The most frustrating thing, though, has always been other people. "Have you tried..." "You shouldn't..", "If you just....", "You can't be using it properly...", "What do they say about it?", "There must be something they can do." "It's because you're stressed.", "If you were more positive it would go away."
This was all made even more frustrating by the fact that I couldn't shout, "F off," at them.
What would start out as someone trying to be helpful would end up as a bizarre exercise in victim blaming and I would end up feeling a lot worse than when they started. I learnt to just nod and smile at all the suggestions, thinking, "Luckily for you, you have no blooming idea what it's like."
I'm sure I've given unsolicited advice to people who are sick before but now I am always more careful.
You see, I cursed the last person to give me advice. "You need to use the straws technique," she said, "We swear by it."
I asked her if she had ever had a voice problem.
"Och, No," she said smugly, "I do my vocal exercises every day."
It was wrong, I know but I cursed her. I wished her to lose her voice and know what it was really like.
And she did.
The next time I saw her she told me how awful it had been and how she had always thought that if you do everything right then you wouldn't get it but both her children had a bug where their voices were croaky and she caught it. Being a singer, her voice went for 3 weeks. I nodded wisely, feeling secretly pleased but guilty that I had wished this on her. Not everyone has my powers but I think it would be wise to be careful.
Almost every other advert on the TV at the moment has something to do with cancer. The NHS have campaigns to remind people to check out coughs, strange poos and for men to feel their balls. Macmillan have a coffee morning and a campaign to go sober in October, Cancer Research are encouraging people to shave their hair off or run through mud, Marie Curie have just had a huge tea party and all of these adverts have got me thinking about what might be an awful and under reported aspect of cancer.
Everyone knows about cancer. They've known of someone, or read a book, or seen a soap. They know it's awful. They know it's caused by smoking or eating salami, or not getting enough of the right kind of exercise. They know that people with cancer have to 'keep their strength up'. They know that cancer treatments happen quickly. They know that doctors work miracles. They believe that cancer is something you have to 'fight'. They know cancer patients have to be strong.
I've often been concerned about this idea that cancer has to be a fight. The problem is that cancer is you. It's your body, growing a bit more than it should. If you fight it you must be fighting yourself. In a war against yourself you will always lose, even when you win. In the past, if I have said this to people they suck their teeth and say, "you have to be careful. If you give up it will win." This is bollocks. Psychologists are beginning to study this and have concluded that mental attitude has no effect on cancer development and disease progression. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/04/20/new-meta-analysis-undermines-the-myth-that-negative-emotions-can-cause-cancer/
These things that people know can end up sounding like blame to someone who is ill. "If only you didn't smoke." "I knew eating Salami would be your downfall." "If only you'd done yoga instead of swimming." "You are eating all the wrong things." "You should eat something." "Even if you are feeling sick, if you don't eat you'll only get worse." "It can't be that bad, or you'd have been seen already. They don't leave people with a cancer diagnosis without an appointment for a month." "It will be fine. I know someone who had cancer and they had chemotherapy for years. Oh, yes, it was awful treatment. Survive? Oh, no but they had years of treatment. You've got to fight. It's going to be hard but you can do it."
When I first lost my voice I would find people's suggestions funny. As if I hadn't done vocal exercises all my life. As if I didn't drink only water. But eventually it wore me down and I started to feel as though I was to blame for being unwell. When people got frustrated because I had tried all their suggestions they would say, "So, why do you think you've got it?" as if I knew and as if knowing would help, except they would have something else to blame me for.
So, while I'm happy to eat cake (I'm always happy to eat cake) and donate a fiver to charity so they can research cures and treatments that might make people feel better I will be extra careful to not turn any research I hear about into blame for someone who has been diagnosed with cancer. They might have witchy powers like mine and curse me to really understand what it's like.
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