Surviving cancer made me feel like A FRAUD

Since her diagnosis with an incurable illness 13 years ago, Deb Gascoyne has defied the odds – but struggled with survivor’s guilt

- VERONIQUE HAWKSWORTH

While there are some friendships we have cherished for decades, there are others that we hold for just a snippet of time yet their impact on our lives stays with us forever.

As I chatted away online with my friends Pamela and Sandra, in 2011, I felt so grateful these exceptional women had come into my life in the past couple of years.

But while we had shared plenty of laughter and our deepest secrets, we also shared a mutual sorrow that had brought us together in the first place – we all had myeloma, an incurable cancer. And almost as soon as these wonderful friends had come into my life, I had lost them.

Back in 2009, I’d been just like any other 34-year-old woman, too busy to think very far ahead. My mind was occupied by my son Sam, then two, and daughter Rebecca, then four, who was soon to start school near our beautiful home in High Wycombe. My husband Nick, then 33, and I barely had a minute to ourselves, but I relished our happy, busy days.

Assuming I was feeling run down from my hectic mum life, I went for a routine blood test in April 2009. I didn’t think too much of it, but when something was identified in my blood sample and I was asked to visit the Oncology ward, I panicked.

As I sat in a hospital cubicle, the doctor explained they needed to rule out myeloma. It was a type of blood cancer usually found in older patients, often men over 60 of Afro-Caribbean descent. Not young women like me.

But to my horror, a couple of weeks later, I got the dreaded news. I had myeloma, a cancer that develops in bone marrow and which, at the time, had an average life expectancy of two to five years.