For more than a year I had experienced pain in my right foot whenever I ran for more than twenty minutes. It had forced me to abandon running and take up cycling, but otherwise was no inconvenience. I thought it best to have my foot checked in case there was a long-term problem I needed to address. Even having the time to schedule an appointment with a local GP about my foot was indicative of my new life. My foot had been a problem for my last six months as premier, but I was always too busy to pay it any attention. I was now living a life where I could look after myself better and not let little things like this drift.

While my new local doctor examined my foot, I mentioned something else I’d noticed recently that perhaps she should look at. During an early-morning shower I’d felt a small lump on the side of my face, near my right ear. I thought little of it, but I had begun to poke and prod it in daily curiosity. It was painless, it didn’t seem to grow, but neither did it disappear. I mentioned it almost as an afterthought. The doctor thought it curious but not alarming, and suggested I have it X-rayed at the same time as my foot.

Feeling no rush to resolve minor ailments, I arrived at St Vincent’s Clinic in Darlinghurst on a Friday morning for my X-rays some six weeks after that GP visit. By this time, the lump on my face had grown from the size of a pea to that of a large marble, like the tombolas my brothers coveted as little boys. Although it was now visible in the mirror if you knew where to look, I had become quite used to it. I was curious but unconcerned.

Former QLD Premiere Anna Bligh

After the tests, while I waited in the clinic for the X-rays,a nurse said that the radiologist would like to conduct an ultrasound of the lump on my face. During the ultrasound I learned about the parotid gland for the first time. The parotid is the largest of our saliva glands and wraps around the junction of our jawbones. ‘Parotid’ means near the ear, and apparently I had something strange in mine. Waiting again for results, I was told they would like to do another test, an MRI with contrast dye. By now it was early afternoon, and I was beginning to understand that my foot was not the problem. By the end of the day, a day that had started out like any other, I knew I had a tumour in my parotid gland. I knew it could be benign or malignant. I also had an appointment to see a head and neck surgeon the following week.

I spent that weekend researching parotid gland tumours. I learned that more than eighty per cent of these tumours are benign, and that they affect more women than men. I learned that the proximity of these glands to the facial nerve can make surgery complicated, but if left unchecked a growing tumour can also put pressure on this nerve and cause some disfigurement. Knowing all the caveats that the medical profession puts on internet medical research, I tried to seek out reputable sites, but of course one site led to another and several times I found myself staring at graphic and gruesome patient photos of facial surgery gone horribly wrong. My research did mean, however, that I was not surprised when the surgeon told me he wanted to remove my lump as soon as possible. He was reassuring and confirmed that these tumours were overwhelmingly benign, reminding me that the word tumour is just a fancy term for a swelling. Surgery was scheduled for a fortnight’s time. Like most people, I hate hospitals. I’ve had a few minor procedures and know that I hate anaesthetics. This trip to hospital was no better or worse than any other. However, when I finally came to and felt what had been done to the side of my head, I was pleased that I had stumbled upon those gruesome medical websites. Part of my head had been shaved and I had a line of staples down my scalp, leading to stitches behind and in front of my ear.

Thankfully, nerves in the area had been temporarily knocked about, causing numbness, so I was foggy but not in pain when I woke to find Greg, Joe and Oliver and his girlfriend waiting for me in my hospital room. After an hour or so, the boys’ minds turned inevitably to food and they headed off to the nearby and exceptionally good Messina ice-cream shop, returning with buckets of extraordinary flavours. The atmosphere in my hospital room was almost festive as we ate ice-cream and laughed, relieved that the tumour had been cut out. In a bizarre twist of modern medicine, my surgeon showed me a photo of my tumour on his mobile phone. It was both repulsive and fascinating, red and swollen and larger than I expected. I was very glad that I no longer had it growing in me. Now we just had to wait for the results of the pathology tests, but the worst seemed to be over.

Anna with her husband Greg and their two sons

* Four days later, I sat in a waiting room with other patients, waiting to see my surgeon for a post-operative check-up. The original biopsy had been inconclusive and further pathology tests had been required to discover whether it was benign or malignant. Knowing that the world of science and medicine can be slow, I was unworried by this uncertainty. Nevertheless, I rang my doctor earlier in the day seeking some news, only to be told that he was in surgery and I would have to wait until my appointment later that evening to discuss results with him. It occurred to me that if the results were clear, his assistant would likely have been authorised to advise me, but I brushed this suspicion aside. Greg had a longstanding commitment to join one of his oldest friends at the Sydney Film Festival, but he wanted to cancel and come to my appointment with me. But opportunities like this were among the reasons we’d returned to live in Sydney, so I insisted he go to the film. I had no concerns about going on my own.

But as others were called ahead of me, and I realised I would be the last patient my doctor saw that evening, I started to worry. When he came into the waiting room to call me, he looked around and asked, ‘Where’s Greg?’ I knew this meant he was concerned that I was on my own, and I felt the cold itch of fear.

In his surgery, he first examined my wound. If he had good news he would have rushed to deliver it, I thought. I looked straight at him and asked about the tests.

He looked away briefly and drew a breath. ‘I’m very sorry, Anna, but the tumour is malignant,’ he said. This doctor removes growths and tumours for a living, he must have said these words a thousand times – and yet he was uncomfortable, even distressed, to deliver them. These words clearly don’t come any easier with the telling. He was professional and didn’t sugar-coat anything as he explained what would come next. I knew I was staring at him and worried briefly that my mouth was gaping open. For a while I couldn’t even hear him. My ears had snapped shut with the shock of it. When I could hear him again, I couldn’t understand him. I heard a litany of words that sounded like death: bone marrow biopsy, PET scan, ECG, chemotherapy, radiation, haematologist.

Death, death, death and death.

Not me, not now, I am not ready.

The news should not have shocked me as it did. I had just had a tumorous growth removed from the side of my face by a head and neck surgeon. I had known for a couple of weeks that the original biopsy had been inconclusive and that there was some possibility that it may be malignant. But I was incredulous to hear it confirmed.

Not me, not now, I am not ready.

I felt numb with disbelief. Recovering enough to know that I didn’t understand what I’d just been told, I asked my doctor to say it all again, from the beginning. What we’d thought was a lump in my parotid saliva gland was actually a tumour in a nearby lymph node. I had non-Hodgkin lymphoma and it was going to change everything about this year and much more. Just when I thought all my walls were behind me, when I had done all the hard things my life would demand of me, the universe had served me up another. This time I would not be the first one through it, though. I would be the beneficiary of all the knowledge and research and treatment pioneered by those who had gone before me. To them, I felt the warmest gratitude. I needed further tests to determine how advanced the disease was, I needed to see a haematologist to consider treatment. The doctor had already scheduled these appointments for me over the next six days. I walked out of the building into the cool darkness of an early winter’s night. Greg had left me a text message asking about the results, but I couldn’t tell him this in a message. I felt a superstitious fear that it wouldn’t be true until I said it, that telling Greg would make it real. I couldn’t think of the words for this. I did not want to say the word ‘cancer’ out loud. It was too big for me and too big for him. I sat, dazed, on a low brick wall in Victoria Street, watching patients shuffle back in through hospital doors and homeless people gather on the corner of the nearby park as a mobile food and coffee van pulled up. I texted Greg to call me during the interval, buying time to collect my thoughts.

I was alone on the footpath, walking back to the car, when Greg called. Seeing my text, he’d known immediately the news wasn’t good and left the theatre to call me. As I heard his voice, a hot rush of tears choked me. Gone was my numb calm and my brave face. I gave in to the terror and sorrow of it, gulping back tears, my throat full and unable to talk as Greg tried to find out where I was. He told me to breathe and talked quietly to calm me until I could say, ‘It’s not okay, it’s cancer. I’ve got lymphoma.’ Through the phone I felt it hit him, as it had hit me, like a bodywasting punch. I steadied myself against the car and reassured him that I could drive home and would meet him there. At home, there was another phone call to make. I needed to call Mum. I craved her comfort like a child just fallen off her bicycle, but I dreaded telling her the news, fearing what it would feel like for her to hear this about a daughter. How could I break this sorry news? This call was even harder than the call to Greg. I didn’t want to frighten her. She wanted to be strong and comfort me. We both lost our resolve and cried together. Living with my sister in Grafton, she felt so far away. Having worked in hospitals for much of her life, she knew more than I did about tests and treatment and what came next, but for now she talked tenderly of love and strength and her faith in me. Greg walked through the door as I finished the call and I felt the warmth and comfort of him, like a treasured blanket, as he folded me in his arms. We still had the awful task ahead of telling our boys and we talked at length about the language we would use – honest and accurate but optimistic and hopeful. The conversations with Joe and Oliver were tough. The terrible power of the word ‘cancer’ frightened them, too, but they were quickly fortified by their need to be strong for me. * I suspect that you, like me, expect something as striking as cancer to announce itself with some dramatic fanfare. In truth, I hadn’t given it much thought but had some vague notions that it must come accompanied by sudden blinding pain, that it would grip the sufferer in the same way women in the movies are suddenly gripped by the first pangs of childbirth. But cancer comes stealthily. By the time I felt that small lump in the shower, my cells had already started multiplying faster than they should and, critically, they had forgotten how to die. Cancer is not an infection; it is not the invasion of a healthy body by a foreign, toxic organism. There are no bacteria or viral enemies to blame and conquer. A cancer cell is one of my own, mutated by my body. It is my own body, malfunctioning in the most serious way possible, nurturing cells that are multiplying at a deadly rate. As I embarked on a series of tests to find out how far the lymphoma had advanced, I felt the boundaries of my life contract. Board meetings, lunch dates, arrangements with friends and scheduled plans, all were cancelled and abandoned as medical appointments filled my diary. My life shrank as I danced to the tune of this tumour. In a matter of days, cancer filled my life. It clogged my waking thoughts and night-time fears. It saturated my conversations, my reading list, my inbox and my outbox. I was astonished by its rapacious speed as all my loud and quiet corners and every nook and cranny of my life were suddenly flooded with it.

Lymphoma is a blood cancer, affecting the lymph, or immune, system. I needed a bone marrow biopsy to determine how deep into this system my cancer had stretched. Bone marrow is where our blood cells begin, but it is locked inside our bones and extracting a sample is no easy task. I readily agreed with Greg that I would not do this on my own. We walked through the doors of the Kinghorn Cancer Centre on Victoria Street for the first of many visits. I had felt ready for this and was keen to know the results, but getting to the biopsy clinic required walking through the chemotherapy ward. On all sides, people were hooked up to bags of chemotherapy drugs, and most were bald. Some were very old and frail, others heartbreakingly young. They were all pale, tired and sick. Soon I would be one of them. My confident pace slowed. I felt my throat thicken with more tears, and I gripped Greg’s hand.The insertion of a large biopsy needle into my pelvic bone at the hip, our largest reservoir of bone marrow, to draw the soft marrow out of my bone, was a painful process. Bones, not containing nerves, cannot be anaesthetised. It has become increasingly common, though, to give patients what is gently called ‘twilight sedation’ through a self-administered infuser, known as the green whistle. This is a large green whistle-shaped container that I was encouraged to place in my mouth and breathe from deeply as I felt pain. As I lay on my side facing Greg, and the biopsy needle did its job, I needed no encouragement. Using the green whistle had immediate and disconcerting results. I got instant pain relief, but my consciousness was quickly altered. Decorum fell away as I began to sob and tell Greg and the nurses that I was in the wrong place, that I wasn’t like the other people in the ward, that I wasn’t a sick person and that I did not belong there. I begged Greg to get me out of there, to tell them that I wasn’t sick. I begged him to save m