In 2021, in the middle of the biggest challenge of my life, I was told I had breast cancer.
This blog started as the record of a motorsport woman betting everything on a rally, and thanks to a great deal of encouragement and support it is still, now, a journey towards the 2024 start line.
Five years went by in a blink while I was absorbed in chasing a goal and a dream, and I got here by coming through some large failures and difficulties along the way.
And in fact — for a year and a half after the diagnosis I had no treatment at all. No supplements, no medication.That is how I spent it.
I did go in to be monitored, but behind having no treatment lay my own thinking about life, my own feelings, the friction of not being understood by the people around me, and a falling-out with my doctor.
A year and a half in which a great deal happened where this illness was concerned.
Then came a meeting with a fine doctor that felt like being guided,and on 14 December 2023 the tumour was removed. Things I can say only now; things I gained by living them.
Those who know do not speak; those who speak do not know.
The way I read it: do not make a drama of your own experience, keep quiet, and let your actions speak. And the less someone knows of your situation, the more they will have to say about it — so respect those people too, and simply keep walking your own road, humbly.
That is how I take it for myself, and withthose words in mind I have got quietly through both a challenge nobody had done before — the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge 2024 — and the ordeal of cancer.
As for why I have decided to write about the illness and how it has gone, here on the blog:
in hospital, with time on my hands, I posted short videos about what I was going through.
The comments and messages that came back were astonishing in number.
Among them:“It gave me courage.” “I got up again, thinking I could still do it.”And:
“I had been about to give up on my life, and I was ashamed of that, and I chose to live.”
Thank you. Thank you. So many thank-yous — and being told that just as I am, I was some use to somebody, put a smile on my own face.
So I am going to set down what I have lived through exactly as it was.
Cancer is a hundred different things to a hundred people. Not only the body: there is pain in the heart, and feelings and hardships that will not go into words. So this is not about whose experience is good or bad. It is simply mine, as it was.
The title of this blog is Cancer, with a smile.
I want to point at the strength and the hope that are visible even inside weakness, and write down what I notice and what I am grateful for, from the days behind me and the days ahead.
I hope that alongside the challenge, my experience becomes a small cheer for someone.
There are short videos with music too, if you would like them.
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