I met a woman in a pub last night. It was a small pub that wasn't even mentioned on the OS map; I walked through the quiet village planning to knock on the door of a house to ask for water, making a U-turn as I spotted the pub sign. It was the kind of rural place where the conversation of about ten people stopped completely as I walked through the door, not in a hostile way but just to see what the hell was going on with the flags, the sweat, the big rucksack. I sat down, puffed a bit and explained what I was doing. They were all very nice, if slightly bemused at this alien presence and I handed a few symptom cards out and received about 20 pounds in donations. One woman was really impressed, "That's a cause very close to my heart" she said, "and other parts of my body." She was coming back into the pub as I left, having been for a cigarette; she gave me a piece of paper with the address of the cafe she worked in and invited me for breakfast the next morning. "What you're doing is brilliant" she said, touching my arm, and suddenly tears were in her eyes and I realised that this was a woman hiding pain beneath a layer of bustle and joviality.
I walked away from the village, up a bridleway to a field full of sheep where I lay down to sleep and thought about this journey and all the tales of ovarian cancer I've heard, other cancers too. Somehow it seems that by my standing up to say "I have had this cancer" it draws other people to tell me their stories in return.
There's the man, dealing with me in his professional capacity who leant forward and said in a low voice, "My mother has it." We exchanged a glance and no more words, it wasn't his time to speak about it.
There's the woman who recognised me in the hospital, her head wrapped in a colourful scarf. Her cancer was advanced, she was seeing the doctor to decide on a second course of chemotherapy.
A woman at the next table to me in a cafe suddenly started telling me about how she was waiting for the results of her genetic testing, how her mother had died of ovarian cancer and she was being tested for the BRAC1 (I think) gene. She'd been waiting for her results for eight weeks.
The electrician who'd just taken his wife for tests that day, suspected ovarian tumour.
The woman in Lidl who asked me "What are you doing?" as I lent my flags against the fruit display to put some bananas in a plastic bag. "I was meant to meet you today. My sister in law has just been diagnosed and she's waiting for surgery", we talked for a while about encapsulated tumours.
There's the woman in the beer tent at a festival who called me back to the table after I put some symptoms cards into the centre, her eyes large. She only said that she'd had recent abdominal surgery and we talked and talked and talked in whispers about the ways we'd found to recover from pain and trauma.
In a cafe in the Rhondda valley and in a pub in Connahs quay they said "Someone died of that quite recently"
I was helped a great deal by a woman whose mother and best friend had died of the same illness, who had driven her friend to all her chemotherapy sessions.
I was met by a woman in Welshpool whose mother died of ovarian cancer and now speaks for the charity Ovarian Cancer Action in Wales, trying to do the same thing I'm doing - raise awareness, raise awareness.
It's not just ovarian cancer I get to hear about.
There's the truck that stopped on the quiet mountain road the other day to see what I was doing. "My dad died of cancer" said the Merthyr Tydfil man driving, and gave me 20 pounds.
There's the woman in a remote area of mid-Wales who froze when I said the words Penny Brohn. She'd had breast cancer fifteen years previously and still followed their diet guidelines.
There are so so many more than this, my memories are becoming too full to hold all the people that I meet.
They're all so hidden, these personal stories, until the moment when a person walks up to me and says one sentence. The woman who approaches me in a city cafe - "I have womb cancer."
It gives me a sense of the multitudes of people carrying pain or fear or trauma, past and present. I don't mean this in a negative, depressing way but in the way that this forms a part of what life is; that an inescapable part of this glorious, incredible life is dealing with illness and death and that is ok.
I do what I can in these moments, I say "That sounds hard" or "Are you ok now?" and I listen to as much of their story as they want to tell me. I try and hold even a little of bit of their troubles for them, just by being a person who listens.
Some 430 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year in Wales.
Some 250 women will lose their lives to ovarian cancer each year in Wales.
Together, these women have partners, children, grandchildren, friends, family, neighbours getting into the tens of thousands. That's a lot of stories.
I walked away from the village, up a bridleway to a field full of sheep where I lay down to sleep and thought about this journey and all the tales of ovarian cancer I've heard, other cancers too. Somehow it seems that by my standing up to say "I have had this cancer" it draws other people to tell me their stories in return.
There's the man, dealing with me in his professional capacity who leant forward and said in a low voice, "My mother has it." We exchanged a glance and no more words, it wasn't his time to speak about it.
There's the woman who recognised me in the hospital, her head wrapped in a colourful scarf. Her cancer was advanced, she was seeing the doctor to decide on a second course of chemotherapy.
A woman at the next table to me in a cafe suddenly started telling me about how she was waiting for the results of her genetic testing, how her mother had died of ovarian cancer and she was being tested for the BRAC1 (I think) gene. She'd been waiting for her results for eight weeks.
The electrician who'd just taken his wife for tests that day, suspected ovarian tumour.
The woman in Lidl who asked me "What are you doing?" as I lent my flags against the fruit display to put some bananas in a plastic bag. "I was meant to meet you today. My sister in law has just been diagnosed and she's waiting for surgery", we talked for a while about encapsulated tumours.
There's the woman in the beer tent at a festival who called me back to the table after I put some symptoms cards into the centre, her eyes large. She only said that she'd had recent abdominal surgery and we talked and talked and talked in whispers about the ways we'd found to recover from pain and trauma.
In a cafe in the Rhondda valley and in a pub in Connahs quay they said "Someone died of that quite recently"
I was helped a great deal by a woman whose mother and best friend had died of the same illness, who had driven her friend to all her chemotherapy sessions.
I was met by a woman in Welshpool whose mother died of ovarian cancer and now speaks for the charity Ovarian Cancer Action in Wales, trying to do the same thing I'm doing - raise awareness, raise awareness.
It's not just ovarian cancer I get to hear about.
There's the truck that stopped on the quiet mountain road the other day to see what I was doing. "My dad died of cancer" said the Merthyr Tydfil man driving, and gave me 20 pounds.
There's the woman in a remote area of mid-Wales who froze when I said the words Penny Brohn. She'd had breast cancer fifteen years previously and still followed their diet guidelines.
There are so so many more than this, my memories are becoming too full to hold all the people that I meet.
They're all so hidden, these personal stories, until the moment when a person walks up to me and says one sentence. The woman who approaches me in a city cafe - "I have womb cancer."
It gives me a sense of the multitudes of people carrying pain or fear or trauma, past and present. I don't mean this in a negative, depressing way but in the way that this forms a part of what life is; that an inescapable part of this glorious, incredible life is dealing with illness and death and that is ok.
I do what I can in these moments, I say "That sounds hard" or "Are you ok now?" and I listen to as much of their story as they want to tell me. I try and hold even a little of bit of their troubles for them, just by being a person who listens.
Some 430 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year in Wales.
Some 250 women will lose their lives to ovarian cancer each year in Wales.
Together, these women have partners, children, grandchildren, friends, family, neighbours getting into the tens of thousands. That's a lot of stories.
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