I was in my final semester of university as a mature student when I started my first lot of chemotherapy; I had a great set of friends, people I had met through university, through the theatre group I worked with and through being a girl and having lovely girlfriends. Having done a bit of travelling, I was also lucky enough to have friends dotted around the globe; in my hometown and the various cities I’d lived since leaving there 16 years before.

My husband commented that when he spoke to people about my cancer it was like joining a secret society. Existing friends revealed a sister or niece that had also been diagnosed or introduced you to another friend who had a similar diagnosis and everyone, absolutely everyone was rooting for me. Extended family started praying for me, as did a friend’s local church (my family aren’t religious church going types but that didn’t seem to stop anybody praying), cards and gifts arrived from far and wide. And so did those friends. A friend in Sydney (who’s son is my Godson) jumped on a plane to spend my 42nd birthday with me. Family members only previously seen at weddings and funerals swapped email addresses; distant friends reconnected. We hear a lot about social networking. This was simply people who cared getting in touch.

It didn’t stop there. I had proposed doing a ‘blog’ as part of my dissertation. I was going to do it on a subject too dull to contemplate. My tutor insisted I write about my cancer. I explained it was too personal to publish on the worldwide web and besides, I didn’t know how it was going to go. She pushed, I folded and my first blog was born. I felt incredibly self-conscious and tried to keep it light and witty. My friends followed and we all supported each other. Then I started getting comments and messages from people I didn’t know; one reader’s mother had breast cancer and wouldn’t discuss it with her; my blog answered many questions her mother wouldn’t and helped this 19 year old understand. Another had lost her mother and it was now too late to ask those questions that I could answer. Other readers wrote to agree with me and support my thoughts and ideas and then this morning, @bahtocancer invited all her readers to write a guest blog on her site and now you’re reading part of my story.

Cancer, you are cruel, brutal and uncompromising; you do not discriminate. If I have learnt one thing from you it is that. Do not discriminate, enjoy everybody around you and feel the love that both friends met and friends not yet met can share.

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I like what Carolyn has to say here, and I’m pleased that she’s come over to Bah! to say it. You can follow her on Twitter here, and she blogs here.

After spending Sunday with Alan packing up the house, and yesterday travelling to my parents’ in phase one of Operation Move (Joy and Mr. Whiskers), I’ll be back with a blog post tomorrow. See you then!  And feel free to contact me about your own guest blog via email. You don’t have to be a cancer survivor to write here: you just have something interesting to say. Now the focus of the blog is shifting towards survivorship, and well….. we’ve all survived something, haven’t we?

I was asked recently for some advice by a concerned father-in-law of a newly diagnosed breast cancer survivor.  He was feeling lost and worried about what to ask or how to ask; about what to do and what not to do.  He wanted to help but didn’t want to overstep the mark or interfere.  He was even worried about asking me for my opinion as he didn’t want to worry me either!   However I was so very pleased that he did ask and hope that what I told him.

Cancer survivors take different courses of action in telling people.  Some don’t say anything.  Some only tell their immediate family/friends.  Some write blogs.  Some post updates on Facebook or twitter.  Some write letters.  Some write books.  Some say it like it is and others only ever provide an edited version.  I wrote a blog.  For me, letting others know what was going on and how I felt via a blog saved me from the many calls and retelling the news.  Getting it down on ‘paper’ also was cathartic in that I pouring out my inner most feelings, often verbalising something that I’d not yet thought through – some remained, some were deleted.  The truth is everyone is different and, as in life, we handle our response to cancer differently too.

My advice to him was to ask his daughter-in-law what she’d like but a few things that I found comfort in:

·      Help with the little jobs.

·      Turning up with a refill of milk/bread/eggs/butter without being asked and without it being a ‘big shop’.

·      Little texts/emails just to say ‘hi’.

·      Don’t expect my reaction to be the same today as it was yesterday… each day is different on a cancer journey and the way we deal with it is different also.

·      Understand when I blow you out at the last minute for no particular excuse.

·      Let me know that you’re free for a lift to the hospital or any appointments and that it’s not ‘out of your way’.

·      Know that I know I look like I’ve been crying but don’t mention it directly, just give me a little hug.

·      Offer to help with the big stuff but don’t stop me doing the bits I can.

·      Don’t be offended if I tell you to bugga off and leave me alone – it’s not personal!

Just knowing that you’re there and can be relied upon is sometimes just enough too.

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I’m delighted to welcome Anna to Bah! o cancer. You can visit her site here and follow her on Twitter here.

If you’re interested in writing a guest blog post for Bah!, please email me.

I came to read this because I’d set off on a long journey with only a few pages left to read of the book I had with me. I went into Waterstones in a panic and was overwhelmed by the choice… so I asked Twitter to recommend a fiction paperback and said I’d buy the first one suggested. It was ‘The Bridesmaid Pact’. I bought it. I read it. I really enjoyed it. It’s funny, it deals with some pretty hefty themes, and the characters are all interesting and believable and just a little bit flawed. There’s a review of it here. Julia Williams blogs here and you can follow her on Twitter here.

If you’d like this signed copy, then please leave a ”Pick me!’ comment. (If you can add a funny bridesmaid anecdote, so much the better.)

The winner of the book will be drawn at random next Saturday, when there’ll be another Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza giveaway.

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The Bah! BBB is all about providing a good read when you need one. If you’d like to donate your good, uplifting book,please email me.

(I’m quite liking this ‘book giveaway every weekend’ thing. What do you think?)

Things changed, though. The Bah! approach to cancer crystallised into something more than doggedly keeping going and trying not to lose my sense of humour. People outside my circle started to read about my dance with cancer. People got what I was about. Somewhere along the line I became, I think, a sort of patient advocate as well as a person dancing with cancer. None of this with any special effort or design on my part: I’ve just kept showing up here, and so have you, and between us, we make Bah! to cancer happen.

Blogging has become part of my life. More than that, it has reminded me of the sense of home I find in writing: me sitting here in my PJs, weaving words in a way that might make a meaning for you, is a daily delight.

Currently, around 800-1000 people visit the blog every day, with numbers steadily rising. (When I first moved to this site in January, it was 200-300.) I’m so pleased that so many of you find enough value in what I have to say to come by, and come back.

But for the last couple of months I’ve been wondering: assuming that my daily Tamoxifen tablet is the end phase of my dance with cancer, how long can I justify keeping the blog going? I don’t want it to be like ‘Moonlighting’, limping on long after Maddie and whatsisname finally got it together, which was really the only reason any of us were watching. . Yet the thought of ending the blog doesn’t sit right. (And I have yet to have a day when there isn’t a post jumping up and down in the blog bit of my brain, waving and grinning and saying ‘Pick me! Pick me!’, which has got to be a good sign, hasn’t it?)

There’s a conundrum at the heart of Bah! these days. Every day that I have nothing to say about cancer is actually what Bah! to cancer is all about. Part of what I am trying to do here is to show people going through diagnosis and treatment, or their friends or family or colleagues, that it is possible to live through a dance with cancer. Bah! has become a blog about surviving. So I am going to write, now, about survivorship. About how life is when you have danced with cancer and lived to blog the tale – because life changes, for sure. I am going to talk to people who understand survival, and people who are involved with getting to the bottom of why cancer happens, and people who try to help and support those of us dancing with cancer. I’m going to celebrate survivorship, without forgetting how, once cancer has danced into your life, it never quite dances out.

And I will keep you posted about my hair. (Forever.)

How does that sound to you?

Yesterday, she gave me a book. It’s called ‘Nine things my fabulous Mummy should do’.

The first is to eat more cherries.

(That’s me standing on a pile of individually drawn cherries, next to a tree made with thread.)

The second is to spend more summer evenings in the garden.

(I love the little pair of butterflies on a night time adventure. )

The third is to grow my hair really, really long.

(In this picture my dress is made from a square of wrapping paper and my hair is studded with blue bead hair slides.)

The fourth is to ‘paint my own rainbow even when the sky is grey’.

The fifth is to make sure my shoes are always fabulous.

(Those are my Sketchers going in the bin. Joy does not approve of Sketchers. I think we an safely assume that my Birkenstocks are already in that rubbish sack.)

The sixth is to ‘get a gold medal in blogging’.

(I’d love that. And I love that Joy’s put that on my list of things to do.)

The seventh is to go for lots of long walks along the beach.

The eighth: make sure I have a good chat with Ned when I feel down.

And finally…. to always remember that my daughter loves me.

I don’t think I’ll forget.

And we keep finding things.

Yesterday, I found a whole raft of rubber ducks lurking in box in the bedroom. They are Cancer Research ones, and are very smart. We have one in our bathroom. (Well, we have one in a box with ‘bathroom’ written on it.)

Would you like one, or do you know someone who would? Please email me with their details and I’ll post one out. To anywhere in the world. When they’re gone, they’re gone. (If you also want to make a little donation to Cancer Research too, feel free to do so, though that’s not compulsory.)

And if you’re reading this thinking ‘chuh! She hasn’t even sent my book yet’…. I did it yesterday, when I also found the big bag of things waiting to go to the post office. It’s on the way. I’ll do better with the ducks, I promise.

(And talking of books, have you had a look at the latest Bah! BBB?)

I was telling Alan about this over dinner last week. The conversation went something like:

Alan: So it’s what you wish you’d known before this all started?

Me: Basically, yes.

Alan: So…. what will you say?

Me: I don’t know, really. (thinks) I suppose….. Don’t worry. Don’t panic. Be patient.

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So there you have it: three things I wish I’d been around to tell myself when my dance with cancer began. All easier said than done, I know, but most things worth doing are.

Thinking about it, what I wish I’d done is written ‘Don’t worry. Don’t panic. Be patient.’ somewhere prominent and looked at it morning, noon and night. Douglas Adams was right when he wrote that the best thing about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was that it said ‘DON’T PANIC’ in big friendly letters on the cover. Dancing with cancer, being more time-consuming, complicated and dangerous than intergalactic space and time travel, requires just a little more advice.

Look what I did with it.

This is the first time I have brushed my hair since December 2008, when I had it cut short in preparation for chemotherapy.

Not that I’m a slattern when it comes to haircare, you understand, it’s just that up until now a quick comb through with my fingers followed by a bit of attention with straighteners and wax have done the trick.

Not any more.

And I have to tell you, brushing my hair gave me a little thrill nothing to with “natural boar bristles to stimulate and massage my scalp” – though it is feeling very stimulated and massaged, since you ask. The whole ‘having hair again’ thing, frankly, never gets old. (I look forward, in due course, to posting pictures of me swishing my hair about, and sitting on it, and plaiting it into braids that wrap four times round my head.)

There are lots of other cancer treatment side effects that have long gone. I can walk up stairs without pausing breathless after 5 (5 steps, not 5 flights), and I don’t feel obliged to do a ‘yay! I walked up stairs!’ dance at the top. I no longer get a frisson of excitement when I put my left arm effortlessly into the sleeve of a coat, although for the first few times after the PICC was removed I sure did. But the hair…. I love the hair. Every day.

Now I know all of the stuff around women and hair and femininity and identity, but I don’t think that that’s the main factor at work here. I think that hair loss is the most obvious and clear marker of cancer that we have. PICC lines, walking sticks, wheelchairs could belong to a whole string of ailments. If you assumed everyone who’s put on a bit of weight was dancing with cancer you’d be in trouble. Being tired and feeling sick often means another, happier, growth. But cancer  - or, to be accurate – cancer treatment – owns hair loss. (I know that chemotherapy isn’t the only thing that causes hair loss, but I believe that hair loss-cancer is the most frequent leap that we make.)

I think that because hair loss is such a gleaming beacon of cancer in our culture, I have come to believe, however irrationally, that the opposite is true: that hair is a sign of cancer-free wellness.

Yes, there’s a hole in that argument you could ride a unicycle through (if you could ride a unicycle). But I don’t care. I have hair to brush.

You may remember Allison’s previous novel, ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’, the story of a mother trying to do everything, with consequences that made me both laugh my mascara off and cry my mascara off. (If you haven’t read it, you really should. It’s brilliant. You can buy it here.) This time Allison is writing about being a teenage fan of a pop star – in this case, David Cassidy. There’s a review of the book here. You can follow Allison on Twitter here.

If you’d like this copy, please leave a comment below, telling us who your teenage crush was. In the interests of full disclosure: mine was John Taylor from Duran Duran.

Those cheekbones! That hair!

The winner of the book will be drawn at random next Saturday, when there’ll be another Bah! Brilliant Book Bonanza giveaway.

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The Bah! BBB is all about providing a good read when you need one. If you’d like to donate your good, uplifting book, please email me.