CoppaFeel! founder Kris Hallenga on the importance of changing how we think about cancer and other terminal illnesses
I’M excited February’s around the corner because firstly, I hate January and secondly it’s time for a pretty big mile stone: my ELEVENTH cancer-versary.
If you’re new to this sort of lingo, it means eleven years ago, on February 19, I was diagnosed with stage 4 terminal, advanced breast cancer.
I know this is hard to wrap your ahead around because it’s not a statement we hear very often. “Terminal” cancer isn’t something we tend to live with this long, especially if your only reference to this disease is what you see in movies.
But I, like you, am startled too. After all this time, after all the cancer-versaries, all the champagne popped, I’m still amazed to be alive. I can confirm it’s just not something you get used to.
I wish I did, and I wish we all did because maybe then it would become more normal and we can stop thinking, and treating, terminal illness the way we do now. We need a mental shift.
We are living with cancer longer, and better, than we ever have and with that we need to change some mindsets.
It’s now the time for us to ask what the repercussions are of people living with cancer for longer. It impacts many things that you’ve probably not thought about: Government benefits, employment rights, the impact of drugs.
We don’t know the long-term impact of many drugs because for so long people haven’t lived long enough to find out! I am making discoveries about my body because I’ve survived long enough to realise they impact my quality of life.
For example, I wasn’t offered breast reconstruction at the time of my mastectomy more than ten years ago because the immediate problem to be solved was to get rid of the cancer.
When a long life expectancy isn’t considered, neither are the long term impacts of urgent decisions. Now I’m wiser, have lived with the consequences of said decision and am deliberating having my other breast removed to make me even chested, a whole decade later.
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It’s great to celebrate long survival – heck, you will see me dancing on tables in a couple of weeks – but let’s also work out how living longer can be considered from the very start, too.
I think that will not only improve quality of life, but our outlook, attitudes and outcomes as well.
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