Meet-up

Yesterday I had my first meet-up with women from a group I've joined on facebook. I've joined a couple of secret groups: one is only for women under the age of 45, as it's not as common for younger women to be diagnosed and the group creates a safe space in which to ask advice, discuss experiences and sometimes generally just rant, with other young women going through the same thing. It helps me feel less alone in experiencing this, and it has really helped with knowledge of what's to come, and understanding the lingo and medical jargon. The other group is a slightly more academic group, set up as a space in which to build resilience among women who have had a breast cancer diagnosis. This group has no age limit and has many members who are much further down the track in their cancer journey. It's also incredibly supportive, the women share their knowledge, strength and experience, and there is a Sunday evening discussion each week where we all get together online and share our thoughts on a particular pre-determined topic. Essentially we are being used as research subjects for an academic institution, who take our contributions and develop theories and resilience frameworks from them, but if I'm going to be a lab rat, this is a lab I'm quite happy to be in, thank you!

Fifteen of us had lunch in a restaurant on the South Bank yesterday, and it was fabulous to meet some of these amazing women who are helping me so much at the moment. I was the youngest person there, and some of the women were as much as 15 years along the road from active treatment, but it was such a wonderful afternoon spent in the company of some incredible people. We each had to get up and switch places after each course (yes, we treated ourselves to three courses, thank goodness my appetite has returned!), so I got to properly meet everyone there. It's quite an interesting concept: meeting a bunch of women with whom you potentially have nothing in common other than a cancer diagnosis, but I felt so grateful to have the opportunity to meet these women, whose paths I would never have crossed otherwise. There was much hilarity and laughter, lots of painful sharing, some gruesome tales, and plenty of great advice. None of these women asked for, or expected to be diagnosed with, breast cancer. But they all rolled their sleeves up and got on with it, and to spend time with people who have come out the other side, and are still getting on with life, was incredibly inspirational for me. Everyone's experience is different, both physically and psychologically, and there's no 'right' or 'wrong' way of going through this, but I took so many things away with me from the day which I'm sure will come back to me over the coming months and help get me through. They were all very impressed that I had made it out during chemo -- I was the only one there going through active treatment. I met a couple of ladies who had also been treated at St Bart's, which was lovely, and they gave me some good advice for things to do in the area between appointments. My favourite advice was a good list of charities who give out free stuff, from make-up to holidays: heck, I may as well get something out of this crappy situation!

While most of the women were sporting lovely new hairdos and talking about how they were getting on with their lives, a couple of them were going through their second or even third diagnosis. Living with secondary (metastatic) breast cancer, where the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, and cannot be cured, is a very different prognosis to primary breast cancer, which I have. The care available is also very different, which many of the women campaign about in an attempt to improve. But still, there lingered an incredible inner strength and resilience that was just as powerful to witness. I'm under no illusion, this may be me some day, and I hope if it is, that I respond with grace and determination, as these women have. And I look forward to a day in the future when I can go along to one of these lunches and be an inspiration to a woman much younger than I, who is going through the first few weeks of her journey.