Many years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and for anyone with a similar diagnosis they will know the feeling that the bottom has just dropped out of their world. My family and I know that feeling all too well.

When I was first diagnosed, I was a mature student in the second year of a degree course at the University of Central Lancashire. Being told that I had cancer was a massive blow to all my aspirations for the future, and even more so, when it was suggested that I should take a year out from my studies because, I was told, I would probably be too tired to carry on with my studies.

The chemotherapy did make me more and more tired. Each course of the drugs seemed to take a little bit more of my energy. However, the university were very understanding and gave me the support to carry on. This gave me the encouragement I needed. I ultimately achieved a B.A. Hons degree in history.

Not only did the chemotherapy leave me hairless, but another side effect was that about three days after the dose of chemicals had been pumped into my body, I became really irritable – the best way that I can describe it is that it felt like the worst case of PMT ever. I really was not a nice person to know, and from normally being a placid, easy-going person, for a couple of days I became a tyrant; nothing was ever right, and my poor husband bore the brunt of my bad temper. We had more arguments during those months of my treatment than at any other time of our marriage.

A few days before Christmas I had my final dose of chemotherapy. I was tired and irritable and more than a little fed up with the whole business. I just wanted my life back and it felt, at that time, as if this thing ‘cancer’ was taking over my life – or at least the remedy for the cancer was taking over my life.

Until that year, it had been the tradition in our family that everybody would come to my house on Christmas Day. We would wait until everyone had arrived and open our presents together, and I would make the traditional Christmas dinner: turkey, roast potatoes and two or three vegetables with Christmas pudding to follow.

However, Christmas that year was going to be different. Yes, all the family were coming to my house, partly because I didn’t want to go out and have to bother about wigs and things like that, but I was not going to do ANY of the cooking. My sister and daughter had laid down the law:

I was to stay out of my kitchen, they would do all the cooking – no arguments.

How would they manage? They wouldn’t know where anything was, and my kitchen was the size of a postage stamp. They came to the conclusion, that the way round that dilemma was that we would all buy take-away Chinese and Indian ready-meals from the supermarket. In that way, all they had to do was to warm them up in the oven.

This turned out to be one of the best Christmas dinners I can remember. The two of them got along just fine in my kitchen – although I couldn’t resist going in to see if they needed any help, only to be quickly shooed out of the way. Once everything had been prepared, we all sat around the table with the usual crackers and party hats, and then helped ourselves to whatever food we fancied from the varied food on the table. It was all really good and not a piece of turkey in sight. Just to keep with the traditional Christmas fare a little, we did have a Christmas pudding for anyone who had a little corner left in their stomachs.

A couple of years later, I and my family were all in Preston for the graduation ceremony. The mortarboard kept sliding off my head because of my hair. Although it had started growing again, it was still only about half an inch long, so I had nothing to anchor any clips to. But that was a small price to pay. I had achieved my degree without having to take a gap year.

I then embarked on a PGCE course, and a few months after completing that course, and being a glutton for punishment, I embarked on a master’s degree again with the University of Central Lancashire. Because of work commitments, it took me a few years to complete that degree, but I loved doing the research, delving into archives at the Burnley Reference Library and at the Records Office in Preston. In recent years, I used the information from the thesis to self-publish a book titled ‘Life - and death - in two Lancashire towns.’

That was many years ago. However, earlier this year, cancer reared its ugly head again when my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. She will now have to go through a similar Christmas to the one I experienced all those years ago. Although, for her, it will not be in the cold of northeast Lancashire. She will be spending it at her home in the warmer climes of Spain.

I know from the experience of losing friends and loved ones to the disease, that not all people survive. I also know I am one of the lucky ones, especially as my tumour had been a very aggressive variety. However, it is now many years since my diagnosis and, although it is not something I can ever forget, for me there has been and still is life after cancer. I also hope and pray that the courses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy my sister has just completed, have got rid of all traces from her body of those nasty little rogue cancer cells.

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Image - Joanne Glasgow