In beginning I told them they must be dreaming, it cannot happen to me, because in my family theres nobody who has ever had it. Even up to this day I believe it’s a dream, and to me it’s a dream, it’s a bad bad dream. And when I went out of the doctor’s hospital, I ran off from that doctor, I didn’t want to see her again because I thought she was just trying to mess my life around. So I kept away 2 months but in the long run she caught up with me again so I had to go and have my operation done.

I felt that, I was quite angry that I had been with so many symptoms for so long and that I wasn’t diagnosed. And that, you know, people assumed things like it’s Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Quite angry that it’s not, theres not a higher awareness of the symptoms of it. You know, ovarian cancer perhaps should be one of the things that’s checked for, particularly for women of my age with these particular symptoms.

I think the feeling that, the worst feeling that happened for me, especially over those first few months, was feeling trapped. It was this sense that, you know, always in the past whatever awful thing that happened, there was some way of escaping. I could run away, I could quit my job; there was always a way of escaping it. And the realisation that this was happening to my body and there was nothing I could do to escape it, just made me feel desperately trapped. And it was very, very important to me to be not in a physical environment where I felt trapped, so I was in one hospital room where I was in a tiny, tiny little cubicle and I was already feeling emotionally so trapped, and then I got severe claustrophobia, and I had it so badly that my family actually managed to convince them to move me to another hospital. So as long as my physical environment wasn’t oppressing me too much I was okay, but as soon as I got into any kind of closed space, that feeling of being trapped just got too much.

As soon as I was diagnosed I was able to say ‘I have ovarian cancer’ and I think you’ve got to be able to admit it to yourself and not be afraid of it because, you know, it’s just part of life. And I think because I was able to talk about it and, you know, not feel this, I don’t know, shame or embarrassment or anything, I never really fell into like a depression or anything like that because it was just kind of assimilated into my life and you just get on with it, it’s just part of the journey.

And what I decided, that I had to get a few things in order. I had to make sure my will was up, in order, and I went to see the vicar, the local reverend because I wanted my daughter not to have to worry about all the funeral arrangements, if it was going to happen. I knew I had to have an operation fairly quickly, and I mean you can have your wisdom tooth out and not come out of it, you know, I wasn’t being over dramatic at that point I didn’t think. So I went to see him and I think he thought I was being a bit dramatic given that I, you know, but he probably sees that all the time. I didn’t know him, by the way, I mean I just rang him up and said, you know, I don’t go to church or anything, but I wanted to do it right, I wanted to make sure that, anyway.

It must have been odd for the people around me because of course they were all really pleased because it looked like that had gone very well and what a horrible shock but everythings going to be fine, and I think that the recovery from that for me took such a long time. The emotionally, you know, I, even a year afterwards was still reeling from it. And I think that’s probably quite difficult to understand when, if you’re someone looking on, because you think ‘oh come on everythings great’ and you’re being told the good stuff, and, and you’re fine. I didn’t feel fine.

I think I left hospital and I really was aware that despite being told that everything looks like it’s going to be fine, they can’t say a hundred percent but it looked really good and the prognosis was great. I felt absolutely terrified and I knew that there was a huge kind of conflict between what I was being told and what I felt.

I think, some of it you just need to talk, you need to say how you feel, you don’t want anyone to say ‘ah but you shouldn’t because everythings going to be all right,’ or ‘but the doctor said this. You just want to say ‘look I feel like this, it’s got nothing logical about it, it’s nothing to do with the prognosis or the treatment or anything, I just feel scared.

And the hardest, one of the hardest parts was, was seeing pain on other peoples faces. I found that really, really difficult, and I got to the point where, I mean people would stop me in the street and say, ‘How are you?’ and ‘I’ve heard about it’, and there would be such a look of pity on their faces for me. That was one of the really hard things I had to cope with. And I got very, I know I got very blas’ with it, because I wouldn’t say, like ‘I’ve got cancer’, or ‘the cancer’s come back’, I would say ‘I’m having chemo’, because it was a kind of lighter way of describing the problem.

Up until then, basically, I’d had a very good job, I had a successful business, a career, I had money in the bank, I could change my car every year if I wanted. I had all the material things that I thought life was about, basically. And physically up until then I had always been very fit and very well. So to a certain extent I suppose what I’d done is taken life very much for granted. And because I was forced to rest, because I didn’t through certain times have the energy to do very much more than just rest, it started me to think a whole lot more deeply about, I suppose, the meaning of life.

And I think one of the hardest things that I had to get my head round was the fact that, you know, one of the things that is guaranteed for all of us is that we will die. And the other thing was, realising that, you know, so many people are living, they’re alive, but it seemed to me they weren’t really living. And so the whole of that, for me, was turned completely upside down, and I recognised that every moment I had was of great value.

I know if you ask my mum, if you ask my friends, that I’m a more compassionate and loving person as a result of that experience. The whole of that experience, has given me a greater sense of what really has a value in life. And for that I am grateful. As mad as that sounds, had I not gone through that experience, I probably wouldn’t have come out feeling, you know, when I see a sunset or when I see new flowers coming, I’m like, ‘Wow. You know, that’s what’s important to me now.

I think it’s made me slightly more resilient than I was, when difficult things have happened, which they have in the years that came next, I didn’t think it was the end of the world. It was difficult and, but I’d already had difficult things to deal with and, and you realise that you can actually survive difficult things.

And since then I have lived life to the full, I have done each day as I wanted to do something. I don’t, I don’t go to plans, somebody says ‘come out and do something, I go if I want to. If I don’t want to go, I don’t go, I please myself, I do what I want to do. Makes you appreciate life is not, you know, this is not a trial, this is life, you’ve got to go for what you have.

I don’t stick to routines, I’m not washing day Monday, baking day Tuesday, I’m not that type of person. I now decide when I get up in the morning, if I want to go and do something, I do it. If I don’t want to do it, I don’t do it. And that’s exactly how I look at life, and I just live each day as it comes and enjoy myself.