how important it is to have the support of friends and family while going through cancer

CHRIS WEISS, CANCER SURVIVOR

‘They say that you are what you eat. So why would you want to eat badly?’

For young cycling-enthusiast Chris Weiss, 2004 marked the beginning of
everything. He had just finished high school in Grahamstown and was taking
a gap year, working in the UK. ‘I was a rock-star eighteen-year-old,’ he says
with a smile.

Feeling invincible and ready to take on the world, Chris found a job at a
school in Brighton and made up his mind to travel around Europe when he
could. It was during one such trip – a contiki tour – that he experienced his
first crippling headache. ‘When I got back to London, I had a second massive
headache,’ he explains, a pain that he has relived many times since. ‘My
parents happened to be in London at the time and said that I needed to go
and get it checked out. I went to a GP and then had an MRI scan. The scan
was clear, but as a precaution, the GP did a full-body routine check. It was the
luckiest thing that ever happened to me because, while he was doing the fullbody
physical, he picked up a lump in the right testicle.’

Relieved that the MRI scan was clear, Chris only half-heartedly
acknowledged the doctor’s advice to have his testicle scanned. ‘Being eighteen
and on my gap year and loving life and partying hard and living in Brighton,
I didn’t book the scan for a while. Eventually I did, but I wasn’t that worried.
I was worried when they were doing the MRI scan because I had never
experienced a headache like that in my life.’

Through the British National Health Service (NHS), Chris would have
had to wait three months to have the scan. His father, unhappy with such a
long wait, suggested he go and do it privately with the emergency credit card.

‘I went and had the scan privately and at this stage, I didn’t really think
anything would be wrong. I cruised off to have it on my own, I didn’t tell any
of my friends, I didn’t even tell my sister, who was living in London at the
time, that I had booked it. My dad knew that I was going at some point but
didn’t know when.’

Nonchalant and independent, Chris took a bus one afternoon after work
to the doctor. He was shown down to the radiology department in the
basement and sat uncomfortably as an ultrasound machine scanned his
testicle. The doctor simply said, ‘There is something here and it’s definitely
cancer,’ before leaving him to put his clothes on. Chris was taken aback. ‘He
didn’t sit me down or break it to me softly; he just kind of blurted it out like
that.’

Panicked and frightened by the information the doctor had so glibly
passed on, he tried to phone his sister but could not get through because he
was in the basement of the radiology department. He ran up the stairs and
tried calling her about six times before she finally answered. He told her that
he had had the scan and it was cancer. The word sounded foreign on his
tongue.

The doctor then sat him down to discuss his options. Alone and in an
unfamiliar and uncomfortable room, Chris’s thoughts were racing. The
doctor told him that the NHS could operate within forty-eight hours, ironic
considering they had wanted him to wait three months for the initial scan.

His advice, however, was to go back to South Africa and have the operation
at home. It was a fast-moving cancer, and so they would need to act quickly,
but it was also highly treatable.

Chris left the doctor’s office feeling lost. He phoned his sister again, who
told him to go back home and wait for her there. He then phoned his dad.

‘He was quite calm on the phone, but only months later it came out that he
had just got home from spinning when I had called. He was in his early sixties
at this stage and he walked into my parents’ living room – my other sister was
doing marking on the floor and my mom was sitting on the couch – and
apparently he walked in and just couldn’t talk. My mom thought that he was
having a heart attack.’

Chris’s next thought was to call his housemate Ricky, but he was not
answering his phone. In the meantime, he headed home in a taxi, too
overwhelmed to fight the throngs of people on the bus. As he got home, Ricky
was making his way out of the school dining hall. The news spread like
wildfire as the two headed home and soon visitors were flooding in, including
Chris’s boss and the headmaster of the school. ‘It started spreading and
everyone just started arriving. I didn’t speak to anyone, people had just
heard.’ His sister and her husband arrived soon after and suggested that they
take him back to London. ‘At this stage, it didn’t dawn on me that I would be
able to come back. I thought I was going home for good and so I said that I
had to say goodbye to everyone before I came up to London.’ He went to bed
that night, prepared to leave the UK for good the following day. He cannot
remember if he slept, but he does remember that Ricky and another friend and
housemate slept in the room with him.

While saying his goodbyes the following morning, Chris learnt one of the
greatest lessons of his cancer experience – the support and comfort of friends.
Five of his friends spontaneously decided to travel to London on the train
with him and then on to Hammersmith where his sister would collect him. It
was extremely comforting for Chris, and distracted him from his darkest
thoughts. It was only when he got into the car with his sister and her husband
that he had a moment to think, and he was not quite sure what to do with the
information or how he should be feeling or reacting.

He asked his brother-in-law how he should tell his friends back in South
Africa. ‘I said to him, “It’s quite hectic to tell people that I have cancer, I feel
fine.” And he told me that the only way I was going to deal with it was if I
was chilled about it and told people the truth – that it was cancer.’

The loneliest part of his cancer experience was when he had to leave his
sister and her husband at Heathrow Airport to begin his journey home. ‘It
was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done because then it was eleven hours on
my own. My sister says it was one of the hardest things she had done, letting
me get on the plane alone. I was suddenly on my own and I was totally
isolated. I couldn’t pick up my phone to speak to anyone.’ Moreover, he
would see his father cry for the first time in his life upon his arrival.

When he arrived in Johannesburg, Chris was whisked straight to the
doctor. They operated the very next morning and he was out by lunchtime. ‘I
was sitting at the dinner table again that night; it’s not a very hectic operation
at all. So they have taken it out and now you’re waiting for results because
they’re doing biopsies and you’re wondering if it’s spread.’ The family were
anxious and agitated, hoping for the best and fearing the worst.

It was at this point that they started researching testicular cancer: what he
should be eating, survival rates and consequences if the cancer had spread.

‘There is just so much information and you don’t know what to believe and
what not to believe,’ Chris explains. ‘Everyone has their titbit of information
and, while it is appreciated, this info, together with the myriad of
information on the web, it’s just an overload.’ Crippled by fear and faced
with a mountain of data, it is no wonder that many cancer patients have no
idea where to begin when it comes to lifestyle, health and dietary decisions.
For a break, Chris and his family decided to go away for the weekend. At
this stage, all they knew was that the neurology results were clear.

After a restless weekend away, Chris went to see the oncologist on the
Monday morning. Everything was clear. That was it. And yet that had been
everything.

‘So I had this whirlwind experience, which was about ten days in total … I
hadn’t felt anything except for the operation, which was a small cut and
healed quickly. I had never felt sick and suddenly I was told I was better. That
was literally the end of it and it was so bizarre from that perspective, because
you’ve gone through this life-changing event.’

It took a while for the news that he had recovered without having to
undergo any radical treatment to sink in. Chris had been building up for a
fight, for treatment, and suddenly there was nothing. ‘While it was nothing,
because it was only ten days and I would never wish it on anyone because it
was a pretty shit ten days, it taught me more than any other ten days in my
life. It taught me more than I ever could have learnt at school or university.’

Initially, he had to undergo CT scans every two months, then every four
months, then every six months and now only once a year.

The value of friendship and support was one of the resounding lessons.

One friend had phoned him every day for three weeks from the UK on a
student budget. ‘It taught me who the people are that are really important and
that the people who aren’t important, aren’t really important.’

Gaining perspective and learning about himself and his limits and
capabilities was another eye opener. ‘It taught me to be myself,’ he says, ‘and
to let the facts unravel. You’re gaining perspective the whole time; you start
appreciating everything because you just don’t know, it’s a total unknown.’

He has also learnt to laugh at himself. Jokes like ‘Have you got balls?’ are not
banned in his presence.

Smoking is now a definite no-no. He will never touch a cigarette or date
someone who smokes. ‘I’m not interested, I really, really hate it,’ he says. He
is also now more conscious of his health and acknowledges that he should
probably be doing more exercise than he currently does. ‘I generally try and be
as healthy as possible, but I do carry on with life. It does play on my mind.’

As far as diet is concerned, he is familiar with all the literature on clean eating
and eating certain foods in moderation. ‘I try to have a balanced diet and
remain conscious of it,’ he says. It is a far cry from how he lived in London,
where fast food was all he and his pals could afford and drinking alcohol was
all they wanted to do. Nowadays, he regularly monitors his cholesterol and
tries to avoid things that are known to cause cancer. ‘I’m aware of things and
I monitor them,’ he says, ‘but you also can’t live life with “what ifs”.’ It was
because of this that he returned to England shortly after his cancer experience,
determined to finish what he had started in terms of his gap year. ‘Going back
was the best thing that I ever did.’

Having an oncologist who was ‘a hard man with a limited bedside
manner’ also taught Chris how important it is to have a doctor who is warm,
open and honest. ‘I remember vivid things about him and how uncomfortable
I was in his office; he was just not a nice guy to deal with.’

When he moved to Cape Town to study, Chris was blown away by his
new oncologist, who was both warm and friendly. This doctor was shocked
that no one had spoken to him before about a prosthetic testicle and offered
him the option. Although Chris turned it down, he now knows that if he ever
does want to consider it, it is a good idea to go for the same size prosthetic, if
not smaller, for comfort reasons. When Chris was faced with a scare during
his studies when another lump was found, this doctor was ‘phenomenal. He
gave me the understanding that there were better ways with dealing with it.’

When he moved back to Johannesburg, Chris decided not to go back to
his original oncologist. If he is ever diagnosed with cancer again, he will
seriously consider going to his Cape Town oncologist for treatment. It goes to
show how crucial it is during traumatic and stressful times to have positive
and warm energy on your side. ‘It would be a difficult decision because home
is Johannesburg right now and it is where my family are, but having a doctor
I can trust is really important in the process and you need to understand that.
It’s hugely underestimated.’

Now that Chris is a tall twenty-seven-year-old with a responsible
disposition, each decision he makes these days is carefully measured. He has
been free of cancer for nine years, which brings his chances of getting cancer
back to those of anyone else. ‘It’s always at the back of my mind,’ he says.

‘It’s difficult for me to attribute now what is and what isn’t a result of that
[cancer] experience. I think a lot of what I do is informed by that experience
because it fundamentally changed me – from a confidence perspective and
gaining perspective on life, from understanding people and friends and their
reactions, who is there and who isn’t, knowing when to be there for other
people … I think it has made me a lot more empathetic and a lot more
sympathetic.’

His advice for someone in a similar situation? Be open and talk about it.
‘The more you talk about it, the more okay you will be with it,’ says Chris,
adding that people’s reactions to you will differ wildly from total denial to
total hysteria and everything in between. He advises to let these people deal
with it in their own way. Try not to take away from how they are feeling.
With wise words and an open heart, Chris is determined to always finish
what he started, no matter what. And to live his life winning.

A NOTE ON SUPPORT

Chris’s story is a reminder of how important it is to have the support of
friends and family while going through such a difficult time, as well as how a
brush with cancer can make one more aware of health issues. Your whole
view on nutrition, for example, may change with an experience like this.

‘Support during a life-threatening illness is paramount,’ explains
psychologist Melissa Card. ‘Knowing that there is someone who can listen
and provide emotional support goes a long way.’ She explains that patients
dealing with something like cancer, as well as their family members, may feel
lonely or isolated. This can be as a result of feeling like one is not understood,
which is why emotional support is so critical. If you are struggling to cope
with the realities of a life-threatening illness or have feelings of isolation and
loneliness, talk to a counsellor, a friend, a family member or someone you
trust.

A brush with death as a catalyst for lifestyle change is not uncommon.

Card, who has witnessed firsthand people who have experienced a scare make
changes to their life, says: ‘We become appreciative of the time we have left or
the second chance at life. We often take for granted what we have and think
that we will live forever, even though we know that we will die one day. Death
is never a reality until it becomes a real possibility.’

One of these changes might be the decision to eat a more nourishing and
balanced diet. Consult a dietitian and read up on health. Don’t wait until
tomorrow; start making changes today.