Dr. Self - From Medicine to Miracle - How My Faith Overcame Cancer

Hellie, who is fifteen, is different from Franny and me. She is dark-haired, extremely attractive and very vivacious. Sometimes Franny says Hellie is the beautiful one, I am the clever one and she is the courageous one. Just now, getting over breaking up with my boyfriend, Martyn, I wish I was the beautiful one. He is a third-year sixth-form pupil so he is older than I am and I would say that he is certainly a great deal more street-wise. I was so surprised when he took an interest in me. I don’t feel that good about the way I look and he is a bit of a catch. When he asked me out I couldn’t believe it. At first I just wanted a boyfriend but I soon loved being with him. I think I was probably already in love with him. When he asked me to go a bit further than just kissing, I was shocked and pleased at the same time. But – and there is always the ‘but’ – I knew it was wrong. So that’s how it finished and now, well, I miss him dreadfully. It has been a bit of a blow to my pride, so since we broke up I have been putting all my energies into entering medical school.

My dad is a general practitioner. There is a special bond between us. When I was born, he saved my life. He has told me the story many times.

‘You were awkward from the very beginning,’ he begins when he recounts the drama. ‘Your mum went into labour unexpectedly on the ante-natal ward and then your shoulders got stuck. I was visiting and I had to deliver you – a good job, too, or you would have died.’

‘What happened next?’ I always ask.

‘Well, you weren’t breathing so I had to resuscitate you. It was the most stressful moment of my career, trying to get a tube down your tiny wind-pipe.’

‘But I made it!’

‘Yes, and that’s why you are called Mary. I called you after the Virgin Mary, to whom I prayed while I was trying to save your life.’

My mum is also wonderful. She is everything you would want in a mother. She is gentle and loving, but she has this way about her. It is impossible to argue with Mum. She is wise and kind and everybody loves her. Sometimes my sisters and I look at her old photographs, admiring her figure and her curls. She was so beautiful, and still is. Her eyes are clear blue and honest, her smile takes over her whole face. The earliest memory I have is sitting in her laundry basket, listening to her playing the piano and singing to me. My mum is a beautiful singer and she leads the church choir. My dad adores her. She has devoted her whole life to her family and she is, as my dad frequently tells us, the heart of our home. Although we are sheltered, I know my parents love us a lot and I have never wanted for anything. Yes, I would say we are very close.

We have lived in Blackpool all our lives. We children all attended a church primary school and went on to Catholic secondary schools. I became a proud pupil of Layton Hill Girls’ Convent. The downside to this has been the total absence of boys from our life. I am just not equipped to deal with a boyfriend and I blame the system for that. What do you say to a boy when you don’t know anything about them? The only thing we have ever been told about sex was one lesson when Mrs Pollock drew a pretty bad picture on the blackboard. She said that it was a man’s penis but really it could have been anything. I can’t believe she used to be a nurse! So, as far as boys go, I am embarrassingly shy and I never know what to say to them. I guess they find me pretty boring, really.

Last year the school merged with the Catholic boys’ grammar, St Joseph’s, where my brother Martin used to be a pupil. Now it is called St Mary’s Roman Catholic High School. Hellie and I have both become interested in the recently formed ‘God Squad’ at school. There has been a big religious revival. It used to be regarded as pathetic to be seen at lunchtime Mass but now it is considered fashionable. It is all very exciting and loads of girls hang out in the chapel, singing and practising new songs. Sometimes I have gone to youth meetings with the God Squad. The last one was really fabulous. There were young people from all different types of churches – not just Catholics. Somebody got up to speak and told us about how Jesus had helped them through all kinds of problems. It made me think a lot about my own faith. Then, at the end, they asked people to go forward if they wanted to know Jesus, but I was too scared. I thought I might get laughed at. So I just stayed there with the God Squad instead …

So, back to All Saints’ Day and our trip to the Lake District. The golds and yellows of the autumn leaves were just about turning to a burnished copper as we trudged through the leafy lanes of Ambleside. The thrushes were devouring the bright red berries. My sister and I kicked through the fallen piles of horse chestnut and sycamore leaves, searching for conkers and helicopter seeds.

I think I looked around with a different focus that day. I could almost see the hand of a magnificent Creator all around me. The colours, sights and sounds of autumn seemed more vivid, more beautiful than ever before. Maybe to outsiders my life seemed to have everything and to be perfectly happy, but sometimes I felt an emptiness. I had heard that the love of Jesus could transform lives and turn them around – and how I wanted that to happen! I was aware of a hunger inside me, a need to link in some way with God.

I was deep in my thoughts as we passed a tiny village church, the sort that is photographed for guide books and postcards. I noticed a creaking mossy lychgate flanked by two huge yew trees. The crumbling gravestones were covered in a tangle of ivy and weeds. Here and there a couple of vases of bright dahlias cheered up the graves.

‘I’ll catch you up,’ I shouted to my sister, and ran down the path between the headstones. Cautiously, I pushed open the heavy oak door. The grating sound made by the rusty hinges startled the jackdaws gathered in the steeple. Inside was dark and cool; the only noise I could hear was the distant cries of the frightened birds. Slowly my eyes adjusted to the shade and I took in my surroundings. The autumn sunlight flooded in through the stained glass windows, pictures of the saints in reds and blues dappling the stone floor in many different hues. I headed towards the altar and, as I did so, a beam of sunlight streamed in through the side window and fell on the golden cross which had been arranged as the centrepiece of the sanctuary.

I knelt close by and seemed to be bathed in a warm golden glow reflected from the cross. The peace and silence of this place was almost palpable.

‘Jesus, if You are real, if You are there, take my life and transform it, too. Use me, Lord, for Your service.’

I didn’t really know what I meant by it. It’s the kind of prayer they say at these youth meetings where everybody seems so happy and joyful. As I stood to leave, I felt a pain shoot down my leg from my knee. It was so painful that I drew my breath in sharply.

‘That’s strange,’ I remember thinking. ‘I must have strained my muscles. Too much jogging!’ I limped slowly out of the church but by the time I caught up with my sister the ache had disappeared.

I visited Franny the following weekend and she invited me to accompany her to the friendly and welcoming church she had become part of. We have always been taught, at school and at church, that there is only one truth and that is Catholicism. I know really I should pray she will see the light. However, my sister used to be really unconfident and shy and now she is a mature young woman with a joyful and carefree spirit. She is so enthusiastic about Jesus and her church that I am puzzled why everyone is so perturbed by it. But that is what it’s like, being a Catholic.

I had never been to a different type of church. But off we went to the evening service on Bonfire Night and, as we huddled together around a large bonfire, Pastor Tony told us we can know God through Jesus and be reborn into a new life. Suddenly it all seemed to make sense. At the end he asked those who wished to know Jesus to go forward. This time I got up straight away and Tony smiled at me warmly as I went towards him to make my prayer. I asked the Lord to forgive my past sins and to come in and be a part of my life and that was when Jesus became a real person to me. At last I had found the way to God.