It Takes a Village: a Cancer Diagnosis and its Implication on the People Around Me

When you receive a diagnosis of cancer, it is not only you that receives it. There is a whole circle of people that are equally affected by the news.

This was not something I realised at the start. I was simply busy with what was going on in my body, with little to no attention for the outsiders. I shifted from not having a hyper-focus on my body to all of a sudden having all the attention going to my body; and quite abruptly. One could say I was classed as being well and the next day I was classed as being ‘sick’. There was a tumour growing inside me, which apparently had been there for a while, only now, it was diagnosed.

I first noticed this ‘effect’ on others when I received the diagnosis. The doctors were considerate to tell me whilst my sister was present. They wanted me to have someone by my side when they shared the results of the CT-scan. When they shared that I had a malignant tumour, from that moment on it was me and my body first. The rest, like the people around me, were second. It just happened automatically. As if someone closed a door from the outside world, because the door of the inside world had automatically swung open. A world I thought I knew, was now revealing itself to me differently through the tumour: there were new territories to discover and explore.

But, in truth, the person next to me equally got the news. My sister had a few tears in her eyes and was understandably also taken by the news, in her own way. She was the first to get involved in my health condition and my situation from then on. She became part of my inner team of support. From being sisters, she was now also in the role of care-supporter. A role that just fell into her lap.

And then others got involved….

Firstly, my direct next of kin; my partner and my two sisters became involved. All three of them came to the other hospital where I had arrived, after the drive in the ambulance.

Only much later, I heard from my sister who had been with me in the first hospital, what had occurred for them in those next hours. She drove her car behind the ambulance I was in. My partner, who also knew by then about the tumour and my transfer, came to the hospital. He had been working at home for that day to be able to ‘stand by’ for support. As the ‘new’ hospital was around the corner from his house he was there in a few minutes. My sister and he met in the hallway of the hospital; they practically fell into each other’s arms. In the middle of the entrance hall, they had a moment of realisation of what was the new reality: “She has a tumour in her body, and it is not okay.” They hugged, and he burst into tears. In that moment, my sister saw him no longer as ‘the partner of her sister’ but a man, expressing his inner-feelings without holding back. After this encounter they moved on to the what’s next, which was my what’s next, an emergency operation. Their what’s next was a mix of them composing themselves in a way to support me and at the same time relating to their own emotions.

When I entered the hospital room after being taken out of the ambulance, I was settled. It was as if I was propelled into the heart of a tornado, on the edge of the unknown. Time stood still. I was in the middle of something, but I was not aware of what it was. There was only the what’s next in this completely new reality. That was it for me.

For them, my inner-inner circle, they too had to relate to this new reality themselves, relate to me in a different position e.g. from healthy to ill. They instantly became my support team and at the same time, they were ‘dragged into’ this roller coaster as well. Whether they liked it or not, opted for it or not, it just happened. The slight difference was they were not in the heart of the heart of it like I was, but right alongside it. That is a different position. You become a ‘bystander’.

And it didn’t stop with them. More people got involved.

In the beginning, I kept the circle small to keep it ‘manageable’ for myself as soooo much came to me in the form of medical procedures. Mostly all went at top speed but going in the opposite direction to what I had been moving before that moment of entering the hospital. It required all my attention to stay with my body and what was next to relate to; very little space left for a lot of people. Only the medical staff and my support team were with me in those first moments, for the ‘functional’ physical needs and the social and emotional support by keeping me company.

So that is what I told my threesome support team. “Let’s keep it small.” But in a few hours, the circle got a bit bigger – next came my parents and a few friends. And then that quickly spread to some more of my family members and the family of my partner. Within a day, the so-called ‘small circle’ became a circle of at least 20 people, and that was just the start. One or two friends of my two sisters, my partner, and my parents got involved as well, as did the partners of my friends and so on. Each person wanting someone to share it with.

I found out that I was directly or indirectly connected to so many people that 20 people became many more – at least in my case. Later when I was laying in the hospital I found out there were many who don’t even have few people around them. My diagnosis affected all the people that I had collected around me; that was more people than I had thought of. The messages via the various media, the flowers, and the cards that I received – all heartwarming. And it showed me how many people were connected with me. As I was initially very focused on my body, its health and what was occurring which needed my acute attention, only in hindsight did I notice how many people got involved and what it did to them.

As we are all so connected, when I read the statistics that every year 12,000 to 15,000 new people in the Netherlands receive a diagnosis of colon cancer, it is obvious that a lot of people around them are directly or indirectly affected as well. If you multiply that by at least 20-30 close ones who are involved, you have – at least- 300,000 people!!! If you take all the other newly diagnosed people per year of the other forms of cancer, like the 18,000 women who are diagnosed with breast cancer, here is another 540,000 people; we are talking about a lot of people. And that is not taking into account the 100,000s of people who are still in their treatments or have recovered and are having check-ups every three months not knowing if it will return, or not.

In short, a diagnosis of cancer affects the whole country. And this is just cancer and does not include all the other life-threatening health issues.

Isn’t that a stop moment, something to give attention to? The amount of us that are sick and those who get affected by someone near to them getting sick, should be the talk of the town, but it is not. Why?

Talking about ‘talk of the town’.

Here comes the proverb I made up from another well-known proverb which says, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’. My proverb became: ‘It also takes a village to support the sick.’

Within this proverb are two aspects:

  1. An unwell person in a village affects all the people living in that village, one way or another as I just mentioned. So, it is not just one person ‘getting it’. There are many more who get affected and not just those who are the closest.
  • You can’t be sick by yourself. Or should I say: you should not be sick by yourself. You need support and all of a sudden it is there, if you have a village, which it was in my case. But again, the reality is not as such for many. Many are on their own. Isn’t that something to have as ‘talk of the town’?

Furthermore, when the illness is more severe, like cancer, it affects more people. Why? Because cancer has an instant ‘aura’ around it of the possibility, or the prediction, of death. That is the effect I noticed that cancer has. The possibility of death triggers a lot of existential themes and questions within people. With that possibility a new possible reality enters the equation: all of a sudden there is a chance to lose a dear one. This is an unspoken concern that triggers all of the village in various ways. Interestingly enough, it – the thought of dying – did not get triggered in me at all. It could have, but it did not. I was only focused on what I was in the middle of. My body became my epicentre, and my number one job was to attend to what was needed in supporting it. That was my only concern. And I became an ‘epicentre’ for my direct circle around me. For them: how can we support her?

The bystander’s place is not an easy one, because you are not the one that is having the illness in your body. It brings up other stuff, so to speak. It becomes about being the support and to quietly deal with your own emotions, wanting to spare the one who is ill. Then there is being the point of contact and having to deal with all the questions – “How is she doing?” and so much more. It confronts others with themselves – their health, way of living, the possibility of being well one day, and being sick the next, or even the possibility of dying. Not to mention that it can trigger ‘old losses’ whether dealt with or not.  All parts of life have a spotlight shone on them when someone very close to you goes through this, as it brings up a lot and each will react to it differently.

This was something I only gradually became aware of. But in those first days, what stood out the most was that I had a village around me, and I felt held and loved in a way I had not yet experienced so intensely. And I am not only talking about my ‘dear ones’. Everybody around me, including the medical staff and other staff members as well as the patients in the hospital became part of ‘my village’.

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