Eating the Underworld (12 page)

Finally, they had been made to see that it was unbearable. They had made agreements that they could never, should never, keep. Untenable agreements. And they had not wanted to know.

They had not wanted to know
. And finally Rachel saw. That was it, she thought, the answer to the mystery. That was why the violence had been necessary—it was the violence of recognition; the violence of splitting open secrets, the truth, innocence, the frog; the force that they had allowed to bind them; the energy necessary to break free.

And it was only then that Rachel remembered that the original ‘Frog Prince' tale had an alternate title. It was also called ‘Iron Henry'.

Henry was the character who appeared only at the very end of the story, when the wicked spell had already been broken. He was the enchanted Prince's faithful servant who had come to drive the couple home to the Prince's kingdom. Henry who, in his grief, had wound three iron bands tight around his heart, to keep it from breaking with sorrow during his master's absence.

As they ride home happily in the splendid, shining carriage, the Prince and Princess heard, in quick startling succession, three loud cracks, each as sharp as the sound of gunfire. What was it, they asked, alarmed? Was something wrong? Was it the carriage tearing and falling apart? But no, the answer came back, it was Henry. With his master now redeemed and free, one by one, the bands were bursting, releasing, springing away from his faithful heart.

I
T IS LATE
N
OVEMBER
1995, twenty-one months since my diagnosis. My scar is a fine, pale silver line, reaching from my navel to my pubic bone. I like it. It reminds me of knights of old with their scars earned through honour. And like them, it comes from another time—I'm fit and well and the cancer story seems a long way behind me. I've been told that I have a ninety-five percent chance of cure. Ninety-five percent seems close enough to one hundred percent and for a long time now, I have been assuming just that. I have blood tests every three months to check the levels of Ca125, an ovarian tumour marker. For at least a year, I have been feeling so
laissez-faire
about them that I haven't felt even a twitch of anxiety as I ring up to get the results. I had cancer, I was extraordinarily lucky, I'm cured. That's the way it reads to me.

It's been a time of rebirth and renewal. I'm feeling terrific. I have loads of energy. My poetry book is nearly ready for publication. The poems in it have won three major literary awards in manuscript form and it feels like a wonderful omen. There are days when I have to restrain myself at some point from jumping high up in the air and shouting, ‘Yippee!'

I'm working on another book as well. Greg has asked me to co-author a book on ovarian cancer with him. As part of this new arrangement, I'll change doctors—it's too confusing to mix the different roles. Greg is in the process of thinking about who he'll suggest as my new gyn-oncologist.

A few months ago, a friend was waiting on the results of a breast lump biopsy. It came back benign. Heady with relief, she said to me, ‘How long does it take before this feeling wears off? How long before you stop appreciating how incredible it is to be alive and you just get back to being normal?'

As soon as she asks it, I know it has already happened to me. When did I stop feeling amazed and start to take things for granted again? I can't remember. I want to stay amazed. I want to remember how lucky I was and how extraordinary the ordinary world is. I begin looking for a pendant or bracelet that I can inscribe and wear; a talisman to remind me.

I look in shop after shop, but nothing catches my eye. Finally, I forget about it. I am busy in my psychology practice and polishing my poetry book. I also have to prepare for a hypnosis workshop I've been asked to run in Perth.

Three weeks before I fly out to Perth, I am flying on foot down Chapel Street. I have to pick up something in an unfamiliar part of the street. As I hurry along, a movement in one of the shop windows catches my eye. An assistant is laying out a tray of pendants. They're engraved with a mixture of odd angular patterns. One in particular draws me in to find out more.

They are Viking Runes, the assistant explains. An ancient, alphabetic script, whose letters carry many layers of meaning. The one I have picked is called
Peorth
or
Perth
. It signifies rebirth and renewal after chaos or death. I am enchanted, I have found my talisman.

I get the back of it engraved with the words,
I am very pleasantly surprised
—the first words I heard in that strange, dark sleep on the operating table. They ushered me in to my second chance at life. As I look at the rune hanging around my neck, I think how odd it is that I should pick a rune called
Perth
, just weeks before going to Perth for the first time.

A few days before I leave for Perth, I get a phone call. It is from the Northern Territory. They are ringing to tell me that I've won the Northern Territory Government Literary Award, a prestigious prize also known as the Red Earth Award.

I effervesce happily on the phone. The presentation dinner, it turns out, is the evening of my last Perth workshop. Geographically challenged as I am, I suggest that maybe I could drop by the Northern Territory on the way home from Perth. My reasoning runs thus: Perth is a long way away from Melbourne. Darwin is a long way away from Melbourne. Therefore the two cities could be close. There is a long silence on the other end of the phone. Then with slow, careful enunciation it is explained to me that no actually, there is a distance of, say, approximately a continent, between Darwin and Perth.

I get onto the Perth plane still high from the Red
Earth win. The red earth of the Northern Territory and Perth, in Western Australia, will be inextricably linked for me from then on. The next time I see Perth, this link will have become part of one of the most eerily lovely stories of my life.

The day after I come home from Perth, I have my three-monthly Ca125 blood test. It's the last one before I graduate to six-monthly tests. It's part of the step-by-step progression to a pronouncement of cure. Three-monthly tests for the first two years, six-monthly tests for the next three years and then once annually for the rest of my life.

A few days go by. It is nearly time to ring for the results of my blood test, but I am so blasé about it by now, that I have literally forgotten about it. It's been a busy, but pleasant week, so it is startling to wake up shaken on Friday morning, gripped in the after-effects of an intense nightmare.

In my dream, I am going swimming at a local pool. I leave my bag and clothes, which consist of two white blouses with fine blue stripes, tucked away by the side of the pool. When I come out of the pool, I discover, to my horror, that someone has taken my bag and deliberately left it out on the open bench so that it will be stolen. Everything that identifies and empowers me—my cards, my keys and my telephone numbers—were in that bag. I feel stripped and bereft. I walk to the tram stop to try to get home. I need to get a number 15. Just as I get to the stop, I see the number 15 rolling away from me. I try to catch it, but it is too late. Tram after tram goes by, while I crane my neck,
desperately trying to see their route numbers. Finally, I see it—another number 15. I jump on board, only to realise to my horror that it is not a number 15 after all, it is a number 42. I'm distraught. All I want to do is get home and this tram is taking me further and further in the opposite direction. The tram forges straight ahead, without making any stops, and then, to my astonishment, I see that it is heading right into the bay. With impeccable dream logic, it glides smoothly on top of the waves, out to an island in the centre of the bay where it stops. I get out, knowing that I am stranded here for the night. As I look through my clothes, I discover to my amazement the missing bag, concealed under the second pin-striped blouse. I realise it was hidden there to frighten me. I settle myself down for the night, knowing that I'll be able to get back in the morning.

When I wake, I feel almost breathless from the intensity of the dream and the memory of the trams flashing by me, wrong number after wrong number, as I search frantically for the one that will take me home. I am mystified by the dream. Life has been going along peacefully. I can't relate it to anything happening internally or externally.

I get up, still shaking off the effects of the dream. Amantha calls out that Greg rang for me yesterday while I was out. He wants me to ring back. It must be about the book, I think to myself. And then one minute later, it hits. Numbers! The nightmare about not getting the right number. It must be the blood test. Something is wrong with my Ca125.

Shakily, I dial Greg's number. He's with a patient and will ring me back. An hour later, the phone rings. ‘It's your Ca125,' Greg begins. ‘I'm sure it's just a lab glitch, but it's risen above normal.'

The ‘normal' range is below 35, although some researchers say that for women who have already had ovarian cancer, the cut-off point should be even lower. My Ca125 has been stable at 15. I suddenly remember my dream-search for the number 15 tram. And how I found it, only to discover that it was actually the number 42 tram. ‘What has it risen to?' I ask.

‘41,' Greg says.

I take a breath and calm myself. Laboratories make mistakes all the time. The Ca125 marker can rise for reasons other than returning cancer—an infection, an inflammation. It will be something benign. This is just a blip. It means nothing.

‘What I think we should do,' says Greg, ‘is retest you in a month's time. We'll probably find it's just gone back to normal.'

He sounds calm. Later he will tell me that his heart dropped like a stone when he opened that envelope and saw my elevated Ca125.

I ring a medical friend. I want to know more about the Ca125. I want to know all of the innocuous reasons it could rise, so I can recite them to myself. Calm myself. The friend says, ‘I think it's very likely that this
means you're having a recurrence.' So much for plan A.

Plan B involves worrying. It is a hard weekend. Martin is away at work, as is Amantha. Fear really does feel like chills. My mind is racing. I know that once ovarian cancer recurs, it's almost always deemed incurable.

It's hard to concentrate on anything else. I alternate the scary thoughts with upbeat ones: it'll work out okay, it'll just be a blip. But it feels as if the black-gloved, horror-movie hand that slides around door handles in the dark, has found its way into my heart and is squeezing tight.

I ring up some friends. I want company. Someone to chat to. A hug. They're not home. A couple of friends know what has happened, but haven't rung to offer support. I'm not good at asking for help, but I figure this is Nature's way of making me learn. I ring one of them.

And this is where fantasy and reality collide. In the fantasy version, I do it—I ask for help and immediately, my karmic lesson having been learned, I'm enfolded in the open arms of friends. They come immediately, with the friendship version of chicken soup, saying, ‘Why didn't you ask us before? Of course we're here for you.' Fadeout.

The real version takes over. What actually happens is …

I ring a close friend whom I've supported through many difficult times of her own. She was with me on the morning I got the news of my Ca125 rise, knows what it means and how terrifying it is. That was four
days ago. She hasn't rung since. I think of the hours I spent on the phone with her each day when she was going through her crises and I feel hurt that she hasn't called. I take a deep breath and tell her that I'm frightened, that the last few days have been nerve-racking. That I'm aware of her silence and disappointed that she hasn't been in contact. And then she attacks me. Launches into furious speech; tells me I am selfish, demanding and self-centred for wanting support at this time.

I am beyond shock. I hang up, not quite able to believe that this has happened. A couple of days later, she realises what she has said and sends apologies. I am too hurt and angry to respond. It is weeks before I feel able to resume our friendship.

It's a lesson on the intense and confusing reactions a cancer diagnosis draws from people. Another good friend will respond in the same way with anger, minus the apologies. One more will simply stop speaking to me. I have other close friends, but out of all of them, these three are the ones to whom I have given the most concerted and sustained support during their many troubled times. I am shaken to discover that now, when I need help from them, they are turning their backs and, indeed, attacking me for asking.

It is hard to describe the impact of this experience. It is worse, in many ways, than the shock of diagnosis. I experienced that as simply a random throw of the dice. It affected me intimately, but I never felt that it was aimed
at
me. Being diagnosed with cancer was not something that I was singled out for, that I deserved or
didn't deserve. It happens to millions of people and I happened to be one of them. Cancer has no face. It's like the weather—impersonal.

With friends, however, the experience is deeply personal. These are people I trusted and cared about. Their reaction now feels literally unreal. A part of me keeps expecting the film to rewind and the projectionist to say, ‘Oops, sorry, wrong film.' I struggle to make sense of what has happened. I am aware too that whatever the mechanism, obviously I have had a role in it. I am a part of this. I need to find out what it is, understand what I have done, what they have done. But right now, I am too wounded, too angry, too raw.

I know intellectually, of course, that this mix of friends' reactions is pretty much the norm. My patients invariably have at least one friend who dropped them like the proverbial hot cake on discovering they had cancer. The fear that cancer inspires cannot be underestimated. Many people simply cannot bear to think about it, let alone come into regular contact with it and the reminder of their own mortality. Others react in infantile ways, angry that you will no longer be able to be ‘mummy' and support them in the ways to which they have become accustomed. Others still are so overcome by the anticipated pain of losing you, that they can't bear to have contact with you. Still others don't know what to say to you and so they say nothing and keep away. None of this, of course, makes it any easier on you. It still feels like abandonment.