“I Blogged My Way Through Mantle Cell Lymphoma”

by Margret Cahill

In the beginning: Blog #1 Saturday, January 12, 2013.

Talk about being thrown headlong in 2013 … I have to say, never in a million years did I think that I would be preparing for our Christmas party on 7th December then taking a call less than a month later to be admitted to a cancer ward. I imagine everyone has the same feeling when they get the dreaded diagnosis of cancer, so this blog is going to be my journal as I find my way through a very different landscape to the one I expected in 2013. Stephen and I have been touched and even overwhelmed by the support that has poured in from more people than we realized we knew, and it is already impossible to keep everyone updated with the latest news. My hope is that we can use the blog to keep everyone updated -- please do feel free to post in reply. It will be lovely to stay in touch . . .

Blog #41 Monday, October 21, 2013

My blood results were splendid . . . After many months of pushing teeny portions around my plate, I am delighted to report that my taste buds are fully active and are capable even of appreciating Chardonnay again . . . We were all happily hugging and cheerfully bouncing in the room. Now, as I am through the other side of it I am obviously delighted that we got the best possible result, but I feel strange having been helped, nay, saved, by something I hated so much, and against which I spoke so vociferously. I don't have an answer to this -- it is another wonderful occasion where because this is a blog I can just say what I am thinking and be confused about my feelings and it is all perfectly acceptable. I am not deluded enough to think this is necessarily it --- all over but the shouting. I have read a lot of stuff which suggests that the very act of having chemo locks you into the Big Pharma system; once you have had chemo the likelihood that you will need it again is very high, so they have a guaranteed customer base to milk. That makes me very cross, but at this point I am also strangely grateful because at least for this moment I am free of cancer. I suppose what it takes me back to is that we can’t know the future. I might be absolutely fine for decades to come and die of old age. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

Excerpted from Undercover of Darkness: How I Blogged My Way Through Mantle Cell Lymphoma by Margaret Cahill, published by John Hunt Publishing, Ltd.