Cancer & How It Strengthened My Faith

Regarding my physical experience of cancer, my diagnosis was accidental – I had no idea I had cancer.

I had long standing breast lumps and one of them was giving me a bit of pain. It was called a fibroid (adenoma) on my right breast. I made a visit to my doctors surgery to get it checked. I was told that they would refer me – this was just before the lock down happened – and after that I got an finally got an appointment through. Unfortunately, the appointment was subsequently cancelled because of lock down so I was advised to go Oxford. The appointment, had it not been cancelled was supposed to be in Banbury which is quite local to me, so when they said it was in Oxford I ended up cancelling my appointment because it was a 45 – minute drive or so, and I thought, okay it’s nothing to worry about because I know what the lump is.

Approximately a month later, a bruise appeared on my right breast which made me go back to the doctors, and again, they referred me. This time I thought I had better go to the appointment since I had already cancelled one. I duly attended my appointment and when the doctor did the examination she said she wasn’t worried about my right breast, but she found a lump in my left breast that I didn’t know was there; it didn’t feel like a lump to me, more like a hardening of my skin.

They did the ultrasound and the biopsy and I got the results a week later, and they told me it was cancer. I ended having about 5 months of chemotherapy and a course of radiotherapy and surgery.

The treatment was quite intense. For me the most difficult part was definitely the chemotherapy. Some days I couldn’t even move, and I was sick for days on end. To be honest, it was quite a horrid experience going through chemotherapy. I don’t want to sugar-coat it.

Alhamdulillah, the thing that kept me going was presuming that it was all temporary. I had a checklist of all my chemotherapy appointments, and each time I had a cycle I would tick it off and I just had that end goal in sight. I keep telling myself that I just had to get through it, you know, and I think that’s what got me through it as well as my faith.

In hindsight, I felt like prior to me being diagnosed, I was kind of struggling with my faith quite a lot and I feel like this cancer experience was a way for Allah to get my attention and get me to focus more on my deen. It really did change my path, because the path that I was kind of heading down, it wasn’t the best path in terms of my Emaan. I feel like this cancer experience refocused me and it did give me strength and the courage to make changes in my life. I was in a job for about ten years before that and I really wasn’t happy in it; during my cancer treatment I was off on long-term sick leave, and when I want back, it gave me the courage to leave, and I’m now in a job that I enjoy.

I think with cancer, each case is individual, so it is quite difficult to give advice. Alhamdulillah, in my experience they found the cancer when it was stage one. It was like an accidental finding. My advice to someone diagnosed with early-stage cancer would be different to my advice for someone diagnosed with stage four cancer, for example. I think it is important to just focus on your relationship with Allah and have that Yaqeen that it is temporary – you will get through it. Also to have a good support network around you is important as well. Accepting help from the people around you is important as well and you will find that people want to help.

For me I found the practical help really helpful, things like cooked meals, lifts to the hospital and a friend phoning, just checking on you. Personally I didn’t want people to surround me. I didn’t want people to fuss around me. I didn’t like it when I told close friends and I ended up feeling like I was reassuring them while they were sobbing. So I think it is important to be around people who are positive.

It’s important to allow people going through cancer who may be having a bad day to vent. Sometimes you can’t fix things; you don’t always have to offer advice to someone, you can just be a friend and listen to them. If someone is going through cancer treatment, I feel like sometimes just being there physically is enough; for me it was more than enough just having someone’s physical presence rather than someone trying to fix things or giving me advice that I didn’t really find helpful.