy patient who had the same type of cancer as me.
‘You know that our cancer is the one that comes back, right? Take them both off and then you never have to worry.
Explaining that I didn’t want to surgically remove healthy body parts seemed obvious to me. But again, another woman judged me for making a decision she wouldn’t have made.
A similar attitude I encountered with two of the “purists”. They had undergone mastectomies and rejected reconstruction, and looked stony when others joked that they were going to ask their surgeon to give them Dolly Parton-like proportions.
Four years later, I am cancer-free, happy and healthy, and my fury over competitive cancer racing has become a source of amusement.
I’ve encountered competitive women and cliques at school, college, work, and even at the gym… but I never imagined I’d encounter them in a cancer support group!
The names have been changed.