Nearly the end! Today and tomorrow and we’re done.
Three weeks on from the final operation I’m getting back to normal ready for work next week. Routine will return with the daily mile run in the morning and I’ll be able to go swimming; should make the forty lengths again without too much problem. As Spring comes I’ll prepare again, God willing, for the Women’s 10k in May, and like two years ago (when cancer was something that happened to other people) I’ll be asking for sponsorship for a breast cancer charity, this time with the awareness that I had a lucky escape, thanks to all the people who’ve supported such charities before, and all those who dedicate their lives to the cause, rather than the hour I’ll dedicate to the run!
Bodies heal according to plan thanks to the outstanding medical care I’ve received. The invisible healing of the heart and head is greatly accelerated by the love, kindness and understanding of family, friends and strangers and I will remain ever amazed and grateful that these have been so freely and generously given. Thank you!
This has not been a linear narrative starting at the beginning and going logically and chronologically to the end. For me life and time are not linear but like a spiral staircase where we start at the bottom and go upwards. We keep passing above what has gone before, find links and hooks to the past and lay down patterns for the future. We stand at this pivotal point in time when the old and new year will almost pass each other by.
2011 has not been an unwelcome guest for me; she has brought many good gifts, good news as well as bad, but she has been here long enough. Her appointment is over, a new visitor is coming up the road, passing the hedges and just out of sight, waiting discreetly until I have given 2011 her coat, handed her the luggage she must take with her, thanked her for coming and kissed her goodbye. As I watch her shuffle down my path, make a left turn onto the road, I do not close the door, for soon 2012 will take a step forward, come up my path with an open smile on her face and mysterious packages in her arms.
Here she is now. I smile and shout hi, making no attempt to hide my pleasure at her arrival. The door is open wide.
“Come in, my long-awaited friend,” I say, embracing her. “How warm and alive you are! How good it is that you are here at last.”
There are many of you now standing in your porches, on your doorsteps, doing the same. Perhaps in your eagerness to see 2011 go you have had her buttoned up in her coat awhile and are waiting for a taxi to take her away, impatiently looking at your watch, wondering why it is taking so long. Perhaps 2011 has been a very unwelcome presence, squatting in your life and, having long-since served the eviction order, your moment is coming to see her booted out the door. She is going now, no doubt about it. The champagne is chilled, the glasses are ready, not so much to cheer 2011 passing, as to welcome in the unknown guest now standing in your hall.
Although she looks a little dazed by her new surroundings, place the glass in her hand and pour. Toast her presence in your life, this most welcome 2012.
I raise my glass to all of you who, like me, are glad 2011 is on her way to that foreign country of the past.
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Friday, 30 December 2011
19. Biology not Mythology
In the film “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” my favourite lines are those spoken by the father who is intent on proving that so much of what we have today comes “ferrom er the Gerreek.” Well, here I’ve proved him right, in writing this blog, I have borrowed so much “from the Greek”, with an odyssey, Theseus, the minotaur and the made-up goddesses, Euphemia and Anaesthesia .
However, I must emphatically state that if Greek mythology has helped out a little, the traditions of Greek drama are strictly not invoked. My encounter with cancer is not a tragedy: I am not a victim of the gods, punished for my hubris, a come-uppance for my over-weaning pride. Even though for me the most important acts took place in a theatre, cancer is neither drama nor mythology. No. Cancer is biology. Cancer is mathematical: its abnormal cells divide and multiply in a similar way to normal ones. Its ways are predictable and understood only as a result of methodical scientific research and skill. Statistically, I had a 1 in 22 chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer because of my age. Apparently, genes, hormones and maternal age further upped the chances; all mathematical and biological.
Nor was my purpose in writing the blog that key element of Greek drama, katharsis, releasing the emotions, but about giving an account of a diagnosis, treatment and cure, primarily for friends who had pieces of the jigsaw but no-one had the whole picture. I hope too it is of some use to anyone in similar circumstances. If anything, the purpose is about trying to understand one small part of this massive monster we know as cancer, to possibly understand a bit more of the whole beast.
I could not have talked to anyone face to face about anything here beyond a few sentences. The blog has been like an empty room where I can show you my blessings and where you help me count them, where I safely leave some words and where you find them, and to those leaving kind encouraging messages in return, there could be no better gift.
However, I must emphatically state that if Greek mythology has helped out a little, the traditions of Greek drama are strictly not invoked. My encounter with cancer is not a tragedy: I am not a victim of the gods, punished for my hubris, a come-uppance for my over-weaning pride. Even though for me the most important acts took place in a theatre, cancer is neither drama nor mythology. No. Cancer is biology. Cancer is mathematical: its abnormal cells divide and multiply in a similar way to normal ones. Its ways are predictable and understood only as a result of methodical scientific research and skill. Statistically, I had a 1 in 22 chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer because of my age. Apparently, genes, hormones and maternal age further upped the chances; all mathematical and biological.
Nor was my purpose in writing the blog that key element of Greek drama, katharsis, releasing the emotions, but about giving an account of a diagnosis, treatment and cure, primarily for friends who had pieces of the jigsaw but no-one had the whole picture. I hope too it is of some use to anyone in similar circumstances. If anything, the purpose is about trying to understand one small part of this massive monster we know as cancer, to possibly understand a bit more of the whole beast.
I could not have talked to anyone face to face about anything here beyond a few sentences. The blog has been like an empty room where I can show you my blessings and where you help me count them, where I safely leave some words and where you find them, and to those leaving kind encouraging messages in return, there could be no better gift.
Thursday, 29 December 2011
From taboos to tattoos.
In 1769 Catpain Cook carried two new words for the English language in the HMS Endeavour and they find themselves together again in the luggage of today's blog.
Taboo – an area deemed by society to be forbidden; an unmentionable topic or word.
Tattoo - made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment.
Even if you think I’ve been open in what I’ve written about in this blog there are a few taboo areas I won’t venture into which may leave you disappointed by the end.
I would not have been able to tell you my story without predecessors stripping away those taboo areas and claiming the language and the subject they represent, including the prevalence of the small symbolic pink ribbons tied discreetly to lapels as a quiet everyday reminder, or the more brazen campaign of a thousand bras tied to railings as a one-off shock campaign to remind us that breast cancer should not be a hidden, unmentionable, taboo.
If “Careless talk costs lives” was a valuable wartime motto, could “Careful talk saves lives” be a useful motto in the war on cancer? Has the fear of talking stopped people from making that first step to the doctor? All too sadly, we know from personal experience and from statistics that this is likely to be true.
We’ve come a long way. The very word ‘cancer’ was taboo for years. People, afraid to admit the cause of death, whispered it, called it something else as if the ‘comatose minotaur’ would awaken in them unless charmed by the magic of the Goddess Euphemia and her secret language. I remember it as a child and felt the air chill as someone lisped ‘Cancer’, the “he-who-must-not-be-named”, the Lord Voldemort of our times. Bravo then to those brave enough to shout out the word ‘cancer’ in public, and bravo that they name the taboo body parts including uterine, ovarian and prostate. Keep shouting; your voices echo down the labyrinths and terrify the minotaur.
What is it that makes these words taboo? Is it their sexual connection? I fear it is. The taboos of old stick. Do we still, after all, like our grandparents’ generation, fear that cancer steals the function and attraction from the place where it is found? This must be it, and the taboos are sticky indeed.
Let’s not be afraid to seek help, to talk about the symptoms, the treatments and the cures; let’s deal with the disease with a proper vocabulary as early as we can so we have the best possible prognosis.
Yet there is still work to be done. If, in writing this blog, I have trodden on the toes of some taboos and made them squeal a little, then good, but I’m not brave enough to take all the taboos by the nose: self-perception and the sexual connection remain an unmentionable. It takes time to beat down the irrational belief that cancer steals our function and attraction.
And the tattoo? The taboo curtain has dropped. This will be something to laugh about in time, but for now, I borrow once more from the cryptic phrase-book of Euphemia: the tattoo they can offer me in March is an artistic illusion that something lost can be found.
Taboo – an area deemed by society to be forbidden; an unmentionable topic or word.
Tattoo - made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment.
Even if you think I’ve been open in what I’ve written about in this blog there are a few taboo areas I won’t venture into which may leave you disappointed by the end.
I would not have been able to tell you my story without predecessors stripping away those taboo areas and claiming the language and the subject they represent, including the prevalence of the small symbolic pink ribbons tied discreetly to lapels as a quiet everyday reminder, or the more brazen campaign of a thousand bras tied to railings as a one-off shock campaign to remind us that breast cancer should not be a hidden, unmentionable, taboo.
If “Careless talk costs lives” was a valuable wartime motto, could “Careful talk saves lives” be a useful motto in the war on cancer? Has the fear of talking stopped people from making that first step to the doctor? All too sadly, we know from personal experience and from statistics that this is likely to be true.
We’ve come a long way. The very word ‘cancer’ was taboo for years. People, afraid to admit the cause of death, whispered it, called it something else as if the ‘comatose minotaur’ would awaken in them unless charmed by the magic of the Goddess Euphemia and her secret language. I remember it as a child and felt the air chill as someone lisped ‘Cancer’, the “he-who-must-not-be-named”, the Lord Voldemort of our times. Bravo then to those brave enough to shout out the word ‘cancer’ in public, and bravo that they name the taboo body parts including uterine, ovarian and prostate. Keep shouting; your voices echo down the labyrinths and terrify the minotaur.
What is it that makes these words taboo? Is it their sexual connection? I fear it is. The taboos of old stick. Do we still, after all, like our grandparents’ generation, fear that cancer steals the function and attraction from the place where it is found? This must be it, and the taboos are sticky indeed.
Let’s not be afraid to seek help, to talk about the symptoms, the treatments and the cures; let’s deal with the disease with a proper vocabulary as early as we can so we have the best possible prognosis.
Yet there is still work to be done. If, in writing this blog, I have trodden on the toes of some taboos and made them squeal a little, then good, but I’m not brave enough to take all the taboos by the nose: self-perception and the sexual connection remain an unmentionable. It takes time to beat down the irrational belief that cancer steals our function and attraction.
And the tattoo? The taboo curtain has dropped. This will be something to laugh about in time, but for now, I borrow once more from the cryptic phrase-book of Euphemia: the tattoo they can offer me in March is an artistic illusion that something lost can be found.
Wednesday, 28 December 2011
17. How did you know? continued
A week later, on the 6th April, the first envelope with what would become a familiar postmark arrived, informing me an appointment had been made for a mammogram at 11 am the following Monday, 11th April.
I went to work as usual, and apart from keeping an eye on the time, did not feel anxious. Mammograms, I’ve found, although not exactly afternoon tea at the Ritz, are uncomfortable rather than painful, possibly because the staff are so kind and expert. This placing of the breast to be squashed between two metal plates sounds worse than it is, although it’s likely others might disagree.
The appointments were running late, and I was concerned to be away from work as I’d only expected it to take an hour or so. Besides, I was hungry. I felt edgy and uncomfortable sitting with other women in the light blue gowns as we awaited our results. The conversation revolved around the main reason we were there: breast cancer. Stories of friends who’d been diagnosed, their treatment, survival and recovery seemed to usher in the dark angel of reality. Despite the mood being upbeat, one woman was filled with dread and despair. The dark angel sitting beside her mimicked every sigh, every frown and at every intake of breath, sucked away optimism.
Eventually I was called in to see the consultant. The mammogram revealed calcifications, and although these had been present at a routine mammogram two years earlier, the x-ray suggested either these were clearer in this particular x-ray, a better picture, as it were, or, the calcifications were larger and more prevalent. As sometimes calcifications can hide cancerous cells, a biopsy was advised and arranged for the following Thursday, 14th April.
I phoned to reassure my husband that all was well, still confident that the biopsy would be a precaution and this was a ‘playing safe’ approach.
Thursday 14th April came. Lunch, and the jolly wit and banter of colleagues in our favourite local restaurant to say goodbye to a good friend who was leaving, completely took my mind off the forthcoming biopsy later that afternoon. If one is to face the firing squad, one should always do so on a good meal.
The biopsy was a little frightening. It followed the same procedure as the mammogram (stop reading now if you are squeamish) but a needle sort of “drills down” deep into the tissue to draw up cells. Once again, this was bearable because of the kindness, expertise and honesty of the staff. When I was told the ‘drilling’ would last for 45 seconds, it did. 45 seconds isn’t really that long, even in this situation.
If you Google search ‘biopsy’, some sources say you can go straight back to work afterwards, but I couldn’t have done. I went to bed when I got home and slept out the evening and night. We all deal with things differently: in all of these surgical procedures I distance my mind from what is happening, float it away somewhere else and pretend my body isn’t part of me, but it’s as if the trauma comes afterwards and the only way is to escape into sleep.
Luxury. I still had two more weeks of ignorance to enjoy.
I went to work as usual, and apart from keeping an eye on the time, did not feel anxious. Mammograms, I’ve found, although not exactly afternoon tea at the Ritz, are uncomfortable rather than painful, possibly because the staff are so kind and expert. This placing of the breast to be squashed between two metal plates sounds worse than it is, although it’s likely others might disagree.
The appointments were running late, and I was concerned to be away from work as I’d only expected it to take an hour or so. Besides, I was hungry. I felt edgy and uncomfortable sitting with other women in the light blue gowns as we awaited our results. The conversation revolved around the main reason we were there: breast cancer. Stories of friends who’d been diagnosed, their treatment, survival and recovery seemed to usher in the dark angel of reality. Despite the mood being upbeat, one woman was filled with dread and despair. The dark angel sitting beside her mimicked every sigh, every frown and at every intake of breath, sucked away optimism.
Eventually I was called in to see the consultant. The mammogram revealed calcifications, and although these had been present at a routine mammogram two years earlier, the x-ray suggested either these were clearer in this particular x-ray, a better picture, as it were, or, the calcifications were larger and more prevalent. As sometimes calcifications can hide cancerous cells, a biopsy was advised and arranged for the following Thursday, 14th April.
I phoned to reassure my husband that all was well, still confident that the biopsy would be a precaution and this was a ‘playing safe’ approach.
Thursday 14th April came. Lunch, and the jolly wit and banter of colleagues in our favourite local restaurant to say goodbye to a good friend who was leaving, completely took my mind off the forthcoming biopsy later that afternoon. If one is to face the firing squad, one should always do so on a good meal.
The biopsy was a little frightening. It followed the same procedure as the mammogram (stop reading now if you are squeamish) but a needle sort of “drills down” deep into the tissue to draw up cells. Once again, this was bearable because of the kindness, expertise and honesty of the staff. When I was told the ‘drilling’ would last for 45 seconds, it did. 45 seconds isn’t really that long, even in this situation.
If you Google search ‘biopsy’, some sources say you can go straight back to work afterwards, but I couldn’t have done. I went to bed when I got home and slept out the evening and night. We all deal with things differently: in all of these surgical procedures I distance my mind from what is happening, float it away somewhere else and pretend my body isn’t part of me, but it’s as if the trauma comes afterwards and the only way is to escape into sleep.
Luxury. I still had two more weeks of ignorance to enjoy.
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
16. How did you know?
There’s not much left to tell, but I’m conscious that in typical fashion, I’ve told this story the wrong way round, beginning at the end (almost) and as we approach the end, going back to the beginning. In the few days left, I hope to cover those things that I've been asked and haven't yet answered here.
The first is, what made you act to go to the doctor? How did you know?
Most of us are responsive to the education around breast cancer, have read the leaflets and posters and dutifully check for changes: lumps, bumps, shape and colour.
It occurred to me in the early weeks of March 2011 that for some time there had been a pain across the left-hand side of my entire chest. How long had it been there? I wondered. It felt like a time-of –the-month ache, but had gone on for well over a month. There were no other signs according to the check list and I felt completely well. Still, we are told that if we are worried in these matters to book an appointment with the GP and I did just that. A week or so later I had my appointment on 31 March.
When I was a four-year-old prodigy with a promising career as a hypochondriac, there were times I’d complain I’d got some sort of ache or pain and in those days when we had neither phone nor car, within hours my mum would have my coat on and be trooping me off to the doctor. Some time along the way I’d wonder where the pain had gone but we'd trudge the rest of the boring journey, wait in the dull room and be subjected to probes and discomfort. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I left work early to make the 4pm appointment, whether this was the little hypochondriac re-surfacing. I also had the sneaky feeling that I’d over-exercised with arm weights in the anti-bingo-wings-for-the-summer campaign I had been engaged in since Christmas. I’d forgotten how easy it was to strain muscles and for them to take time to heal. "I’m probably taking an appointment away from a really sick person as a result of my over-eager, vanity-inspired activity." I thought as I parked the car outside the surgery.
As an infrequent visitor to the medical centre, guilt gave way to pondering how it had happened that all doctors were now younger than me.
“I can detect a very small lump,” Youth declared, having completed the examination. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about but just to be sure I’ll make an appointment for you at the breast clinic.”
Oh well, at least I hadn’t wasted his time, I thought, as I went back to the car and was pleased the appointment was over early enough to grab half a pizza and take my son to his 6pm kick-off. Children's football has long given me a wonderful excuse to be in the open air after work and I welcomed this chance to enjoy the lengthening Spring evening. They were playing a team with a previous history of intense rivalry so full-on support was required.
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” I told my husband when we finally got home and had time to discuss the appointment, unaware of the blissful ignorance I would live in for a further month.
The first is, what made you act to go to the doctor? How did you know?
Most of us are responsive to the education around breast cancer, have read the leaflets and posters and dutifully check for changes: lumps, bumps, shape and colour.
It occurred to me in the early weeks of March 2011 that for some time there had been a pain across the left-hand side of my entire chest. How long had it been there? I wondered. It felt like a time-of –the-month ache, but had gone on for well over a month. There were no other signs according to the check list and I felt completely well. Still, we are told that if we are worried in these matters to book an appointment with the GP and I did just that. A week or so later I had my appointment on 31 March.
When I was a four-year-old prodigy with a promising career as a hypochondriac, there were times I’d complain I’d got some sort of ache or pain and in those days when we had neither phone nor car, within hours my mum would have my coat on and be trooping me off to the doctor. Some time along the way I’d wonder where the pain had gone but we'd trudge the rest of the boring journey, wait in the dull room and be subjected to probes and discomfort. I couldn’t help but wonder, as I left work early to make the 4pm appointment, whether this was the little hypochondriac re-surfacing. I also had the sneaky feeling that I’d over-exercised with arm weights in the anti-bingo-wings-for-the-summer campaign I had been engaged in since Christmas. I’d forgotten how easy it was to strain muscles and for them to take time to heal. "I’m probably taking an appointment away from a really sick person as a result of my over-eager, vanity-inspired activity." I thought as I parked the car outside the surgery.
As an infrequent visitor to the medical centre, guilt gave way to pondering how it had happened that all doctors were now younger than me.
“I can detect a very small lump,” Youth declared, having completed the examination. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about but just to be sure I’ll make an appointment for you at the breast clinic.”
Oh well, at least I hadn’t wasted his time, I thought, as I went back to the car and was pleased the appointment was over early enough to grab half a pizza and take my son to his 6pm kick-off. Children's football has long given me a wonderful excuse to be in the open air after work and I welcomed this chance to enjoy the lengthening Spring evening. They were playing a team with a previous history of intense rivalry so full-on support was required.
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about,” I told my husband when we finally got home and had time to discuss the appointment, unaware of the blissful ignorance I would live in for a further month.
Saturday, 24 December 2011
15. The Best Christmas Present
Anaesthetics? Something to smile about.
As I said in Monday’s Blog, I thought the anaesthetic of the operation would be a big fear and the aesthetics something I could handle when in reality it wasn’t so straightforward.
The word ‘anaesthetic’ calls to mind a suffocating, evil-smelling mask being placed over my nose and mouth, having horrible dreams and waking up feeling ghastly. This was my experience of having teeth extracted as a child and it was so awful I have been fastidious in dental routines for me and the children, doing everything possible to prevent tooth decay and the need for any of us to go through that particular trauma.
Thankfully, I was reassured at the pre-operative assessment before the mastectomy, that anaesthetics these days are quite sophisticated and the unpleasantness I remember is gone. True to form, the day of the first operation I was taken into the annoyingly busy pre-theatre room where people seemed to be talking over my head:
“How many tropical fish do you have now?” one asked the other, as if I wasn’t there.
“Let me see: one, two, three...”
They’re just trying to trick me to fall asleep, I thought defiantly.
“Four, five, six, seven...”
I was right. They were tricking me and it worked. I remembered nothing else until I awoke in the Recovery Room. There were no unpleasant experiences at all. Just the same with the second. Out in no time, awake, and no unpleasant after-effects. Better still, I don’t know if they had given me morphine, but I came round and felt quite er, happy.
Around twenty-five years ago, my husband and I hit upon an idea which has meant every year we give each other the best, most liberating, most spirit-of-Christmas present ever. We decided that instead of buying each other a gift, we would make a donation to the charity of the others’ choice. It began by us knowing someone directly who was say, building a school in El Salvador or working with a leper colony in India and we could send the donation with them. It changed over time and became quite good fun too.
“What are you buying your husband this Christmas?”
“A pig.”
“What are you buying your wife this Christmas?”
“A cow.”
Over the years we have addressed the extremes of earth, wind and fire through relief for victims of earthquakes, hurricanes and droughts. We have bought metres of plastic to build waterproof shelters, vaccines to prevent outbreaks of cholera and lengths of pipe to build village water pumps, all without having to push through crowds to the sound loop of “Have yourself a merry little Christmas”. I’d strongly recommend it. Now we just shortcut to selecting our own charity and making a donation.
Sometime in November word gets out that I’m not just on the 'Sucker List' but on the 'Big Sucker List'. That is, I receive letters from a very large number of charities. This used to be quite handy when I was teaching, as their persuasive letters and materials made excellent teaching resources. This year, I sat with several letters in front of me, all of equal worth trying to decide which one to donate to. As it was two weeks before my second anaesthetic, the decision was easy.
This year it was The Smile Train's turn, a charity which provides a straightforward operation for children born with cleft palates and lips. In the UK babies born with this condition are operated on relatively early so the feeding, speaking and aesthetic difficulties are dealt with long before they grow up. Not so in some countries, where children with cleft lip and palate not only struggle with eating and speaking but are treated cruelly and ostracised from society for life. The letter told me £35 could buy an anaesthetic for a child so the surgical procedure would alter their face and their fate for the rest of their lives.
I looked at the pictures of the babies with their twisted upper lips, beautiful children, but would not be seen so where they were destined to grow up. I felt a little sorry that they would have the discomfort of the surgery, but then shrugged: “Sorry, little one. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you.” I wrote a cheque for the cost of the anaesthetic, popped it in the envelope and posted it.
Hopefully, right now, some little person somewhere in the world is just like me: has had that anaesthetic and surgery; is a little irritated by the scars as they heal, but that soon, all will be normal and the rest of their lives will open up to them enabling them to be happy and fulfilled as they so deserve.
This year, strange as it sounds, anaesthetic is the best Christmas present.
http://www.smiletrain.org.uk/real-heroes/
As I said in Monday’s Blog, I thought the anaesthetic of the operation would be a big fear and the aesthetics something I could handle when in reality it wasn’t so straightforward.
The word ‘anaesthetic’ calls to mind a suffocating, evil-smelling mask being placed over my nose and mouth, having horrible dreams and waking up feeling ghastly. This was my experience of having teeth extracted as a child and it was so awful I have been fastidious in dental routines for me and the children, doing everything possible to prevent tooth decay and the need for any of us to go through that particular trauma.
Thankfully, I was reassured at the pre-operative assessment before the mastectomy, that anaesthetics these days are quite sophisticated and the unpleasantness I remember is gone. True to form, the day of the first operation I was taken into the annoyingly busy pre-theatre room where people seemed to be talking over my head:
“How many tropical fish do you have now?” one asked the other, as if I wasn’t there.
“Let me see: one, two, three...”
They’re just trying to trick me to fall asleep, I thought defiantly.
“Four, five, six, seven...”
I was right. They were tricking me and it worked. I remembered nothing else until I awoke in the Recovery Room. There were no unpleasant experiences at all. Just the same with the second. Out in no time, awake, and no unpleasant after-effects. Better still, I don’t know if they had given me morphine, but I came round and felt quite er, happy.
Around twenty-five years ago, my husband and I hit upon an idea which has meant every year we give each other the best, most liberating, most spirit-of-Christmas present ever. We decided that instead of buying each other a gift, we would make a donation to the charity of the others’ choice. It began by us knowing someone directly who was say, building a school in El Salvador or working with a leper colony in India and we could send the donation with them. It changed over time and became quite good fun too.
“What are you buying your husband this Christmas?”
“A pig.”
“What are you buying your wife this Christmas?”
“A cow.”
Over the years we have addressed the extremes of earth, wind and fire through relief for victims of earthquakes, hurricanes and droughts. We have bought metres of plastic to build waterproof shelters, vaccines to prevent outbreaks of cholera and lengths of pipe to build village water pumps, all without having to push through crowds to the sound loop of “Have yourself a merry little Christmas”. I’d strongly recommend it. Now we just shortcut to selecting our own charity and making a donation.
Sometime in November word gets out that I’m not just on the 'Sucker List' but on the 'Big Sucker List'. That is, I receive letters from a very large number of charities. This used to be quite handy when I was teaching, as their persuasive letters and materials made excellent teaching resources. This year, I sat with several letters in front of me, all of equal worth trying to decide which one to donate to. As it was two weeks before my second anaesthetic, the decision was easy.
This year it was The Smile Train's turn, a charity which provides a straightforward operation for children born with cleft palates and lips. In the UK babies born with this condition are operated on relatively early so the feeding, speaking and aesthetic difficulties are dealt with long before they grow up. Not so in some countries, where children with cleft lip and palate not only struggle with eating and speaking but are treated cruelly and ostracised from society for life. The letter told me £35 could buy an anaesthetic for a child so the surgical procedure would alter their face and their fate for the rest of their lives.
I looked at the pictures of the babies with their twisted upper lips, beautiful children, but would not be seen so where they were destined to grow up. I felt a little sorry that they would have the discomfort of the surgery, but then shrugged: “Sorry, little one. If they can do it to me, they can do it to you.” I wrote a cheque for the cost of the anaesthetic, popped it in the envelope and posted it.
Hopefully, right now, some little person somewhere in the world is just like me: has had that anaesthetic and surgery; is a little irritated by the scars as they heal, but that soon, all will be normal and the rest of their lives will open up to them enabling them to be happy and fulfilled as they so deserve.
This year, strange as it sounds, anaesthetic is the best Christmas present.
http://www.smiletrain.org.uk/real-heroes/
Friday, 23 December 2011
14. Boedica, Queen of the Iceni
The chest expansion made me feel like my breast wasn’t made of flesh but armour, an iron breast-plate, and I was suddenly fearless, invincible. I could take on anything. It also made me hard-hearted. It’s as if somewhere deep within a voice was saying, look you’ve been hurt enough, don’t take anymore, fight, stand up for yourself. My new role model and alter ego became the legendary female warrior, Boedica. Hope you’ll forgive the following doggerel rap on her heroism in driving the Romans out of Britain:
Boedica, Boedica, Iceni queen,
Stood up to the Romans when they were really mean.
When her husband died they took her wealth,
Her daughters’ ‘ honour’ stole by stealth.
They flogged our queen and took her power:
A big mistake; their final hour.
Boedica, Boedica, Iceni queen,
Stood up to the Romans when they were really mean.
Called up the Britons from far and wide
‘We’re Britons not slaves,’ her shrill voice cried.
They rose in their thousands –a tribal band
Burning Roman cities across the land
Cadiliem, Verualanium brought down to dust
‘To rid ourselves of the tyrant we must.’
The Iceni warrior wore a long red cloak
Tied with a brooch, gold round her throat
Strong for the cause, brave and true
Boedica, my heroine , I want to be like you!
If I felt vulnerable, which I have so often done since the mastectomy, I could pretend I was Boedica and feel strong and feisty. There was a major drawback to this: people in my life aren’t the Romans, they’re not an enemy at all; they’re usually those closest, but the Queen of the Iceni often hardened her heart and in a shrill voice clamoured for war. If she cried war and you didn’t deserve it, she is sorry.
Boedica, the time has come to take of your iron breast-plate and lay down your sword. The battle is over and won and we can all live another day.
Boedica, Boedica, Iceni queen,
Stood up to the Romans when they were really mean.
When her husband died they took her wealth,
Her daughters’ ‘ honour’ stole by stealth.
They flogged our queen and took her power:
A big mistake; their final hour.
Boedica, Boedica, Iceni queen,
Stood up to the Romans when they were really mean.
Called up the Britons from far and wide
‘We’re Britons not slaves,’ her shrill voice cried.
They rose in their thousands –a tribal band
Burning Roman cities across the land
Cadiliem, Verualanium brought down to dust
‘To rid ourselves of the tyrant we must.’
The Iceni warrior wore a long red cloak
Tied with a brooch, gold round her throat
Strong for the cause, brave and true
Boedica, my heroine , I want to be like you!
If I felt vulnerable, which I have so often done since the mastectomy, I could pretend I was Boedica and feel strong and feisty. There was a major drawback to this: people in my life aren’t the Romans, they’re not an enemy at all; they’re usually those closest, but the Queen of the Iceni often hardened her heart and in a shrill voice clamoured for war. If she cried war and you didn’t deserve it, she is sorry.
Boedica, the time has come to take of your iron breast-plate and lay down your sword. The battle is over and won and we can all live another day.
Thursday, 22 December 2011
13. Chest Expanders (Aesthetics, part 3)
In the olden days, when I were a lass in Yorkshire, there were things called chest expanders. Designed for men wishing to develop their pectoral muscles and what would, thirty years later, be called a ‘six-pack’ , they comprised two handles in between which was a series of tightly coiled springs. The purpose was to take a handle in each hand and pull the springs apart across the chest, thereby improving the tone and strength of the muscles. There was just one main snag in their design.
As children, we found some chest expanders in our attic which had belonged to my father. In his youth, he had been a boxer and the expanders were presumably the nineteen-fifties equivalent of a home gym. In pre-waxing days, boxers were traditionally hirsute in pursuit of the sport. So think naked hairy chest, chest expander with its very resistant coiled spring. Visualise the arms pulling the springs apart, empathise with the keen resistance of the springs as they tone the muscles and ...
Ping! Ouch! Bugger!
The involuntary release of the springs meant they instantly went back to their tightly-coiled default position, leaving no time for the chest hairs to get out of the way. This was why we found the expanders in the attic.
Several decades on and I became familiar with a very different sort of chest expander, one of which was very cleverly placed underneath the skin and muscle during the mastectomy surgery.
Two weeks after the operation, a day before my birthday, I received three unique gifts: the best news that there were no traces of cancer in the lymph nodes meaning it had not spread; the good/bad news that the pre-cancerous cells were very extensive making the mastectomy absolutely vital; and 100 millilitres of saline solution in the expander.
Back on the 'isn't science wonderful' theme the process is quite remarkable. A magnet under the skin signals the port of entry through which a needle is inserted and the saline solution slowly released into the expander. It doesn’t even hurt, although walking back to the car afterwards it felt as if I a weight had been sewn in there. I would have to get used to the iron breast plate feeling, but once again the body, grateful and accepting, responded by telling the skin and muscle to grow. Little by little, with fortnightly fill-ups, the chest duly expanded.
Spring had passed, midsummer was here and nature was growing and ripening everywhere!
As children, we found some chest expanders in our attic which had belonged to my father. In his youth, he had been a boxer and the expanders were presumably the nineteen-fifties equivalent of a home gym. In pre-waxing days, boxers were traditionally hirsute in pursuit of the sport. So think naked hairy chest, chest expander with its very resistant coiled spring. Visualise the arms pulling the springs apart, empathise with the keen resistance of the springs as they tone the muscles and ...
Ping! Ouch! Bugger!
The involuntary release of the springs meant they instantly went back to their tightly-coiled default position, leaving no time for the chest hairs to get out of the way. This was why we found the expanders in the attic.
Several decades on and I became familiar with a very different sort of chest expander, one of which was very cleverly placed underneath the skin and muscle during the mastectomy surgery.
Two weeks after the operation, a day before my birthday, I received three unique gifts: the best news that there were no traces of cancer in the lymph nodes meaning it had not spread; the good/bad news that the pre-cancerous cells were very extensive making the mastectomy absolutely vital; and 100 millilitres of saline solution in the expander.
Back on the 'isn't science wonderful' theme the process is quite remarkable. A magnet under the skin signals the port of entry through which a needle is inserted and the saline solution slowly released into the expander. It doesn’t even hurt, although walking back to the car afterwards it felt as if I a weight had been sewn in there. I would have to get used to the iron breast plate feeling, but once again the body, grateful and accepting, responded by telling the skin and muscle to grow. Little by little, with fortnightly fill-ups, the chest duly expanded.
Spring had passed, midsummer was here and nature was growing and ripening everywhere!
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
12. From breast envy to building sites (Aesthetics, Part 2)
“Do you mean I’ll be able to make pastry during the early stages of labour?” I earnestly asked the midwife.
“Oh, yes, it’s quite possible. Just lean against the table as you roll out your pastry, do your special breathing through the contractions and carry on with your baking.”
“That’s amazing!” I exclaimed. “Making pastry in labour! My goodness, I’ll have to make the most of it. I’ve no idea how to make pastry now.”
In the dictionary, acceptance and anger aren’t far apart. When things go wrong, you can accept what’s happened then you are angry. It’s a strange, illogical, embarrassing anger, but it has to be got through. It’s illogical because you’re angry that everyone continues to have what you don’t: two normal breasts. Of course we don’t say anything; it’s just a bad inner resentment we carry around for awhile.
There are many women amongst us who know what it is to be pregnant, feel the joy of the growing child, the nausea and tiredness, the excitement and exhaustion; learn to love the unknown being within. Expectant mothers, expecting pregnancy to be full-term, to finally meet a new son or daughter. Hopeful, waiting.
Then comes a day when that vision of joy cracks like glass and your world collapses. The promised fruit is blighted; there will be no harvest. The child ebbs away, is only a memory, a denied future, a lost family. No matter how much it hurts others, for the mother it is a very physical grief; a feeling of failure to nurture the foetus.
“When you see other pregnant women you feel angry, like you want to kick them.” My counsellor said, and surprisingly, it broke the grief as I admitted the resentment for other women having what I had lost. Once she’d said this it no longer hurt to see pregnant women and better still, I could feel truly happy for them.
So what has all that got to do with anything? No matter how nice we are, there is a part of us that feels angry that we have lost this entirely feminine part of ourselves, a breast, and we cannot suppress this illogical anger that other women continue to have the usual two. Sorry and all that, ladies, but it can’t be helped and it isn’t long before we get over it.
One way of dealing with it is to avoid all possible sources of anger. Don’t go anywhere, don’t look anywhere. This means you become a hermit until the anger passes. No television. No shopping. All those pretty bras just seem to meet you at eye level at the top of every escalator.
This would be fine but you do have to go shopping. You have to confront the source of fear: the lingerie department. Enter this place with eyes averted, quickly pass the pretty pink ones with black lace, the white ones with the satin and silk, the underwired ones, the t-shirt ones, the ‘exaggerate your cleavage’ ones, the ‘uplift and flatter’ ones, uh, flatter, you’re feeling very flat by now.
Keep going – you have some of these at home - but soft and feminine isn’t for you anymore. Think reconstruction, think building, think hard hat. You are looking for scaffolding, hoists and iron girders.
Hah, at last you find them, hidden at floor level, and it hurts to bend. You squat, jeans stereotypically slipping down, and search for your materials. There, we have a choice, in black and white. You can begin to reconstruct with these alright.
Funny that in all these highly active years I scarcely owned a sports’ bra and now that so much as thinking about tennis makes me weak, I have a good collection of them.
Flick the dictionary pages forward now, to half-way through. Humour and irony are just one page apart.
“Oh, yes, it’s quite possible. Just lean against the table as you roll out your pastry, do your special breathing through the contractions and carry on with your baking.”
“That’s amazing!” I exclaimed. “Making pastry in labour! My goodness, I’ll have to make the most of it. I’ve no idea how to make pastry now.”
In the dictionary, acceptance and anger aren’t far apart. When things go wrong, you can accept what’s happened then you are angry. It’s a strange, illogical, embarrassing anger, but it has to be got through. It’s illogical because you’re angry that everyone continues to have what you don’t: two normal breasts. Of course we don’t say anything; it’s just a bad inner resentment we carry around for awhile.
There are many women amongst us who know what it is to be pregnant, feel the joy of the growing child, the nausea and tiredness, the excitement and exhaustion; learn to love the unknown being within. Expectant mothers, expecting pregnancy to be full-term, to finally meet a new son or daughter. Hopeful, waiting.
Then comes a day when that vision of joy cracks like glass and your world collapses. The promised fruit is blighted; there will be no harvest. The child ebbs away, is only a memory, a denied future, a lost family. No matter how much it hurts others, for the mother it is a very physical grief; a feeling of failure to nurture the foetus.
“When you see other pregnant women you feel angry, like you want to kick them.” My counsellor said, and surprisingly, it broke the grief as I admitted the resentment for other women having what I had lost. Once she’d said this it no longer hurt to see pregnant women and better still, I could feel truly happy for them.
So what has all that got to do with anything? No matter how nice we are, there is a part of us that feels angry that we have lost this entirely feminine part of ourselves, a breast, and we cannot suppress this illogical anger that other women continue to have the usual two. Sorry and all that, ladies, but it can’t be helped and it isn’t long before we get over it.
One way of dealing with it is to avoid all possible sources of anger. Don’t go anywhere, don’t look anywhere. This means you become a hermit until the anger passes. No television. No shopping. All those pretty bras just seem to meet you at eye level at the top of every escalator.
This would be fine but you do have to go shopping. You have to confront the source of fear: the lingerie department. Enter this place with eyes averted, quickly pass the pretty pink ones with black lace, the white ones with the satin and silk, the underwired ones, the t-shirt ones, the ‘exaggerate your cleavage’ ones, the ‘uplift and flatter’ ones, uh, flatter, you’re feeling very flat by now.
Keep going – you have some of these at home - but soft and feminine isn’t for you anymore. Think reconstruction, think building, think hard hat. You are looking for scaffolding, hoists and iron girders.
Hah, at last you find them, hidden at floor level, and it hurts to bend. You squat, jeans stereotypically slipping down, and search for your materials. There, we have a choice, in black and white. You can begin to reconstruct with these alright.
Funny that in all these highly active years I scarcely owned a sports’ bra and now that so much as thinking about tennis makes me weak, I have a good collection of them.
Flick the dictionary pages forward now, to half-way through. Humour and irony are just one page apart.
Tuesday, 20 December 2011
11. Puppies for Christmas (Aesthetics, Part 1)
Which were you? A Cindy or a Barbie girl? I’ll nail my colours and colour my nails: I had a Cindy doll, and found the big-boobed Barbie quite distasteful, at least until puberty.
After several agonising months as a twelve-year-old begging the blighters to grow and finally having reason to wear a Berlei double A cup bra, breasts became part of the body furniture. We all had them, (girls that is) more or less, and we could get on with the business of growing up. By sixteen I’d accepted that ‘voluptuous’ wasn’t a word that would be ascribed to me, saw an advantage if not a cleavage, and knew I wouldn’t fall out of a bikini if a big wave hit the beach. They never got in the way, never caused embarrassment, were good as gold.
When babies came along, they came into their own, even though it took a while to realise you need to feed yourself if you want the breasts to feed the baby. There was something wonderfully satisfying about placating a baby’s hunger and something immensely special about that closeness of nursing and nurturing. It always strikes me as odd that we live in a society where pictures of women’s breasts are everywhere, selling everything from newspapers to fast cars, yet we still feel awkward if a woman wants to discreetly expose a limited area of breast for their intended purpose of feeding a baby.
At this point we reach the subject of how breasts feature in our culture, from Reubens to Jordan. As a child I thought it wonderful that naked breasts should be on display above the fireplace of a friend’s house - I learnt that what I thought was rude was actually Reubens - and it probably sparked a long-term interest in art. Then there is Jordan (not, just to clarify, the sixteenth century Spanish artist but the twenty-first century one whose pictures regularly exhibit in ‘Hello’ magazine) with the cosmetically enhanced breasts she affectionately refers to as her ‘puppies’. I wonder what breed these would be? Labrador? Large, golden-brown and like being ...?
I used to think that the only thing I had in common with Katie Price was that we both liked riding - horses, of course - although she is a true expert, with masses of very varied experience. Me, I’m an amateur, can rise to the trot and once managed a few jumps before falling off. In matters equestrian I cannot follow her, but in matters canine, I can learn something about ‘puppies’.
I think I looked after my puppies, even though one sadly died. But hey, it’s Christmas and I have two now, and hopefully, this time, for life.
After several agonising months as a twelve-year-old begging the blighters to grow and finally having reason to wear a Berlei double A cup bra, breasts became part of the body furniture. We all had them, (girls that is) more or less, and we could get on with the business of growing up. By sixteen I’d accepted that ‘voluptuous’ wasn’t a word that would be ascribed to me, saw an advantage if not a cleavage, and knew I wouldn’t fall out of a bikini if a big wave hit the beach. They never got in the way, never caused embarrassment, were good as gold.
When babies came along, they came into their own, even though it took a while to realise you need to feed yourself if you want the breasts to feed the baby. There was something wonderfully satisfying about placating a baby’s hunger and something immensely special about that closeness of nursing and nurturing. It always strikes me as odd that we live in a society where pictures of women’s breasts are everywhere, selling everything from newspapers to fast cars, yet we still feel awkward if a woman wants to discreetly expose a limited area of breast for their intended purpose of feeding a baby.
At this point we reach the subject of how breasts feature in our culture, from Reubens to Jordan. As a child I thought it wonderful that naked breasts should be on display above the fireplace of a friend’s house - I learnt that what I thought was rude was actually Reubens - and it probably sparked a long-term interest in art. Then there is Jordan (not, just to clarify, the sixteenth century Spanish artist but the twenty-first century one whose pictures regularly exhibit in ‘Hello’ magazine) with the cosmetically enhanced breasts she affectionately refers to as her ‘puppies’. I wonder what breed these would be? Labrador? Large, golden-brown and like being ...?
I used to think that the only thing I had in common with Katie Price was that we both liked riding - horses, of course - although she is a true expert, with masses of very varied experience. Me, I’m an amateur, can rise to the trot and once managed a few jumps before falling off. In matters equestrian I cannot follow her, but in matters canine, I can learn something about ‘puppies’.
I think I looked after my puppies, even though one sadly died. But hey, it’s Christmas and I have two now, and hopefully, this time, for life.
Monday, 19 December 2011
10. The Lucky List
I learnt I had DCIS on 28 April 2011, the day before the Royal Wedding, a long bank holiday weekend, for which I was grateful as I could hide away, slap on a smile, pretend it was happening to someone else, then focus on finishing an MA assignment for the deadline on 3 May.
On Wednesday 4 May I had a long appointment with the Consultant surgeon and the Macmillan nurse. This time my husband was with me; a reassuring companion who helped me make sense of it all. There was no escaping now. This was for real and it was happening to me. The dates and details of the surgery were planned and explained. Fortunately and joyously, the fulfilment of a lifetime ambition to go to Cuba, scheduled for the end of May, could go ahead, as the surgery could wait until afterwards.
I went home and wrote out the Lucky List, the positives:
1. It’s not an aggressive, invasive or urgent cancer;
2. So many women have a tougher deal and go through the doors further down that Corridor;
3. It would be much tougher to cope with the aesthetics if I were younger;
4. Mastectomy comes with reconstruction. This is so important as I won’t experience the sense of loss, emptiness, bleakness I'd be likely to feel if I were just having the mastectomy. There’s a replacement breast of sorts;
5. I already have children and was able breast-feed; so glad I didn’t miss out on that;
6. It comes at a time of my life when it’s the least disruptive: how tough if the children were small;
7. I can still go to Cuba;
8. It shouldn’t affect my son’s A Level exams;
9. Six weeks off work in the middle of summer with imposed idleness? I should find something good in that!
10. Last, but far from least, I would receive the best medical care, possibly in the world.
Fortunately, the negatives list was shorter:
1. This is major surgery and it will hurt;
2. I’m terrified of anaesthetics;
3. Even though there is reconstruction, I’m still losing a breast;
4. There’ll be emotional pain to deal with;
5. It’ll take time to recover.
The two that I got wrong were the aesthetics and anaesthetics. The anaesthetic was no problem; experts help you slide out of consciousness with ease and without fear. The aesthetics were much more problematic than I’d anticipated. Size, it seems, does matter. Breasts are an issue, as you’ll see in tomorrow’s blog.
On Wednesday 4 May I had a long appointment with the Consultant surgeon and the Macmillan nurse. This time my husband was with me; a reassuring companion who helped me make sense of it all. There was no escaping now. This was for real and it was happening to me. The dates and details of the surgery were planned and explained. Fortunately and joyously, the fulfilment of a lifetime ambition to go to Cuba, scheduled for the end of May, could go ahead, as the surgery could wait until afterwards.
I went home and wrote out the Lucky List, the positives:
1. It’s not an aggressive, invasive or urgent cancer;
2. So many women have a tougher deal and go through the doors further down that Corridor;
3. It would be much tougher to cope with the aesthetics if I were younger;
4. Mastectomy comes with reconstruction. This is so important as I won’t experience the sense of loss, emptiness, bleakness I'd be likely to feel if I were just having the mastectomy. There’s a replacement breast of sorts;
5. I already have children and was able breast-feed; so glad I didn’t miss out on that;
6. It comes at a time of my life when it’s the least disruptive: how tough if the children were small;
7. I can still go to Cuba;
8. It shouldn’t affect my son’s A Level exams;
9. Six weeks off work in the middle of summer with imposed idleness? I should find something good in that!
10. Last, but far from least, I would receive the best medical care, possibly in the world.
Fortunately, the negatives list was shorter:
1. This is major surgery and it will hurt;
2. I’m terrified of anaesthetics;
3. Even though there is reconstruction, I’m still losing a breast;
4. There’ll be emotional pain to deal with;
5. It’ll take time to recover.
The two that I got wrong were the aesthetics and anaesthetics. The anaesthetic was no problem; experts help you slide out of consciousness with ease and without fear. The aesthetics were much more problematic than I’d anticipated. Size, it seems, does matter. Breasts are an issue, as you’ll see in tomorrow’s blog.
Sunday, 18 December 2011
9. Isn't Science Wonderful?
Two electrons are walking down the road. One says, “Oh, I’ve just realised, I’ve lost my negativity!”
“Are you sure?” asks the other.
“Yes, I’m positive.”
I wasn’t good at Science at school but I am lucky that plenty of other people are. It is their genius that enabled me to have reconstruction as part of the mastectomy. In previous years women had to wait, but now the surgical procedure has been developed to give us a choice. I was lucky too, apparently because I was small-breasted and physically fit, that the operation would just involve the chest area. There are possibilities to take flesh and muscle from the stomach or back, but that would have meant more scarring, more pain, more discomfort.
In the two-hours plus I was in theatre on 14 June, simply put, they removed the breast tissue and lymph nodes, then lifted skin and muscle from the chest wall, placed the expander beneath it, then stitched me up. When I came round in the Recovery Room, my chest hurt and I found it difficult to breathe, despite the oxygen they were giving me, probably due to the tightness of the muscles having been moved to a new place.
I am in awe of all the people that have made this operation possible, from the researchers who figured out how muscles and skin could be moved to the surgeons who make it happen. I am also in awe of the way the human body can accept and adapt.
Some say cancer messes with your head. In this case, my head did feel a bit messed up because it had to adapt to the new structure of my upper body, so that it couldn’t quite get things to work as they once had. It wasn’t just my strength that was affected but the ability to combine several muscle groups to do a task. For instance, basic culinary procedures became unpleasantly difficult: cutting bread, grating cheese and mashing potatoes, carrying trays, opening tins and, horror of horrors, opening a wine bottle with a corkscrew! Thankfully, buying wine with screw-tops had already become a domestic habit, so this last inability wasn’t discovered until quite recently. Ancient scientific genius ensures champagne corks need minimal encouragement to open by themselves.
Others kindly did the chores I struggled with, but the one thing I had to do again by myself was return to swimming, one of my loves and comforts. Just as on the first afternoon after the operation I had learnt to eat, speak and walk again like a two-year-old, six weeks later I felt like a toddler, back to where my children had been as babies, in the leisure pool at the local swimming baths.
It wasn’t just the nostalgia of coming to this ‘baby’ pool where we’d spent many happy hours that brought a little tear to my eye; it was the self-pity of a strong swimmer who scythed the water unafraid, covering a kilometre in half an hour, now, timidly crossing her arms over her weird-looking chest and dropping quickly to be hidden by the water. Slowly at first, she made her way across the narrow pool, telling her muscles how to move as once she would have guided the infant swimmers, and, like them, gradually joyful that water holds us up if we trust it. The rearranged muscles were working together and getting stronger. One breadth, then another, and another. Swimming was flying. Her heart was soaring.
The negative had become positive.
“Are you sure?” asks the other.
“Yes, I’m positive.”
I wasn’t good at Science at school but I am lucky that plenty of other people are. It is their genius that enabled me to have reconstruction as part of the mastectomy. In previous years women had to wait, but now the surgical procedure has been developed to give us a choice. I was lucky too, apparently because I was small-breasted and physically fit, that the operation would just involve the chest area. There are possibilities to take flesh and muscle from the stomach or back, but that would have meant more scarring, more pain, more discomfort.
In the two-hours plus I was in theatre on 14 June, simply put, they removed the breast tissue and lymph nodes, then lifted skin and muscle from the chest wall, placed the expander beneath it, then stitched me up. When I came round in the Recovery Room, my chest hurt and I found it difficult to breathe, despite the oxygen they were giving me, probably due to the tightness of the muscles having been moved to a new place.
I am in awe of all the people that have made this operation possible, from the researchers who figured out how muscles and skin could be moved to the surgeons who make it happen. I am also in awe of the way the human body can accept and adapt.
Some say cancer messes with your head. In this case, my head did feel a bit messed up because it had to adapt to the new structure of my upper body, so that it couldn’t quite get things to work as they once had. It wasn’t just my strength that was affected but the ability to combine several muscle groups to do a task. For instance, basic culinary procedures became unpleasantly difficult: cutting bread, grating cheese and mashing potatoes, carrying trays, opening tins and, horror of horrors, opening a wine bottle with a corkscrew! Thankfully, buying wine with screw-tops had already become a domestic habit, so this last inability wasn’t discovered until quite recently. Ancient scientific genius ensures champagne corks need minimal encouragement to open by themselves.
Others kindly did the chores I struggled with, but the one thing I had to do again by myself was return to swimming, one of my loves and comforts. Just as on the first afternoon after the operation I had learnt to eat, speak and walk again like a two-year-old, six weeks later I felt like a toddler, back to where my children had been as babies, in the leisure pool at the local swimming baths.
It wasn’t just the nostalgia of coming to this ‘baby’ pool where we’d spent many happy hours that brought a little tear to my eye; it was the self-pity of a strong swimmer who scythed the water unafraid, covering a kilometre in half an hour, now, timidly crossing her arms over her weird-looking chest and dropping quickly to be hidden by the water. Slowly at first, she made her way across the narrow pool, telling her muscles how to move as once she would have guided the infant swimmers, and, like them, gradually joyful that water holds us up if we trust it. The rearranged muscles were working together and getting stronger. One breadth, then another, and another. Swimming was flying. Her heart was soaring.
The negative had become positive.
Saturday, 17 December 2011
8. “...stick around until the bandages come off” (Time: Tom Waits)
One of the best opening paragraphs I read as a child went something like this:
“When I awoke I knew something was different. I had a remarkably clear view of the ceiling...” It turns out that the narrator has turned invisible and his clear view was because his nose was no longer in the way. I thought of this the first time I had a shower the day after the initial operation in June. Looking downwards, I could see my belly from an angle I hadn’t seen since I was twelve. Depressing as this was, the area was still so padded up with dressings it would be a few weeks before I needed to fully face the truth of what was hidden underneath.
I thought too of another memorable detail from my childhood reading. In “Helen Keller’s Teacher”, the teacher, Annie Sullivan, almost blind due to a childhood eye disease, has her sight restored after a series of operations. The description of the bandages coming off and the revelation of her returned sight are both intense and exciting.
I think a lot about the coming off of bandages: in Tom Waits song, ‘Time’ and the two books I’ve mentioned. If I’m honest here, I’m using these references to others’ experiences to delay talking about mine. But here I am, having made a commitment to this blog and would feel a coward not to talk about this part. If I nip off to see if we have any courage in the cupboard whilst I’m telling you this, please be patient!
Six days after this last operation, the reconstruction one on 9th December, was the day I was allowed to remove some of the outer bandages. As I had been told to keep the dressings dry, the first celebration was washing my hair and the second, pulling off the by now rather itchy dressings. Blue Peter Christmas presents came to mind: peeling back sticky-backed plastic to reveal something made earlier. The view from above was promising, but plenty of blue bruising was less pretty. It's good to have got this far though. The permanent implants are settling in, and although there is 2% chance of infection, my fear of it is diminishing.
Even when the final dressings are removed, it will be a whole lot better than the day in the shower, two weeks after the June operation, when at last the dressings gave way to the flowing water and I finally had to confront what they had been hiding. If Ann Sullivan’s bandages being removed gave her sight, mine revealed an image of sightlessness, a lost face with a scar slashed across it and the central eye sealed over. It was the ugliest face I had ever seen and I wept for the pity of it, glad that the tears mingled with the water and the sounds of my sobs were masked by the gurgling drain.
Now I’ve told you. Time washes away even the worst times.
Tom Waits-Time, from the 1985 album 'Rain Dogs'. Backing video taken from a live performance on the 1988 film 'Big Time'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_eR0IVSOhY&feature=player_embedded
“When I awoke I knew something was different. I had a remarkably clear view of the ceiling...” It turns out that the narrator has turned invisible and his clear view was because his nose was no longer in the way. I thought of this the first time I had a shower the day after the initial operation in June. Looking downwards, I could see my belly from an angle I hadn’t seen since I was twelve. Depressing as this was, the area was still so padded up with dressings it would be a few weeks before I needed to fully face the truth of what was hidden underneath.
I thought too of another memorable detail from my childhood reading. In “Helen Keller’s Teacher”, the teacher, Annie Sullivan, almost blind due to a childhood eye disease, has her sight restored after a series of operations. The description of the bandages coming off and the revelation of her returned sight are both intense and exciting.
I think a lot about the coming off of bandages: in Tom Waits song, ‘Time’ and the two books I’ve mentioned. If I’m honest here, I’m using these references to others’ experiences to delay talking about mine. But here I am, having made a commitment to this blog and would feel a coward not to talk about this part. If I nip off to see if we have any courage in the cupboard whilst I’m telling you this, please be patient!
Six days after this last operation, the reconstruction one on 9th December, was the day I was allowed to remove some of the outer bandages. As I had been told to keep the dressings dry, the first celebration was washing my hair and the second, pulling off the by now rather itchy dressings. Blue Peter Christmas presents came to mind: peeling back sticky-backed plastic to reveal something made earlier. The view from above was promising, but plenty of blue bruising was less pretty. It's good to have got this far though. The permanent implants are settling in, and although there is 2% chance of infection, my fear of it is diminishing.
Even when the final dressings are removed, it will be a whole lot better than the day in the shower, two weeks after the June operation, when at last the dressings gave way to the flowing water and I finally had to confront what they had been hiding. If Ann Sullivan’s bandages being removed gave her sight, mine revealed an image of sightlessness, a lost face with a scar slashed across it and the central eye sealed over. It was the ugliest face I had ever seen and I wept for the pity of it, glad that the tears mingled with the water and the sounds of my sobs were masked by the gurgling drain.
Now I’ve told you. Time washes away even the worst times.
Tom Waits-Time, from the 1985 album 'Rain Dogs'. Backing video taken from a live performance on the 1988 film 'Big Time'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_eR0IVSOhY&feature=player_embedded
Friday, 16 December 2011
7. Taking control of the battle
Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell, 1984
“I’ve lost Sam,” an elderly lady leaned over the fence to tell her neighbour.
“Oh, dear. Where did you last see him?” the neighbour replied, taking a rest from the gardening.
“No, no, Sylvia.I’ve lost him. He died last night.”
In my blissfully ignorant days of youth euphemisms seemed so silly and open to misinterpretation. Why couldn’t people just use proper words? Yet, I learnt as I grew up that when life throws death at us, the little word ‘loss’ becomes many people’s euphemism of choice.
The ‘Party’ slogan from the George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” echoed down the halls of memory and I began to make up my own slogan for coping with my diagnosis: “Who controls the language controls the pain.”
Those who know me might think it’s the typical reaction of a control-freak, but the concept of losing a part of your body that has been with you all your adult life is a kind of bereavement and communicating that ‘loss’ is so much easier if you stay in control of the language. I realised I could do this best by protecting myself behind a wall of different languages, like a fortress with towers and ramparts designed to keep attackers at bay. My ‘tour de force’ (tower of strength?) was the wonderful Latin term of my diagnosis, Ductal Carcinoma in Situ. It took several seconds to say, then depending on your knowledge of Latin, up to ten minutes to work out what it meant. Here was some good stalling time, time to think up a good story! “It’s a cancer that’s not going anywhere at the moment, a ‘good’ cancer.” I began. “It is asleep, trapped in the labyrinths of now disused milk ducts, a comatose minotaur in the mine-shafts of early motherhood."
“Like Theseus,” I continued, “the surgeon will go in and kill it before it properly wakes up. No-one knows how long it might sleep but who would be foolish enough to wait until it wakes up and careers out of control through those labyrinthine ducts until it reached other gateways, the lymph nodes, and the main highway of the bloodstream?“
If Ductal Carcinoma in Situ was my best defence, my best weapon was the word ‘pre-cancerous’. Sounding like ‘precarious’ it was an anaesthetised dart gun keeping the beast asleep and benign, like it hadn’t got the strength to do any real damage. Only when I felt really brave could I pull out the pin out of the word ‘mastectomy’ and throw in the air like a grenade before mentally running away.
What I dreaded most was the invasion of people's word choices to describe what was happening to me as that would kill my courage. The most painful of all, the one that even now makes me wince, is the expression ‘have her breast off’. For this is an image of defeat, of helpless women at the mercy of sabre-wielding soldiers on horseback, slashing their way through civilians, the dying, the injured, the weeping.
So it was that between diagnosis and surgical procedure, I chose to play the goddess Euphemia, pottering round a bland garden of self-deception, picking words carefully to cover over the thorny truth, and by and large pretending it was happening to someone else.
“What? Cancer?” Euphemia would say. “No this isn’t happening to me. No, not me. Mastectomy? No, no, don’t do it to me... Do it to Julia. Julie then, whoever she is, but not to me.”
“I’ve lost Sam,” an elderly lady leaned over the fence to tell her neighbour.
“Oh, dear. Where did you last see him?” the neighbour replied, taking a rest from the gardening.
“No, no, Sylvia.I’ve lost him. He died last night.”
In my blissfully ignorant days of youth euphemisms seemed so silly and open to misinterpretation. Why couldn’t people just use proper words? Yet, I learnt as I grew up that when life throws death at us, the little word ‘loss’ becomes many people’s euphemism of choice.
The ‘Party’ slogan from the George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” echoed down the halls of memory and I began to make up my own slogan for coping with my diagnosis: “Who controls the language controls the pain.”
Those who know me might think it’s the typical reaction of a control-freak, but the concept of losing a part of your body that has been with you all your adult life is a kind of bereavement and communicating that ‘loss’ is so much easier if you stay in control of the language. I realised I could do this best by protecting myself behind a wall of different languages, like a fortress with towers and ramparts designed to keep attackers at bay. My ‘tour de force’ (tower of strength?) was the wonderful Latin term of my diagnosis, Ductal Carcinoma in Situ. It took several seconds to say, then depending on your knowledge of Latin, up to ten minutes to work out what it meant. Here was some good stalling time, time to think up a good story! “It’s a cancer that’s not going anywhere at the moment, a ‘good’ cancer.” I began. “It is asleep, trapped in the labyrinths of now disused milk ducts, a comatose minotaur in the mine-shafts of early motherhood."
“Like Theseus,” I continued, “the surgeon will go in and kill it before it properly wakes up. No-one knows how long it might sleep but who would be foolish enough to wait until it wakes up and careers out of control through those labyrinthine ducts until it reached other gateways, the lymph nodes, and the main highway of the bloodstream?“
If Ductal Carcinoma in Situ was my best defence, my best weapon was the word ‘pre-cancerous’. Sounding like ‘precarious’ it was an anaesthetised dart gun keeping the beast asleep and benign, like it hadn’t got the strength to do any real damage. Only when I felt really brave could I pull out the pin out of the word ‘mastectomy’ and throw in the air like a grenade before mentally running away.
What I dreaded most was the invasion of people's word choices to describe what was happening to me as that would kill my courage. The most painful of all, the one that even now makes me wince, is the expression ‘have her breast off’. For this is an image of defeat, of helpless women at the mercy of sabre-wielding soldiers on horseback, slashing their way through civilians, the dying, the injured, the weeping.
So it was that between diagnosis and surgical procedure, I chose to play the goddess Euphemia, pottering round a bland garden of self-deception, picking words carefully to cover over the thorny truth, and by and large pretending it was happening to someone else.
“What? Cancer?” Euphemia would say. “No this isn’t happening to me. No, not me. Mastectomy? No, no, don’t do it to me... Do it to Julia. Julie then, whoever she is, but not to me.”
Thursday, 15 December 2011
Reconstruction - happy in my own skin
“We read literature to learn how to walk around in someone else’s skin.” I tell students, justifying my existence as an English teacher and giving them a reason to read a 400 page classic. I borrow my phrase from Atticus Finch in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ who teaches his children tolerance by telling them:
“if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...”
“Sir?”
“Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” (To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee)
Everything we say in life, I’m convinced, has a way of coming along later to mock us and this is true of this particular motto.
Two days after my second operation – reconstruction - the one that attempts to put back what was taken away, I woke at two in the morning in a panic. What have I lost? I asked myself, as if I’d been careless enough to leave my breast somewhere with the same forgetful ease I have left umbrellas on public transport.
Following the diagnosis in April I steeled myself to be without a left breast, then once it disappeared in the operation on 14 June, I had to get used to the empty space. A few weeks later, as part of the reconstruction process, saline solution was injected into the expander and gradually, every two weeks, the skin and muscles were stretched to create a new shape. The operation on 9 December was to make that shape permanent with an implant and a small adjustment to the right breast to provide some sort of symmetry.
So this middle-of-the-night panic had me desperate to work out what had gone, what had come back and what was hopefully going to stay. Whose skin am I now in? I asked myself. As I came up to consciousness, it was a relief to realise that these additions under the bandages and bedclothes will be a new part of the old me. We take our body bits for granted; they don’t cause us any trouble, but when we suddenly have to lose them as a necessary exchange for the hope of life, then it’s not just our bodies, but our heads that are affected. Cancer messes with your head. Perhaps, now I’m coming through at the other side, my mind is finally facing up to what’s gone on, little by little.
So, for now, I shall disregard Atticus Finch and the 'walking round in someone else's skin' motto and very consciously walk around in my own, hope against hope that it likes what the surgeon has put under it, and ask it to play nice and heal over. For a while after, there’ll be a silent rejoicing that I am lucky enough to be walking around, very much alive, and very, very happy in my own skin.
“if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view...”
“Sir?”
“Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” (To Kill a Mockingbird. Harper Lee)
Everything we say in life, I’m convinced, has a way of coming along later to mock us and this is true of this particular motto.
Two days after my second operation – reconstruction - the one that attempts to put back what was taken away, I woke at two in the morning in a panic. What have I lost? I asked myself, as if I’d been careless enough to leave my breast somewhere with the same forgetful ease I have left umbrellas on public transport.
Following the diagnosis in April I steeled myself to be without a left breast, then once it disappeared in the operation on 14 June, I had to get used to the empty space. A few weeks later, as part of the reconstruction process, saline solution was injected into the expander and gradually, every two weeks, the skin and muscles were stretched to create a new shape. The operation on 9 December was to make that shape permanent with an implant and a small adjustment to the right breast to provide some sort of symmetry.
So this middle-of-the-night panic had me desperate to work out what had gone, what had come back and what was hopefully going to stay. Whose skin am I now in? I asked myself. As I came up to consciousness, it was a relief to realise that these additions under the bandages and bedclothes will be a new part of the old me. We take our body bits for granted; they don’t cause us any trouble, but when we suddenly have to lose them as a necessary exchange for the hope of life, then it’s not just our bodies, but our heads that are affected. Cancer messes with your head. Perhaps, now I’m coming through at the other side, my mind is finally facing up to what’s gone on, little by little.
So, for now, I shall disregard Atticus Finch and the 'walking round in someone else's skin' motto and very consciously walk around in my own, hope against hope that it likes what the surgeon has put under it, and ask it to play nice and heal over. For a while after, there’ll be a silent rejoicing that I am lucky enough to be walking around, very much alive, and very, very happy in my own skin.
Wednesday, 14 December 2011
5, Home from Hospital
Who are the best people in a hospital?
The ultra sound people!
A neutron goes into a bar and orders a drink.
Neutron: How much?
Bar person: For you, no charge.
The jokes are clinking across the dinner table toasting us being reunited as a family. “You can tell you’ve been to university. The jokes are getting more intellectual!” we tell our newly-returned oldest son.
Relaxed and happy, all together again, this meal contrasts with the one on 6th May when we told the boys the situation in between one important A Level exam and another, just in case the information were to damage the supreme concentration and control needed for foreign language speaking tests.
Then, mouth dry and hardly enjoying the lovely meal my husband had made, I waited until we had all finished.
Me: I have been to hospital the last two Thursdays, once for a biopsy then to get the results, which is why I have been very tired when I’ve come home. They have confirmed that I have pre-cancerous cells in my left breast and I will need to have an operation to remove them. It’s nothing to worry about.
Their compassion was immediate and thankfully one of them was direct enough to ask: So have you got breast cancer then?
Me: That’s the good thing about this. It’s about taking away the cells before they have time to develop into proper cancer. It’s lucky that they were found early. I’m glad you asked that though...
I’ll be tired after the operation and not able to do the usual things and I’ll be off work. I’m not ill, in fact I’m very well...I’m running the Women’s 10k on Sunday so there’s nothing to worry about.
We chose to wait to tell you until after you’d done your Speaking Test, just in case it unsettled you. The operation will be on 14th June just before your exams finish but hopefully it won’t have any impact on them.
Afterwards, during Friday evening, the boys were lovely, kind and affectionate. They stayed close; there was nothing we needed to say, but they were sweet and companionable. Son 1 and I watched the film ‘Charlotte Gray’ based on Sebastian Faulks’ novel. It was a good message of bravery, determination and triumph over extreme adversity as was watching Bear Grylls in Mexico’s Copper Canyon, which I watched with Son 2.
Now it’s December. They’re playing football together, not in the dark and rain on the water-logged lawn, but on the X-Box, a few doors across the landing. I can hear them as I write, their cheers, jibes and laughter. Soon there’ll be guitars on full volume as they thrash a song out together. It’s very noisy.
What‘s best about being home from hospital?
Being part of a family’s noise and loving every sound.
The ultra sound people!
A neutron goes into a bar and orders a drink.
Neutron: How much?
Bar person: For you, no charge.
The jokes are clinking across the dinner table toasting us being reunited as a family. “You can tell you’ve been to university. The jokes are getting more intellectual!” we tell our newly-returned oldest son.
Relaxed and happy, all together again, this meal contrasts with the one on 6th May when we told the boys the situation in between one important A Level exam and another, just in case the information were to damage the supreme concentration and control needed for foreign language speaking tests.
Then, mouth dry and hardly enjoying the lovely meal my husband had made, I waited until we had all finished.
Me: I have been to hospital the last two Thursdays, once for a biopsy then to get the results, which is why I have been very tired when I’ve come home. They have confirmed that I have pre-cancerous cells in my left breast and I will need to have an operation to remove them. It’s nothing to worry about.
Their compassion was immediate and thankfully one of them was direct enough to ask: So have you got breast cancer then?
Me: That’s the good thing about this. It’s about taking away the cells before they have time to develop into proper cancer. It’s lucky that they were found early. I’m glad you asked that though...
I’ll be tired after the operation and not able to do the usual things and I’ll be off work. I’m not ill, in fact I’m very well...I’m running the Women’s 10k on Sunday so there’s nothing to worry about.
We chose to wait to tell you until after you’d done your Speaking Test, just in case it unsettled you. The operation will be on 14th June just before your exams finish but hopefully it won’t have any impact on them.
Afterwards, during Friday evening, the boys were lovely, kind and affectionate. They stayed close; there was nothing we needed to say, but they were sweet and companionable. Son 1 and I watched the film ‘Charlotte Gray’ based on Sebastian Faulks’ novel. It was a good message of bravery, determination and triumph over extreme adversity as was watching Bear Grylls in Mexico’s Copper Canyon, which I watched with Son 2.
Now it’s December. They’re playing football together, not in the dark and rain on the water-logged lawn, but on the X-Box, a few doors across the landing. I can hear them as I write, their cheers, jibes and laughter. Soon there’ll be guitars on full volume as they thrash a song out together. It’s very noisy.
What‘s best about being home from hospital?
Being part of a family’s noise and loving every sound.
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
4. The corridor of many doors
Life is a corridor of many doors. Behind each one is an opportunity.
That’s what I’d like to think, but on the Corridor of Cancer, the doors tend not to open onto opportunity.
I don’t know about your hospital, but the breast clinic at mine was a series of doors off a long corridor which is perhaps why a metaphor of corridors was helpful to me in trying to understand what happened.
I went, one sunny spring afternoon, to get the results of a biopsy I’d had a couple of weeks earlier. Of course, I was just going to hear that there was nothing to worry about and I would be walking away into the late April sunshine feeling guilty I’d wasted everybody’s time. Not so. The air was suddenly thick with words I didn’t want to hear.
There are pre-cancerous cells ... mastectomy advised ... another biopsy just to be sure...
Pre-cancerous. The mind tries to make sense of it all. Pre-cancerous. That means it’s not really cancer yet. What a hand-hold that little prefix was to a woman sliding down into a crevasse!
Mastectomy. That seems a bit drastic. But if I have a mastectomy I won’t need chemo and radiotherapy. Thank God, those words have always filled me with terror.
The spring sunshine made our faces glow and mine felt hot, trying as it was to contain those prickly tears.
Although having the first biopsy had been an uncomfortable experience which had left me exhausted and in pain, if another might help in the avoidance of something so drastic as a mastectomy, it was to be welcomed. Of course, looking back now, I realise how the mastectomy was probably inevitable, but who loses hope so early on? The second biopsy was to see how widespread the cells were.
You will notice that I have written quite a lot already and the word ‘lucky’ has been silent. I can’t keep it quiet any longer. You see, in all of this awful news crashing around my ears, I was lucky, am lucky, that the Consultant Surgeon broke the news in such a kind and understanding way, diminishing the brutality of the solution with its advantages, the key one being reconstruction of the breast. I am lucky that she is one of the kindest, most skilful women I have ever come across and is at once reassuringly down to earth whilst at the same time highly capable in being at the ‘cutting edge’ (excuse pun) of breast surgery and reconstruction.
Laden with leaflets about DCIS – Ductal Carcinoma in Situ - and introduced to my Macmillan nurse, I thought about corridors. I had expected to walk in one door, marked ‘All clear and nothing to worry about’ but had been ushered past that to the one marked, ‘Early stages, treatable, likely to make a full recovery.’ I realised that in the shadowy imagined corridor were many doors; the signs on each became progressively more depressing, and there at the very end, I could just make out the dull sign marked exit, terminal, death.
I shivered as if the icy draught which blew from that direction was keen to remind me of just where I was. I glanced up to confirm the sign - early stages, treatable, likely to make a fully recovery - was the door I had been summoned to, turned the handle and stepped into the startling light. I closed the door, eager to escape the ominous passage I had stood in, sighed with relief and allowed the warm sun on my skin to soothe me. ‘Thank you, God.’ I whispered. ‘for it being this door, just one down from the all-clear. I saw the other doors and know where the corridor leads. I’m lucky. Thank you.’
Outside, beyond the window, that Thursday afternoon after Easter, nature was rampaging through the fields, spray-painting the landscape with letters of vibrant yellows and intense reds.
‘Resurgam.’ she had written. ‘I will rise again.’ I read.
That’s what I’d like to think, but on the Corridor of Cancer, the doors tend not to open onto opportunity.
I don’t know about your hospital, but the breast clinic at mine was a series of doors off a long corridor which is perhaps why a metaphor of corridors was helpful to me in trying to understand what happened.
I went, one sunny spring afternoon, to get the results of a biopsy I’d had a couple of weeks earlier. Of course, I was just going to hear that there was nothing to worry about and I would be walking away into the late April sunshine feeling guilty I’d wasted everybody’s time. Not so. The air was suddenly thick with words I didn’t want to hear.
There are pre-cancerous cells ... mastectomy advised ... another biopsy just to be sure...
Pre-cancerous. The mind tries to make sense of it all. Pre-cancerous. That means it’s not really cancer yet. What a hand-hold that little prefix was to a woman sliding down into a crevasse!
Mastectomy. That seems a bit drastic. But if I have a mastectomy I won’t need chemo and radiotherapy. Thank God, those words have always filled me with terror.
The spring sunshine made our faces glow and mine felt hot, trying as it was to contain those prickly tears.
Although having the first biopsy had been an uncomfortable experience which had left me exhausted and in pain, if another might help in the avoidance of something so drastic as a mastectomy, it was to be welcomed. Of course, looking back now, I realise how the mastectomy was probably inevitable, but who loses hope so early on? The second biopsy was to see how widespread the cells were.
You will notice that I have written quite a lot already and the word ‘lucky’ has been silent. I can’t keep it quiet any longer. You see, in all of this awful news crashing around my ears, I was lucky, am lucky, that the Consultant Surgeon broke the news in such a kind and understanding way, diminishing the brutality of the solution with its advantages, the key one being reconstruction of the breast. I am lucky that she is one of the kindest, most skilful women I have ever come across and is at once reassuringly down to earth whilst at the same time highly capable in being at the ‘cutting edge’ (excuse pun) of breast surgery and reconstruction.
Laden with leaflets about DCIS – Ductal Carcinoma in Situ - and introduced to my Macmillan nurse, I thought about corridors. I had expected to walk in one door, marked ‘All clear and nothing to worry about’ but had been ushered past that to the one marked, ‘Early stages, treatable, likely to make a full recovery.’ I realised that in the shadowy imagined corridor were many doors; the signs on each became progressively more depressing, and there at the very end, I could just make out the dull sign marked exit, terminal, death.
I shivered as if the icy draught which blew from that direction was keen to remind me of just where I was. I glanced up to confirm the sign - early stages, treatable, likely to make a fully recovery - was the door I had been summoned to, turned the handle and stepped into the startling light. I closed the door, eager to escape the ominous passage I had stood in, sighed with relief and allowed the warm sun on my skin to soothe me. ‘Thank you, God.’ I whispered. ‘for it being this door, just one down from the all-clear. I saw the other doors and know where the corridor leads. I’m lucky. Thank you.’
Outside, beyond the window, that Thursday afternoon after Easter, nature was rampaging through the fields, spray-painting the landscape with letters of vibrant yellows and intense reds.
‘Resurgam.’ she had written. ‘I will rise again.’ I read.
Monday, 12 December 2011
3. The Lucky Bird
I have a few questions for you. Did you visit the support chat rooms of the cancer charities? Did you see how that little word ‘Lucky’ popped up where you least expected it to?
From those very personal stories the Lucky Bird gathers trails of hope for you in its dainty beak, to comfort you in a nest of words, to give you a sense there is a safe place as you deal with your diagnosis.
It is a timid bird but keep watching and listening. How long before it becomes tame enough to hop around the garden of your conversations; how soon before it is making its nest in your opening sentences? Listen for its call. It is there like a blackbird singing sweetly, almost imperceptibly, weaving its song into the babbling brook of speech, your own cancer narrative.
Lucky is a sweet little bird, courageously flying in the face of the Invisible Hawk that is Cancer.
Its eyes unblinking, the Cancer Hawk sits and waits. It sits. It waits. It watches while we scurry around like tiny creatures in the undergrowth, oblivious to its watching, too busy to look up, safe in our little skins. It is the master of time, the master of stealth, ready to stoop. It chooses us.
This is unlucky.
Sometimes, because of all the good research and knowledge we now have of the possible causes of cancer, we blame ourselves, allow ourselves to think others will blame us.
We know so much about what can help prevent it. But we don’t always know why we got it. Most of the people I know who have had cancer, who survived it or who died, were not to blame. They didn’t choose it; it chose them.
They were unlucky. I was unlucky to lose people I loved dearly and miss very much because cancer chose them. We were unlucky as friends and family.
But unlucky doesn’t give courage, doesn’t give strength, doesn’t give help, or hope, doesn’t give you the will to fight, to pull your life out of cancer’s claws, to bite back, to affirm who you are.
What unlucky does do is give... give up.
From those very personal stories the Lucky Bird gathers trails of hope for you in its dainty beak, to comfort you in a nest of words, to give you a sense there is a safe place as you deal with your diagnosis.
It is a timid bird but keep watching and listening. How long before it becomes tame enough to hop around the garden of your conversations; how soon before it is making its nest in your opening sentences? Listen for its call. It is there like a blackbird singing sweetly, almost imperceptibly, weaving its song into the babbling brook of speech, your own cancer narrative.
Lucky is a sweet little bird, courageously flying in the face of the Invisible Hawk that is Cancer.
Its eyes unblinking, the Cancer Hawk sits and waits. It sits. It waits. It watches while we scurry around like tiny creatures in the undergrowth, oblivious to its watching, too busy to look up, safe in our little skins. It is the master of time, the master of stealth, ready to stoop. It chooses us.
This is unlucky.
Sometimes, because of all the good research and knowledge we now have of the possible causes of cancer, we blame ourselves, allow ourselves to think others will blame us.
We know so much about what can help prevent it. But we don’t always know why we got it. Most of the people I know who have had cancer, who survived it or who died, were not to blame. They didn’t choose it; it chose them.
They were unlucky. I was unlucky to lose people I loved dearly and miss very much because cancer chose them. We were unlucky as friends and family.
But unlucky doesn’t give courage, doesn’t give strength, doesn’t give help, or hope, doesn’t give you the will to fight, to pull your life out of cancer’s claws, to bite back, to affirm who you are.
What unlucky does do is give... give up.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
2. Why I am lucky.
Christmas approaches and I shall be warm and dry in bed while others are out in the cold looking for Christmas gifts and buying food. This year I shall dream away while other people get stressed. Do I feel selfish? No. Is this lucky? Yes.
It’s lucky not because I’m lazy and uncaring and don’t want to make Christmas ‘special’ for others. I am not being ‘dog in the manger’ (never quite sure what it means but seems appropriately seasonal) , nor making a one-woman protest against the great conspiracy that women are the default project managers of Christmas. (Pedants note*: I didn’t slip up and muddle my mangers with my managers).
I’m lucky because I am recovering from a final operation as part of my treatment for breast cancer, details of which will emerge in time.
I’m lucky because I’m here as in I’m here in life and have the rest of my life in front of me. I’m lucky because this is nearly the end of my treatment. I’m lucky that it’s likely to be over before the end of 2011 and I can look ahead at the start of 2012 to appreciating my life and living it to the max. Not that I didn’t do that before, but there’s always room for improvement.
I’m lucky that I have a loving family who’ll do the Christmas slog by and large so I don’t have to. I’m lucky that my children are in their teens and can do most things for themselves and might just do a bit for me too. Cups of tea made by your children taste so good, don’t they? I think they should include an instruction on the tea bag box: for best results and enhanced flavour, use a teapot, or alternatively, a teenager. Wouldn’t it be most refreshing to see a “Serving Suggestion” picture of a sixteen year old boy making tea instead of the dull pictures tea manufacturers impose on us, even if they did need to state “Teenager not included” to avoid a sudden dip in sales.
I’m lucky to have some wonderful friends who remember my key hospital dates and text me encouraging messages, who post instantly on Facebook when I give them just the briefest inkling of where I’m up to with this cancer story, who buy me ‘slinky’ pyjamas, cute nighties, flowers, lunch out when I’m feeling better, who drive me to pleasant places for the essential walks to get fit and healthy again. Friends whose colourful get-well cards adorn the shelves and nestle in amongst the bouquets of flowers.
Lucky to have the memory of loved ones’ voices whisper in my head as the needles go in. Lucky to have prayers in m heart as I slide out of consciousness.
Are you starting to see what makes us lucky? And this is just the beginning.
• Pedants note. Please note this is the imperative so no apostrophe required.
It’s lucky not because I’m lazy and uncaring and don’t want to make Christmas ‘special’ for others. I am not being ‘dog in the manger’ (never quite sure what it means but seems appropriately seasonal) , nor making a one-woman protest against the great conspiracy that women are the default project managers of Christmas. (Pedants note*: I didn’t slip up and muddle my mangers with my managers).
I’m lucky because I am recovering from a final operation as part of my treatment for breast cancer, details of which will emerge in time.
I’m lucky because I’m here as in I’m here in life and have the rest of my life in front of me. I’m lucky because this is nearly the end of my treatment. I’m lucky that it’s likely to be over before the end of 2011 and I can look ahead at the start of 2012 to appreciating my life and living it to the max. Not that I didn’t do that before, but there’s always room for improvement.
I’m lucky that I have a loving family who’ll do the Christmas slog by and large so I don’t have to. I’m lucky that my children are in their teens and can do most things for themselves and might just do a bit for me too. Cups of tea made by your children taste so good, don’t they? I think they should include an instruction on the tea bag box: for best results and enhanced flavour, use a teapot, or alternatively, a teenager. Wouldn’t it be most refreshing to see a “Serving Suggestion” picture of a sixteen year old boy making tea instead of the dull pictures tea manufacturers impose on us, even if they did need to state “Teenager not included” to avoid a sudden dip in sales.
I’m lucky to have some wonderful friends who remember my key hospital dates and text me encouraging messages, who post instantly on Facebook when I give them just the briefest inkling of where I’m up to with this cancer story, who buy me ‘slinky’ pyjamas, cute nighties, flowers, lunch out when I’m feeling better, who drive me to pleasant places for the essential walks to get fit and healthy again. Friends whose colourful get-well cards adorn the shelves and nestle in amongst the bouquets of flowers.
Lucky to have the memory of loved ones’ voices whisper in my head as the needles go in. Lucky to have prayers in m heart as I slide out of consciousness.
Are you starting to see what makes us lucky? And this is just the beginning.
• Pedants note. Please note this is the imperative so no apostrophe required.
1. How can you say lucky with cancer?
Welcome!
Perhaps you are reading this blog because:
a) You are unlucky enough to have been diagnosed with some form of cancer
b) You are unlucky enough to know someone who has been diagnosed with some form of cancer
c) You think a cancer diagnosis makes people write strange things and you want to see if you are right
d) You are a pedant of the English language and connecting ‘cancer ‘to ‘lucky’ has put your semantic sensitivities on red alert.
If any of the above statements apply to you we have, sadly on all counts, something in common.
You can’t stand in the same river twice. I can’t promise to provide anything other than a first hand perspective of just one experience of being diagnosed with cancer, receiving treatment and coming out the other side. As each of us is unique, there can be no two exact diagnoses, treatments, responses, reactions and perspectives. It may look like the same river, but it aint. (Pedantic note: slang expression intended).
I will start by explaining the title: How can you say lucky with cancer?
Over the coming days I will give you some answers to this rather odd question, starting with a simple introduction:
Visit the chat-rooms of the many charities providing cancer support. Time yourself to see how long it takes before someone will tell you they are lucky. Reading about what they are going through you might, if you see yourself as the c) d) types above, wonder whether those writing have really grasped the concept of this everyday English word.
If you, like me, visit the chat rooms, for some solidarity, some inspiration, some information, some shared experience, some friendship, some sympathy, some understanding, some moaning, some despairing, some celebrating, some explaining, some getting lost in the complexities of someone’s diagnosis, some getting lost in the complexities of someone’s treatment, some reassurance, or even just something to do when all else seems pointless, you will understand the generosity with which the word ‘lucky’ is used. You’ll be moved by the humility, humbled by the bravery, stunned by people’s capacity to be forever positive and give so much hope and encouragement to others.
So luck is relative and luck is what you make of your life. When your life is not the straightforwardly relatively easy thing it was before that dreadful day of diagnosis, it suddenly becomes intensely precious, a jewel you were keeping safe in a box for a special occasion. Now there is no time to waste, take it out, wear it, admire it, flaunt it. When we have to take a close look at that wonderful gift we take for granted, involuntarily our tongues touch the roof of our mouth to form a ‘lu’ sound followed quickly by the fricative ‘ck’ and before we know it, the ‘y’ is a wagging tail to the word: lucky.
Perhaps you are reading this blog because:
a) You are unlucky enough to have been diagnosed with some form of cancer
b) You are unlucky enough to know someone who has been diagnosed with some form of cancer
c) You think a cancer diagnosis makes people write strange things and you want to see if you are right
d) You are a pedant of the English language and connecting ‘cancer ‘to ‘lucky’ has put your semantic sensitivities on red alert.
If any of the above statements apply to you we have, sadly on all counts, something in common.
You can’t stand in the same river twice. I can’t promise to provide anything other than a first hand perspective of just one experience of being diagnosed with cancer, receiving treatment and coming out the other side. As each of us is unique, there can be no two exact diagnoses, treatments, responses, reactions and perspectives. It may look like the same river, but it aint. (Pedantic note: slang expression intended).
I will start by explaining the title: How can you say lucky with cancer?
Over the coming days I will give you some answers to this rather odd question, starting with a simple introduction:
Visit the chat-rooms of the many charities providing cancer support. Time yourself to see how long it takes before someone will tell you they are lucky. Reading about what they are going through you might, if you see yourself as the c) d) types above, wonder whether those writing have really grasped the concept of this everyday English word.
If you, like me, visit the chat rooms, for some solidarity, some inspiration, some information, some shared experience, some friendship, some sympathy, some understanding, some moaning, some despairing, some celebrating, some explaining, some getting lost in the complexities of someone’s diagnosis, some getting lost in the complexities of someone’s treatment, some reassurance, or even just something to do when all else seems pointless, you will understand the generosity with which the word ‘lucky’ is used. You’ll be moved by the humility, humbled by the bravery, stunned by people’s capacity to be forever positive and give so much hope and encouragement to others.
So luck is relative and luck is what you make of your life. When your life is not the straightforwardly relatively easy thing it was before that dreadful day of diagnosis, it suddenly becomes intensely precious, a jewel you were keeping safe in a box for a special occasion. Now there is no time to waste, take it out, wear it, admire it, flaunt it. When we have to take a close look at that wonderful gift we take for granted, involuntarily our tongues touch the roof of our mouth to form a ‘lu’ sound followed quickly by the fricative ‘ck’ and before we know it, the ‘y’ is a wagging tail to the word: lucky.
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