When Fear Feels like a Prediction

My biggest fear has always been dying, and not just dying, but dying of cancer. It has been a shadow that has followed me around for as long as I can remember. Some people fear the dark, or spiders, or flying in planes. I fear my own cells in my body turning against me. I fear the slow, cruel ending I have watched others go through.

I’ve carried this belief for years: I’m going to die of cancer one day; I just don’t know which one it will be.

I know it sounds dramatic, but there is a good reason for me to think this way.

When my son was fifteen, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. At the same time, my mum was fighting her own battle with lung cancer. Two loved ones, going through chemotherapy and radiation, both trying to survive. I remember feeling like I was in the middle of a field, watching a tornado swirling around me, no shelter, just bracing myself, hoping the wind wouldn’t take both of them.

My son survived. He fought hard, and he won. I’ll always be grateful for that.

My mum didn’t. She was only fifty six.

Her death still sits heavy on my chest because it didn’t have to happen. It was preventable. She smoked her entire life. No matter how many times I begged her to stop, she wouldn’t. She was stubborn like that.

When I was a teenager, I made her an ashtray in art class. Made of clay, lumpy, uneven. Only something a kid would be proud of. I scratched the words Do not smoke inside it, thinking maybe she’d see it every time she tapped her ashes into it, and something inside her would shift. I wrapped it carefully and put it under the Christmas tree, excited for her to open something I’d made with love and hope.

She opened it, looked at it, and her face scowled. She was angry. She stood up, walked to the bin, and threw it away. Then she told me to never tell her what to do. It’s a moment that has been etched into my brain and plays on repeat like a broken tape inside a tape recorder.

I didn’t have the words back then, but I knew what I was trying to say: I want you to live. I want you to be here.

She didn’t listen. And now she’s gone.

I’m eight years away from the age my mum was when she died, and that number feels like a countdown. I want to live longer than she did. I want to see my children grow up, get married, have grandchildren. I want to break the pattern.

People tell me my fear is irrational. But is it?

I’ve already had two melanomas cut out of my skin. I’ve just been told I’m in the 5% of women with extremely dense breasts - the kind that hide tumours and raise the risk. I’ve watched cancer take my nanna and my mum, and I’ve watched it try to take my son.

So, no, I don’t think my fear is irrational. It’s rooted in reality.

But what I’m trying to learn is that fear isn’t a prediction of what is to come. It’s a reaction.

My fear doesn’t mean that cancer is coming for me. It means I have lived through enough trauma that my brain is scanning for danger. It means that I know how short life is, and I don’t want my chapter to end early.

Instead of letting my fear overwhelm me, I can use it to make better choices.

I can get regular skin checks.

I can have mammograms.

I can eat healthy and exercise.

I can fight for myself the way I fought for everyone else.

I can choose to believe that my story doesn’t have to end the way my mums did.

And maybe that’s enough - choosing to live instead of waiting to die.