I do not want my cancer to come back. I want to be cured and never to have to face this again. The fear is there, of course, and at times it can haunt you and I guess I could be small and quiet and hope that it will pass me by and not notice me again and let me live a peaceful life with Rhodri and my two boys.
But to do that would be doing a disservice to myself, because for all the darkness that it has brought to me, cancer has also brought me light. My cancer has changed me and shaped me into the person I have become.
Cancer has made me confront demons in my life that I would never have otherwise had the courage to confront. Cancer has shown me angels in the form of the people who have cared for me, and my family and friends who have stood by me and loved me. It has brought me together with my husband in a way I would never have thought possible. We started off two very different people in one place and now I feel that we are as one, united, and I would never have thought that would happen.
I thought that we might crumble, but we did not, we became stronger. My eyes half-closed to life are open because of cancer. I have made decisions that I would never otherwise have made.
So I will NOT lead the small quiet life I envisaged at some points along this journey, living in fear of cancer. I AM going to live a large and loud life, full of love and happiness with my three boys, Rhodri, Elis and Osian. I will shout at the top of my voice that I am alive and, no matter what is to come in the future, whatever life throws at me, I will catch it and throw it back and like Aslan the great lion in Narnia, I will come back the stronger person because of it.
It is the end of a beautiful sunny day. The sun is setting and the sky is streaked with red. I’ve bathed my two boys. Elis is downstairs with his father watching the cricket and despite the fact that I’ve asked them to keep the noise down, they can’t contain themselves and keep shouting out, their voices carrying throughout the house.
Osh can hear them and even though he can hardly keep his eyes open, he wants to go and be with them. So I take him in my arms and breathe in his smell and even though he is three years and nearly one day old he lies still like a baby. While I cradle him in my arms he looks up at me and I look back at him and I rock him gently. I’m sitting on my bed watching the sun set, glad to be alive, and there is nowhere on earth at this moment in time that I would rather be.
About the author…
Michelle Williams-Huw was born in 1967 in Pontypool. She lives in Cardiff with her husband and two children aged three and seven. She has worked in the film and television industry in Cardiff for the last eleven years and has worked for BBC Wales for the last five years.
For more information please visit
www.michellewilliams-huw.com
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My Mummy Wears a Wig - Does Yours? A true and heart warming account of a journey through breast cancer Page 28