So I recovered from the operation quite quickly and on the 6th day I was due to come home and they said well well give you the results that weve found. So they called me into a little room and there was, oh I don’t know, the sister, the two doctors, there seemed to be a crowd of them, and they sat me there and said that they’d found a cancer. And I, you know, it’s not happening, you know, you it’s , it was a cyst, what do you mean it’s cancer?’ They said well weve caught it in the very early stages’ he said it’s just, it’s all within itself he said it’s attached to your bowel, it attached to the lining of your stomach’ he said, but he said weve got it’ he said we should be okay. He said well get our oncologist to come and have a word with you later on.

So when the Oncologist came he was extremely nice, he explained what they’d found,’this cancer’ he said, but he said I’d like to give you chemotherapy.

So I, pretty numb really, my husband was waiting for me so he said, he said what, you know, what was the problem?’ I said oh well well get home first. So we drove home, so we had a cup of tea and we sat where we are now and I saidtheres good news and theres bad news. So I told him the bad news which it was cancer, I saidthe good news is they’ve caught it, theres no problem but they’re going to give me chemotherapy to be on the safe side.

Was it difficult telling other people about your diagnosis?

I think I was probably more bothered for them than I was for myself. Certainly with my husband, I was’ I was dreading telling him. I think, I knew that I’d handle it better than he would. And he was out at work at the time, and I phoned him, and the line went quiet, so I knew he was crying. And he said, ‘Right, I’ll be there, you know, and even though hes out delivering and whatever, but I was quite calm and collected really.

I was bothered about telling my parents, I think because of my mum being ill, you know, and I felt sorry’ and them being of an age, I felt sorry for my dad especially, because, you know, he had his wife and his daughter all at the same time to deal with, sort of thing, you know, and he was more or less my mum’s’ well, he was my mum’s main carer, so he had it all to do, and he suffers from emphysema anyway, so it was difficult for him.

So how did you go about telling your family and friends?

Well I can’t remember really. I suppose they just came to the hospital and told people one by one as, as was appropriate I suppose really. My youngest son I didn’t tell him for a few days because, I can’t remember what he was doing, but it was, and I think, I think my friend phoned round a lot of people though. I’ve got a friend who supported me a lot and I know he phoned round quite a lot of people. And so I think most, you know, a lot of it was by phone really, because a lot, most of my relations and that aren’t here.

Was it difficult telling them?

I found it ever so difficult whenever I told anybody. And like, you know, even when I, like my neighbour came across one day when I came out of hospital, you know, and I had to say to her and I found it ever so difficult, every time I had to tell anybody. And I was actually really quite pleased when everybody knew, because it, because I then, I didn’t have to go over it every single time, you know, it, it was such a relief after about 3 weeks when everybody knew I’d got cancer and then that was it. And then it, that was a, you know, that was a great relief ’cause I could just sort of be more normal, but then everybody treated me so differently that that was quite difficult;

Work, I decided to be up-front from the beginning. I worked with a very close, small team. I and my 3 colleagues had worked together for 8 years and we were more than work colleagues, we were friends and so I was up-front. I came and told them exactly what was wrong. They were upset but very supportive, excellent they’ve been. The elderly people at work that was a different matter. We told them that I’d had to have a serious operation and that I’d be off work for a while. And as I say, because nobody knew that I’d got a wig on, it wasn’t necessary to say any more. Had they noticed or what have you, it might have been different but no, we didn’t say anything more to them. And when I retired we more or less just said that I had been seriously ill and that I felt that I needed some time to myself so we felt it was better to leave and they accepted that.

I decided not to tell my parents and I decided not to tell my sister and my brother because I didn’t know what to tell them, I didn’t want them to have the worry that we were having. And so I, I spent a weekend of trying to be quite jolly, which was extremely difficult. Not being able to eat anything and just pretend that I had a tummy upset. I did say that I had to go in for a minor op that Monday, just a small gynae problem, and was very relieved when Monday morning came and went into hospital.

When I do look back on how I spent the Saturday with my mum and didn’t tell her, I don’t know how I did that. And I had to put on this front of being my normal self. And obviously the conversation would have revolved around certain things which I knew this new diagnosis was going to have a terrible impact on, and yet I still, you know, decided that I wasn’t going to say anything.

And I had a phone call, I had a phone conversation with my sister and that was very difficult, you know, I just, at one stage I just wanted to tell her, and at another stage I thought ‘no, I’m not going to tell her until I know exactly what I have to tell her’ because I just knew the impact that it would have on them.

But I was just me and right really from the beginning it was a case of you can’t go backwards, you have to go forwards, theres absolutely nothing you can do about this, and I remember sitting in the, well I was lying in my bed all piped up with all sorts of things, and I remember actually sitting laughing with my husband, my mum and my dad. I don’t know, I can’t remember what, but it was great because it was almost like, ‘well I can still laugh’, and it was much easier for friends and family if I was chatty, yappy, myself, much easier for them if I was like that, and it was also much easier for me knowing that I wasn’t actually making it difficult for people to approach me, because what I realised very quickly as well was that people were terribly embarrassed. People were, didn’t know what to say, people didn’t know how to act, and if I was as much myself as I could be I would get more support because people weren’t scared to support me. So I learnt that very early on.

I did at first find it very difficult to, not to appreciate that I had cancer because I think I’d already guessed, it was finding out what sort. But I found it very difficult to actually say it. Once I’d said it, once I could say to somebody “I have cancer, I have ovarian cancer”. Once you’ve said it half a dozen times it is the same as saying “I have diabetes, I have high blood pressure, whatever. And I try to do that, I try to tell people to actually say the word, to get other people to talk about it. And it’s quite, once you do that, once you’ve broken that barrier I find it very encouraging and I would, and I do say that to other people, try to actually say it because it’s not a dirty secret and in the past I think it almost has been.

So how old was your daughter?

Three at the time, shes now six.

And what did you tell her?

Well the way we put it to her was that mummy had wonky cells and these wonky cells had made her very poorly. Because she was still quite shocked by the fact that mummy was in hospital, or had been in hospital. And I remember when they came to see me the following day after the operation she just stood there going “Mummy come home, mummy come home,” and it was quite heartbreaking because she just couldn’t understand. It’s a big thing. I remember her even turning round and saying “Daddy will go back to work and you come home,” you know, so she just wanted to get a bit of normality. And she couldn’t understand why I was there and why I wasn’t at home.

And my husband was great because he said “Well do you remember on Animal Hospital how the doctors have to, you know, perform an operation to make the animals better? Well that’s what’s happened with mummy,” and you know, and it was just a real Godsend because then immediately she could understand and she wanted to see where they’d cut me. And you were thinking ‘oh no, no, no’, you know, and then you thought ‘well maybe it’s better then she can understand and, you know, after that she sort of realised that things weren’t the same.

I could tell my niece but I thought ‘What do I tell my boys? Do I just say ‘oh my cancer’s come back’ or ‘I’m not too good or I don’t know what, or do I spell it out to them?’ And I thought ‘Well they’re in their thirties, you know, they’re not’, and I didn’t want to tell them but my husband said ‘if it was my mum I would want to know and I would be very upset if I didn’t know.

So I did and I thought ‘well I’m not telling them on the phone and we went up to London and my son and his wife had just bought a house in London and we went up to have, they were seeing decorators and everything and the only way I could get the two boys together was say ‘look I’ll meet you at the house and I want to talk to you’ and they thought I wanted to talk about, about my ex’s money, you know, about what’s going to happen when he dies, and I actually phoned my ex and told him what I was going to tell them, and hed lost his mother when she was forty eight with cancer, and he was very upset about it and he said ‘I thought you wanted to talk to them about me, you know, and leaving, what you’re going to do with my money. I said ‘no nothing, and he was very concerned and I said ‘I’m going to tell them, I’m just preparing you, (because one of them still lived with him), be prepared to tell them, you know, sympathise with them, but I am going to tell them what it’s about.