Today marks three years since I was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer, a disease with an average life expectancy of two to five years. My oncologist is much more optimistic about my prognosis, but it doesn’t take a maths genius to see I’m lucky to still be here.
This week should have been all about celebrating that milestone, but it’s actually taught me so much more.
In the days following my diagnosis in July 2022, I experienced the lowest lows alongside extraordinary pockets of joy. It’s hard for me to express the bone-aching grief of feeling my future wrenched away from me in four short words: ‘It’s not good news’.
But in truth, I have missed that feeling. There is nothing I want more than for my drugs to continue working so I can live for decades, but I also miss the sheer feeling of aliveness that comes with the sudden proximity to death.
To be told you have a terminal illness is to be enveloped in deep, unconditional love. It is throwing caution to the wind, saying ‘I love you’ to the people you never say that to. It is living on the edge of something; feeling your feelings more deeply than ever. Knowing yourself entirely.
And as much as I’m deeply, deeply grateful and glad that my drugs have been working for the last three years, I have sometimes loosened the grip on my aliveness. I have wandered once more into complacency; found myself irritated about the dishwasher or a late train.
Then our cat disappeared.
Our beautiful old boy, Cosme, went missing last Saturday 28th June, just as my husband and I returned from a swimming holiday in Sardinia. I have always been careful not to reveal where I live on the internet, but within 24 hours my phone number and neighbourhood were on social media posts all over the South of England.
My husband and I trawled the streets, printing flyers and posters, while banging on porcelain bowls with a fork and calling out ‘Cosi!’ like loons. My stepdaughter and her boyfriend came to help, slapping on factor 50 to roam the streets in the lethargy-inducing heatwave.
While I was in Ryman debating whether to buy a lamination machine to rainproof the posters, the neighbours were mobilising both on and offline. On Facebook, strangers shared plans of action, while in real life, they offered to scour the local cemetery. Residents invited me into their homes to check their sheds. Strangers messaged through Instagram to tell me their own cat had once run away, and survived for 10 days on water from a dripping pipe. Neighbours sent me photos of a cat similar to ours, asking ‘is this him?’
Six days later, Cosme was found.
He had been hit by a car and was trapped down the side of a neighbour’s house. He survived for almost a week with a broken leg and broken jaw, with no food or water, in the hottest week of the year.
Yet when he heard me calling his name, he somehow rallied, limping heroically towards me as we all cheered him on, blockbuster-movie style. My husband shifted breeze blocks to lift him out before we finally got him into his cage. It was one of those moments that chokes you up, but I felt somehow euphoric. I could feel again.
Cosme is now in hospital, and this has been one of the saddest weeks of my life. I couldn’t bear the thought that he was out there somewhere, hurt and alone. I missed him so much.
I adopted Cosme and his sister, Cleo, when I was single, and they've been with me through heartbreak, Covid and cancer. They moved with me to my now-husband’s house a few years ago, and my stepdaughters adore them. They are the joy of our lives.
But my tears this week haven’t just been out of sadness and worry. I have also cried from sheer overwhelm at the spirit of community; the way people care. I’ve discovered a whole new side to my neighbourhood; the people behind the doors. I’ve felt the kindness of strangers on social media, of fellow cat lovers all over the country.
I don’t know what it feels like to die, but I know people can experience euphoria in the lead-up to death. At her living funeral before she died, CoppaFeel! founder Kris Hallenga said she’d had the best day of her life, and more recently, fellow patient Sophie Busson said a similar thing. There is something magical in being close to death that allows us to feel what life really means.
But it shouldn’t take a terminal diagnosis to let people know how we truly feel.
We’re embarrassed to say ‘I love you’ to the well, but we say it in spades to the sick. It’s like dancing while drunk vs sober. Death strips us of our inhibitions.
The summer of 2025 has felt remarkably similar to the summer of 2022, or at least this week feels a lot like the aftermath of my diagnosis three summers ago. It’s not just the overwhelming heatwave, the scorched grass of my garden, the deep sense of lethargy. It’s that feeling of loving so deeply. I have felt again the deep yearning for human connection that I think I have been lacking.
I want to be able to recapture that feeling while continuing to be well. There has to be a way for us to love deeply, and to express ourselves, without the worst happening to us.
This week, I have truly felt the love. I have truly felt all the feelings. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the care you’ve thrown our way. As I write this, Cosme is in surgery, and we hope he’ll be home with us soon. Laura x
Oh hooray! Poor baby boy. I hope you are both very well. Lovely photos of you and as always very profound words. Thanks for your clarity ❤️
What a week you’ve had ❤️