Story of a CANCER patient

8/14/2019 Story of a CANCER patient

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IF 17 years in politics taught former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh anything, it'sjust how strong she can be when her back is against the wall.

The pioneering first popularly elected female premier says that's a powerful thing tohave in her emotional armour as she faces her toughest battle yet: the fight to rid herbody of the insidious cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

It was about 7pm on the evening of this year's first State of Origin match, June 5, whenher doctor uttered the word cancer as she sat, just the two of them, in his Sydney office.She recalled feeling overcome with "cold terror".

"I was very unprepared for a diagnosis like that and very shocked to hear it," she said."The word cancer is a very big, ugly word and when it wraps itself around you, it feelsabsolutely dark and cold and terrifying.

"It just, it's a very strange feeling. You just get cold terror all through the bottom of your

stomach."

But, just as she told Queenslanders devastated by the 2010/11 summer of disastersthat she knew "in her bones" they were up to the challenge, she believes she too canface this fight and win.

It was in late March, about a year into her political retirement and the beginning of anew life in Sydney, when Ms Bligh first noticed a small lump, about the size of a peanear her right earlobe. The keen runner had booked an appointment with a GP to finallyget a niggling foot injury examined and decided to ask about the lump as well.

"When I first felt it, I wasn't particularly worried. It was more of a curiosity than aconcern," Ms Bligh said. "I think as women we are very aware that a lump in our breastcan be a very life-threatening thing to find.

"But finding a small lump on my face, you know, when I very first felt it, it wasn'tsomething very much different to a blind pimple and I thought I wonder what that is."

The GP ordered X-rays and a specialist appointment. It was five weeks before she

made and attended the appointments.

"I'd been busy. I hadn't worried about it. It wasn't something I was paying a lot ofattention to.

"It was only as the day got closer to the X-ray that I could sort of feel it and thought 'thishas actually got bigger'. It was the size of a marble.

"It was a very strange day because I thought I was going in for a relatively quick X-rayand a specialist appointment about my foot.


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"Now I think of my body as a war zone. I feel like the lymphoma has divisions of panzertanks in there and the chemotherapy is a thermonuclear device and we've got thebigger weapons and I'm very confident about the outcome.

"But it's not much fun having a war zone battling away inside you and the thermonucleardevices are good, but they make a bit of a mess of the countryside along the way."

Ms Bligh will face her second chemotherapy treatment on Monday but she said thereality of her situation was still sinking in for her, husband Greg Withers and sons Oliverand Joe.

"It feels very real when I'm at chemotherapy and I see a lot of other people who are

going through it and are further advanced than I am.

"But then for two weeks in between treatment it feels a bit surreal, like it isn't really

happening.

"So far I am very lucky that I haven't had a terrible reaction to the treatment, although I

accept that as I have more treatments it's likely to affect me more.

"I haven't lost my hair yet but my doctor tells me I'm very likely to, probably in the next

fortnight. So to be fitted for a wig made it feel very real.

"I think that the other thing I realised I felt is that I still felt very young. My 20-year-old

son doesn't think I'm young but I still feel like a very young 52-year-old, so it does

confront you with your mortality and it does confront you with all the things you still have

left to do.

"I still have lots of things to do for my kids."


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Ms Bligh said her prognosis was good, a 94 per cent chance of success according tothe International Prognostic Index, and it was when she began chemotherapy twoweeks ago that she began to feel in control.

"For me, starting the therapy felt for the first time I felt like 'okay, now I am killing this

bastard. Now I'm on track. Now I know what to do'."

She will undergo a series of six chemotherapy treatments over the next three months.

"Then I will have a range of tests to see if it's worked and that may hopefully be the endof it," Ms Bligh said.

"The last thing I want is for this thing to come back so for the next three and a bitmonths it's taking life very slowly, being very kind to myself. I don't think it will hurt me

slow down for a while."

Family and friends have rallied around the former premier, along with completestrangers from across the country and around the world. Complete strangers who havesent holy medals, handwritten letters of support and their prayers.

"While I'm not a particularly religious person, there's something nice about knowing youare in people's prayers. It makes me feel a little safer," she said.

"It's interesting the effect all of that has on you. I don't think that either Greg or I realised

how much we needed a bit of love and support until it all came and wrapped itselfaround us.

"It's interesting all the different and funny ways people find to help. I have a Jewishfriend in New York who sent another friend in Sydney her mother's recipe for chickenbroth. It's a centuries-old Jewish chicken soup recipe and she's been making it for meand bring it over to the house.

"Other people have made it their business to find me the most ridiculous head coveringson Google and then send them to me. They are different ways of sending love.

"The effect it's had is that close friends have drawn closer and other people whoperhaps we'd lost contact with over the years have reached out and found us again.That's an incredible silver lining.

"It just reminds me again, one of the things that I loved about politics is that you dotouch people's lives and despite all the criticisms and all the bomb-throwing, at its heart,it's a very human business and when you do touch people's lives they don't forget it andthey do pay it back and I feel very, very blessed by that.


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"I suspect people don't realise just how powerful it is to send somebody a message, acard, a handwritten letter. When you're spirits are very low, which they can be at timeswhen something like this happens, you can literally feel your spirits being lifted by it. Itmight sound corny but it's true. I open these letters and I feel better."

Ms Bligh recalled one letter from a woman whom she had encountered many years agoat the opening of a Red Cross blood bank. She had needed extensive blood

transfusions as she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

"I'd had a long chat with her because up until that point I'd been very squeamish aboutblood tests and blood donations and I've never donated blood,'' Ms Bligh said.

"She gave such a powerful speech at the opening of the blood bank that I decided I hadto get over myself and started donating blood and I became a regular blood donor. Shewrote to me and reminded me. They're the little vignettes that stay with you and yourealise there's a lot of people out there.

"It transcends politics, it transcends some of the animosity and negative feelings thatpolitics can sometimes generate and it reminds us all of our common humanity.''

Ms Bligh described convincing her husband Greg to attend the Sydney Film Festivalwith a friend rather than attend that June 5 appointment when she was diagnosed withher as one of her biggest mistakes so far, but a lesson worth learning. She thought shewas getting her stitches out and did not expect the test results back.

"Probably it's been one of the harder things for me to accept support, to ask for help andin the early stages when I was still being diagnosed I blithely went off on my own

confidently thinking I could do all of this.

"In some ways being at the doctors without Greg and hearing the diagnosis by myselfwas probably a good wake-up call to me to confront all that reticence in myself becauseit would be irresponsible I think for me to try to do this on my own.

"There are people who don't have a lot of family and friends and this must be veryterrifying for them. I feel very blessed with friends, very blessed with family. My motherhas seven sisters so every aunty has drawn closer and that's an incredible strength todraw on and I just realise that I would be nuts not to ask friends to help.

"While I am very confident about the prognosis, it is still a scary and difficult thing to doon your own.''

Ms Bligh said battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma was far tougher than anything she hadfaced in politics.

"There were times when I was exhausted, times when I felt things were unfair, timeswhen I was driven to anger by various things that might have happened, but I can


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honestly say I never experienced personal fear or felt so completely confronted by theunknown that I didn't know what to do next.

"That's the frightening thing about cancer. While medicine does know a lot about it,

when you're the person experiencing it, it still feels like you are in completely uncharted

waters and I never felt like that in politics.

"I do think that having done some of the things I have done in politics, it certainly

strengthened me as a person and I've had to confront thing that taught me a lot about

what I can do when my back's against the wall.

"I was very conscious of learning that when the Queensland floods and disasters were

on. That I was being thrown challenges I had never had to face before and as I felt

myself rise to those challenges, I learnt things about what I am capable of and that's a

very powerful thing to have in your back pocket when something like this hits.

"But still nothing really prepares you for confronting your own mortality and you think

you know what it's going to feel like but you really don't."

Ms Bligh said if she had not made that initial doctor's appointment for her foot, she could

have still been in the dark about her condition.

"If I had ignored it for another six or 12 months, it may well have spread quite seriously

through my body and become a much, much different and more life-threatening

experience.


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"I think there's a message there for all of us that if there's even the tiniest thing worryingyou, 25 minutes at the doctor's surgery is worth it.

"Cancer is a very insidious disease and it is often spreading and there are nosymptoms. This little lump was the only symptom I had.

"I hope that through all of this some people hear more about it and at least think to goand get a check-up."

Story of a CANCER patient

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