No Ankle-Biters For Me Please!

Who would have thought there was any silver lining to accompany a terminal cancer diagnosis? For me, there actually is one tiny sliver of consolation. For many young women who are diagnosed with cancer, terminal or otherwise, their thoughts quickly turn to their fertility. I understand that. Many if not most women assume that they will carry a child at some point in their future. Many women desperately want to be mothers. And some cancer treatments will, at the very least, cause temporary infertility. If a young woman is really unlucky, her fertility may never return. For patients with cancers that are more likely to be put in permanent remission, egg-harvesting can sometimes be carried out before treatment begins. However for those of us who are unlucky to receive a de novo terminal diagnosis, this isn't really an option.

For me, my terminal diagnosis clarified something for me, a question I batted around my head for most of my adult life – do I want to have children? When I received my diagnosis, children didn't cross my mind. In the first weeks after diagnosis, children didn't cross my mind. In the three month grieving period I went through once the initial shock and anger subsided, children didn't cross my mind. I was mourning for the life and future that I was going to lose. I thought of my husband, of my friends, of my family, of them all living on without me, dealing with their loss, experiencing new and interesting things, living. I felt held back. It was mental torture. After a few months and after reading a number of blogs by young, female cancer-sufferers, I realised. I realised that the fact that I would never be a mother had simply not occurred to me. In that moment, it dawned on me that I was not only ambivalent towards being a mother but actually completely uninterested in it. I had no conscious or subconscious desire to pass on my genetic material. (and, having got terminal cancer at 31, maybe that's just as well!)

I know several women who are not maternal. The reason I wondered if I did actually want children was because I differed from them in a few ways. Unlike them, I have in the past pondered baby names and I loved dolls as a child. I definitely “mothered” those dolls. But as I got older, interest in children fell away. I am also really awkward around children and don't really know how to interact with them on their level. I feel apprehensive if I'm asked to mind someone's children because I know that it will be an stilted affair. But despite all that, I thought it would be different if I had children of my own. And it would be. If only I could decide if I wanted them. Well, for better or for worse, now I know. Cancer takes and takes and takes. It's a greedy swine. So, as a cancer-sufferer, I reach for any positive I can, anything that will make this experience less existentially-taxing. I am glad that I don't have the anguish of realising I will never be a mother. I experience enough guilt in my life these days without another weight being shifted on to my shoulders. I have nothing but sympathy for young women in my position who desperately wanted to carry and give birth to a child. You all have my deepest commiserations. I cannot imagine what it feels like. Genuinely I can't. Thanks, cancer. Now there's two words, I never thought I would type!