Pauline - Interview 24

Age at interview: 70

Age at diagnosis: 61

Brief Outline: Pauline had bowel cancer diagnosed in 1991. She received surgery and chemotherapy, and had a secondary liver cancer which was successfully treated. For her, cancer is something to deal with and get over, and doesn't think about it much nowadays.

Background: Pauline is married and retired. Ethnic Background: White British.

More about me...

Pauline was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 1991. It was a shock when she was diagnosed as she was a healthy person before then, who hadn’t had many other health problems. 

 

She received a bowel operation and chemotherapy as initial treatment. A secondary cancer was found in her liver, for which she received a liver operation and second round of chemotherapy. She found that her friends and family were wonderfully supportive while she was ill. However, when she was having treatment she had to chase for chemotherapy as they didn’t call her automatically. She also had to wait and chase for her diagnostic and follow up scans, which was worrying. Additionally, she didn’t think the nursing staff at the hospitals were as caring as they could be. She was discharged early following her operation, and came home to recover. The staff from her GP surgery helped her through recovery; nurses from her surgery came to clean out her central line (PICC) every two weeks. 

 

Pauline says that it takes quite a long time to get over all the operations and chemotherapy, and she didn’t realise quite how ill she had been until a few years later. She doesn’t think cancer has changed her or that she has any long-term problems; it was just another thing to deal with in life. She doesn’t dwell on it nowadays, but sometimes worries a bit that the cancer might come back. 

 

Pauline wishes she hadn't had colorectal cancer but feels she was lucky to survive and has put it behind her.

So do you have any messages or any advice to give people who are living past a cancer diagnosis?

 

Forget it. Forget it. It’s happened. You’re better. Get on with it, you know. But be aware of it. Yeah, it’s just something that’s happened, you know, I don’t dwell on it. I wish it hadn’t happened. It took five years of your life, you know, at a time when you’re getting a bit near the end, but you only have to look at the children and, you know, that you see with cancer and you know that you’ve been very lucky. I mean it must be awful for parents of children as well. You know, there are a lot worse than me. So, you know, as I say, I’ve been lucky, you know. If that’s all I get then I’ve had a good healthy life. 

Pauline had been supported by a nurse and hadn't felt the need to join a support group, although she would have liked to speak to another person who'd had colorectal cancer.

Did you ever, or were you ever, given any information about things like support groups, or did you ever think that that was something you might want to use or…?

 

No, because most probably because I didn’t need it. If I’d have said to somebody I needed it then I most probably would have been. I did say I’d like to talk to someone who’d had it, and nothing came from that, and that might have been helpful because there’s nothing like getting it from the horse’s mouth, is there. That’s why I said when my friend recently, her husband had the problem, I felt they might need that, you know, so… But because I didn’t, I just heard through the grapevine that this chap was down the pub and he’d had it and he was out and while I was still ill, you know, still not able to get out and about. Yeah, so no, there were no, I mean this girl was very good that I had anyway, the nurse, she was enough support for me, but she hadn’t had cancer, you know. I might have felt a bit happier, but I got over it. I didn’t need it.

Pauline hadn't realised how ill her colorectal cancer treatment had made her until 2-3 years later; she thought she was better than she was but a positive attitude helped her to get on with life.

Well, I know that every day I would think, you know, when I was getting better and getting over it, I would think, “Oh, I’m so much better now”. And then six months later I’d suddenly notice and realise, “I’m so much better than I was six months ago”. And it takes quite a long time after a couple of operations like that, and all that chemotherapy, to get over it, but you don’t realise it. Possibly if I was a younger person I would have noticed it, but you do tend to put it down to your age, you know. But the girls I go swimming with now they’ve all got something wrong with them and I say, “I think I’m the only one here that’s healthy”, you know. But I just, it’s an attitude, isn’t it.

 

I think a lot of these things are attitude, you know.

 

So you now consider yourself healthy now even after having had…

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah and my husband, I mean I started going out, you know, to walk and they told me not to drive for six months etcetera. We’d go to the supermarket to get the groceries. I’d say, “Oh, I’ll come with you”. And I called it my zimmer frame but I used to lean on the trolley, but I could only get from the car park to the shop, you know, then I’d have to go back and wait in the car. And then I could get from the car park to the grocery bit, the greengrocery, you know, and then I could get from the car park, and gradually you’d push yourself around, you know, and make yourself. There were times when I thought, “I could really do with a disabled sticker.” But it’s a good job I didn’t have one because it made me get on with it, you know.

 

And I had to struggle to get here and there and, you know, so no, you don’t realise how ill you are actually until two or three years later, or how ill you’ve been, you know, and even then, as I say, I feel younger now than I did three or four years ago, because I didn’t realise how ill I’d been and how it had knocked me for six.

 

You put it down to your old age, as I say. You think, “Well, I can’t expect”. And then I think, I did used to look at people of seventy and think, “Well, they’re jumping around and I’m not”. And seventy-five, how they’d got all this energy, you know, but now I’m doing that as well.