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They both fell ill with cancer at the same time.
First him, her husband, with prostate cancer.
Then herself, in breast cancer.
– It’s been tough, very stressful, says artist Anna Stadling, 50.
It was during a pure routine checkup that Anna Stadling’s breast cancer was discovered, during the mammogram examination she had been ordered to do.
It showed that she had cancer in her left breast.
He felt no lump, nothing different, nothing strange, nothing really.
– That is what is so insidious in all cancer, that we may not feel something that is suddenly there, he says.
Christmas didn’t turn out as usual
It was the day before Christmas Eve 2015, when the family was preparing for Christmas, that they received the message.
– It’s almost like I don’t remember anything, says Anna.
Just a few months earlier, in September, her husband, musician Pecka Hammarstedt, 53, had been told that she had prostate cancer.
Now they were both there, together, each with their own fatal illness and responsibility for their 5-year-old son John Henry, and they felt that life might be hanging by a fragile thread.
– I think for the sake of your son you try to do the best you can. But clearly you sit there and cry and wonder if there is another Christmas, for my husband and me, says Anna Stadling.
Suddenly the two of them were in the family with cancer.
– It was surreal.
Two who struggled to recover and who would become patients at the same clinic, the oncology clinic at St. Göran Hospital in Stockholm.
Photo: MAGNUS WENNMAN
“It was a shock,” says musician Anna Stadling, 50. On Christmas 2015, she was told she had breast cancer and her entire life collapsed.
Fear: dying for your child
One winter day in January, Pecka was on the operating table. Two weeks later it was time for Anna.
After the Christmas weekend, she was told she had to have her entire breast removed.
– Then all life collapsed. This with the removal of a breast was a scare for me, she says.
– It’s a shame to remove a part of the body. But in relation to what it could have caused, I think “shit on that chest, I want to live.”
Finally, a prosthesis was implanted.
– He’s hard as a rock, says Anna over the “new” chest and hits it with her finger bones.
But the absolute greatest fear was that he would not survive. Or even worse: that both she and Pecka would die for their son.
– I was afraid it was so serious that I would not be allowed to stay with John Henry. That was my biggest fear, says Anna Stadling.
– I know many who have had to leave their children, it is difficult to welcome. I’ve been to many of those funerals.
Photo: MAGNUS WENNMAN
Today, artist Anna Stadling, 50, is healthy from her breast cancer. Now she is strong enough to go out and talk about her cancer. You have just accepted honorary assignment as an Ambassador for the Breast Cancer Association.
Ambassador of the Swedish Breast Cancer Association
Could you and Pecka support each other, or were you so overwhelmed you couldn’t handle it?
– We didn’t sit down every day to talk about “if you’re going to die or if I’m going to die.” But we could understand each other’s pain and anxiety.
At the same time that they were trying to comfort themselves, to comfort each other, they were trying to make the illness understandable to their young son.
– We said “One day you will die, but NOW we will live”.
Today, Anna Stadling has landed so well in life that she accepted the honorary assignment as an ambassador for the Breast Cancer Association. A commission that he shares with the photographic model and entrepreneur Emma Wiklund and the artist Blossom Tainton Lindqvist.
That is why we meet Anna at the Breast Cancer Association’s pink club in central Stockholm, a stone’s throw from where she lives.
– I will try to spread what I myself have lived and hopefully I can contribute with enthusiasm, she says.
Photo: ALLER MEDIA SE
Both were suffering from cancer at the same time, artist Anna Stadling, 50, and her husband, musician Pecka Hammarstedt, 53. She had breast cancer and he had prostate cancer. Today, they are both healthy.
The song began to be shared
The feeling of living without control is very striking, experience. That feeling of loss of control and the desire to return to normal life was what Anna Stadling wanted to convey in the song “When this is all over.”
It emerged during this difficult period. The song is written and produced by Andreas Mattsson, but it is Anna’s experiences that are behind the lyrics.
It was added, like other songs, during the acute cancer period.
But something happened this spring that none of them were prepared for.
– When the pandemic began to invade us, people began to share this song and wrote that it is a song about our time, for our time, about our longing, he says.
Yearned for everyday life
Now Anna Stadling tells for the first time what was really the origin of the song.
– You long for everyday life to come back, you long for the simple, says Anna Stadling about the difficult period of cancer.
Annually, about 10,000 breast cancer diagnoses are made in Sweden.
– It feels very strange to be one of those who has suffered from breast cancer, but now I am one of them.
Something that has been lost is the trust in life that was once obvious.
– The naivety of not being able to let myself be affected, that feeling of naivety, is gone, says Anna Stadling.
– At the same time, I feel great gratitude for having survived, for being able to stay.
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