A letter to my body

A couple of weeks ago I went to a fantastic two day event organised by Breast Cancer Care for young women with breast cancer. Something that came up was the A letter to my body campaign. I decided to write my own. It's ended up embarrassingly cheesy and cringeworthy but I'll share it here anyway now I've written it. Maybe just have a sick bucket to hand....


Dear body

If I was writing to you a couple of months ago, this would have been a very different letter. I'd be giving you a massive bollocking for letting me down so horrendously. I'd barely noticed you, or acknowledged you until July 18th this year, but everything changed on that day. On July 18th, you made me mad. I was furious. How dare you fail me so completely. How dare you fill me with fear. How dare you ruin my life. I deserved better than you.

Over the last 12 weeks my feelings towards you have changed. You've amazed me. I do notice you now, and I want to acknowledge everything you do for me, and say thank you.

You're being injected with a cocktail of poisons every three weeks. It's targetting the cancer, but at the same time, it is viciously attacking the rest of you. Potential side effects of chemo range from nausea to, well, death. I didn't have any faith in you whatsoever. I wrote off a full 18 weeks of my life, assuming I'd be unable to do anything more than lie around watching mindless crap on the TV while you suffered through the assault of chemo.

I totally underestimated you! It's 7 weeks since that first blast of chemo and you've been continuously repairing any damage caused in such a speedy, no-nonsense way, that there are times I've not been sure that this isn't all just a bad dream. I am so incredibly proud of you. I know when you're having to work hard to do this, and I'm trying to be good at those times and rest so you can get on with it as quickly as possible. Because when you're well, I get to go out and enjoy my life, and appreciate you at your best. Like when you give me that warm, fuzzy feeling in my heart, or that tingly, excited feeling in my stomach, or when my legs ache from a run or my face aches from laughing. I love those feelings, and I wouldn't get them without you.

I know we've got some tough times ahead. But we are tough, and we'll just fight like mad with everything we've got. I know you'll be scarred at the end of this. But it will just be a reminder of a battle that we won. We are a team. We'll get rid of this bullshit cancer, and then have the best life ever.

xx