Breast cancer: therapist on the other side

This is an extract from an article originally publish in The Time on November 10, 2007, it is of particular interest and importance to me, both as a woman and as a Counsellor. Dr Galgut’s personal insight and experience as a patient having had Breast Cancer, offers other women with this disease, an opportunity to understand that, not only to they have a right to the myriad of emotions that they be experiencing thoughout diagnosis and treatment, but that they also have a right to ask questions…actually understand what is going on in their bodies at diagnosis and during treatment, if they wish. In addition, and importantly, the courage to seek therapeutic counselling support, at whatever stage of their personal cancer journey…each individual experience can be different.

Counselling women with breast cancer was Cordelia Galgut’s speciality but she was unprepared for the strength of emotion when it was diagnosed in her.

I didn’t have a diagnosis yet but I could see on the screen that I was in big trouble. The radiologist who was taking an ultrasound scan of my right breast looked deadpan. I asked: “Is it serious?” “At least it’s not lung cancer,” she replied. What? I presumed she was confirming indirectly that she thought it was cancer, but I was stunned by her comment.

Summoning up the courage to speak again, I asked what she could see. “Are you a medical doctor or a scientist?” she responded, as if that would answer my question, and then told me that I’d have to have a biopsy. When I said I wanted to know more, I was told that this was not possible.

These dreadful moments three years ago, when I first learnt, in my late-forties, that I had breast cancer, began a voyage of discovery. As a counsellor and psychotherapist helping women with breast cancer, I’d imagined that I could understand well enough what they were going through. In fact, I didn’t have a clue. Having breast cancer changed what I said to women with breast cancer for good.

You can read the rest of the article here