Diary of a Soul Reborn

It was so painful. The nurse was holding my hand, talking to me, trying to distract me. I was crying. I was scared, cold, and felt lonely and desperate. They also inserted clips into my breast to mark the area. They did three biopsies. On one hand, it felt like a lifetime; on the other, everything happened so fast, and it felt like so much was going on at once. One of my friends, who had recently gone through the one-stop shop clinic, told me she waited a week for her biopsy results. So when they finished and told me to get dressed and come to another room to make an appointment for next week, I wasn’t surprised. I felt physically drained after the examination, and my mind wasn’t in the right place either. I got dressed and wanted to work on my positive mindset and mind programming until the next week so that I would receive good news. The nurse asked me if I wanted a hot chocolate, and I said yes—I needed something tasty and warm. My expectation was that I’d be given the hot chocolate, make an appointment, and off I’d go, with one more week to wait for the results from the lab. The nurse took me to a different room. When the door opened, I entered a much nicer room than the rest of the clinic—there were armchairs with nice pink cushions, and it was decorated very warmly. I sat down and started drinking my hot chocolate. It was almost 11 o’clock. The specialist nurse and the radiologist came in and sat down. They spoke very calmly and quietly and said they had some bad news—I had breast cancer. I suddenly felt like I left my body, like I was just observing all of this. It felt like I was only dreaming. It was like time stopped and everything froze. They said it was likely to be curable, but they wouldn’t know for sure until they did further imaging. My next appointment at the breast clinic was scheduled for Thursday, 16th February, which was the day my two friends from the Czech Republic were coming to visit me for a few days. When I mentioned it to the nurse, she recommended bringing them with me to the hospital and not postponing the appointment. I asked what the chance was that it wasn’t cancer, since they still didn’t have the results of the biopsies. They said that from what they had seen, it was 99% likely to be cancer. They also advised me not to stop doing anything and to carry on with everything as normal. My concern was about exercising, and they said the more I exercised, the better. They asked if I had someone to go to, and I said that I had planned to visit a friend. They suggested that would be best. Looking back, there were so many signs during that appointment—everything was clear all along. During the physical examination, when the nurse said, “We will definitely have some answers for you today,” she must have already suspected something from what she saw with her own eyes. Then when the radiologist didn’t react to my repeated “as long as it is good news” comments, and later when they offered me the hot chocolate and brought me to the beautiful room in the clinic—it was obvious. When they left the room, I didn’t know what to do. The first person I called was Ed, because I had been planning to visit him on the way home—if time allowed—so I could go back to work. But suddenly, I had no sense of time, and work was the last thing on my mind. I broke the news to him, and we agreed that I would go straight to him. I left the hospital around 11:15, but I was so unable to process anything that the drive took me nearly 45 minutes instead of 15. I kept missing turns, trying to call a few of the most important people (using my hands-free set). I couldn’t process it. I was in complete shock and also felt angry with everyone who had told me it wouldn’t be anything serious. I felt like they had underestimated the situation, and I wasn’t even thinking straight. I got to Ed’s, and it felt much better not to be alone in my own head (although I was anyway). He gave me so much support. First, he called our manager and told him what had happened and that I wasn’t in a state to come back to work. We both got the afternoon off and went for a walk. Ed tried to talk about things, and I tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but it was like my brain was just trying to analyse and process everything that had happened that morning. I zoned out many times during that walk. When we got back, we chatted for some time, and Ed made me a sandwich because I hadn’t eaten in 24 hours. After spending a good three or four hours with Ed, I decided to say goodbye and go home. Klara wanted to pop by to see me, and I was planning to visit my brother later that evening as well. And it was as I was going back to my car, reaching for the handle, that something suddenly changed. It was like my mind—which had been like a computer processing billions of data points at once—finally found a result. Everything unfroze. Something clicked. I turned around, looked at Ed, who was still standing in front of the house ready to wave at me as I left, and I said, “I’ve got this. I will heal. I don’t know how, but I will.”