Today has seen the news that Bernadette Nolan died of secondary breast cancer... news that had been inevitable for some time now, but is no less sad in consequence. At 52 years of age she was still 'young' in the cancer world, and diagnosed just a few months before I was, her story, as told publicly via women's magazines, was one I found helpful as I began my own treatment 'journey'. I am lucky, fortunate, blessed, whatever the word is, enough that, as far as anyone knows, I am still NED, that my surgeon when he saw me in February decided he could reduce the frequency of my check-ups to annual, but, for me anyway, there is always a lingering shadow cast by the crab who has no favourites.
In case any one wonders, my cancer was different from Bernadette Nolan's - hers was HER2+, mine was HER2-; mine was ER+, PR+, hers I have no idea. I say this partly because it isn't always obvious the breast cancer is the collective name for a whole range of horrible diseases, and that actually, by luck I got the 'least bad' version albeit in the 'most bad' primary form.
Over the last three years (or just under) I realise that I have got to know something like a hundred other women with breast cancer, to a lesser or great degree, many of whom I now count as friends, and too many of whom have had their lives stolen by this cruel disease. Were any demonstration needed that cancer has no favourites, that it is remarkably egalitarian (or equally indiscriminate) these people are it... aged from their twenties to their nineties, career girls and young mums to grandmothers, dinner ladies to doctors, Asian and British, Christians, agnostics and atheists, wealthy and living on benefits, healthy and with numerous underlying health conditions...
This crab has no favourites, and the 'risk factors' don't seem to count for much, it simply sneaks up and grabs whomsoever it wills in its pincers.
One of the most influential theology books I ever read was called Our God Has No Favourites and was an exploration of Eucharistic practice which deny this truth. I am glad that God has no favourites, glad that it grieves God as much whoever it is who falls prey to the crab's clutches. I am glad, obviously, that so far my story is a good one, a hopeful, hipe-filled one, but I am also glad that God is not a capricious deity who will favour my attempted piety over another's authentic agnosticism.
Today I will pray for the Nolans, whose grief must be lived in the glare of the media, and for those who slip away unobserved in a busy hospital ward with a nurse for company. I will pray for the researchers and doctors, for hospices and support organisations. And I will pray for the 125 people in the UK who, today, discover that they, too are part of this club no one wants to join.
RIP Berndatte Nolan, and everyone else who has, this day, entered eternity
