HOW TO SURVIVE A MEDICAL CRISIS

The day I was diagnosed with breast cancer made me so cross because in the afternoon I had arranged with my kids to go shopping for new curtains. It had taken ages to find some time where nobody had something on after school and I felt ripped off. Of all days this one. The inconvenience of it all.

Which brings me to my point that nobody really wants to be sick. Its not something you plan for, not something you look forward to and certainly not something you would prefer to be doing. It also doesn't give a rats that you want new curtains.

One day when my sister and I were younger, we played a game called simply THE BODY GAME. What you have to do is give your opponent a part of the body and they have to tell you something wrong with it in their body. My sister beat me but not before we had rolled around in hysterics just about bursting a few blood vessels. It was one of the funniest things I have ever done despite the seriousness of it all.

Humour makes all this bearable. Laughter and humour. When I got breast cancer my boss told me to laugh lots. I thought it was a weird thing to say at the time but I get it now. When you laugh, the cancer and/or the condition is put aside. It doesn't get a chance to win.

Hanging out with friends brings on laughter. I remember being absolutely bowled over when some girls I went to school with came to see me in hospital. They had never really been friends so it was a real lesson in how people change as they grow up. One of them presented me with a blanket her mother had made and told me that everyone her mother had made one for had died. My mouth and that of another friend accompanying her dropped in amazement. We couldn't believe what we were hearing. And then it began. That tiny bubble of laughter that eventually exploded, in this case when they both left. Poor woman. Such an huge and charitable effort to come and see someone she really doesn't know and she ballsed it up good and proper! But believe it or not it helped cos I don't think of the pain and the drains and the nonsense. I think of my friends foot in mouth and still smile.

All this sad stuff must take its toll on the doctors too. I remember waking from mastectomy number 1 and wondering what my new "girls" looked like - one was being re-constructed and the other reduced. The doctor took off my dressings and cracked up laughing when all I could manage was WICKED! A lifetime of teaching teenagers finally paid off. At a crucial moment I found the right words to lighten the tone and mood of the room and to make people including myself laugh.

Please don't get the idea that I am being flippant about my medical condition. There are some days when laughter is the farthest thing on my mind and I can't raise a smile. On these days I thank God for the clever people who designed my happy pills and wait for the storm to pass. It usually does.:)