The C-Word (12 page)

To my surprise, I didn’t cry. I sat and stared blankly at myself in the mirror for a good twenty minutes, testing out headbands to disguise my thinning locks. But when, later that afternoon, I spoke to Dad while I drove into town for an afternoon at work, and he made some minor comment about my hands-free kit and questioned my ability to hear other cars on the road, I totally lost it.

You know those stupid, niggling worries that you sit on for a while, then in the heat of the moment they pour out of your mouth all at once, at breakneck, Vicky Pollard speed? It usually kicks off with the words, ‘And another thing …’ (or, ‘Yeah but, no but …’). Well, that’s exactly what happened. What I should have said to Dad was that he and Mum had been incredible from day one, that no one could have done more for me than they had, and that I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be for them to watch their daughter go through this … but could they perhaps remember that while The Bullshit may have been having many effects on me, it hadn’t robbed me of my ability to drive, my ability to make good decisions, or my ability to look after myself in the way my doctors had advised.

But, of course, it didn’t come out like that. It was more along the lines of: ‘For crying out loud, Dad, just because I’ve got cancer doesn’t mean I’m incapable of driving, you know! And you need to realise that [sniff] I’m not a little girl any more and [snort] I’m doing all the right things and [splutter] the symptoms are [whimper] not. my. fault. The acne’s not caused by fizzy drinks and the piles aren’t down to my sodding diet [sob] – they’re because of the BLOODY TOXIC CHEMICALS in me [snivel] and it’s time you fucking trusted me to look after myself!’

Dad told me that I was right, that he was sorry, that he trusted me and that parental instinct sometimes made him and Mum say the wrong thing. And, of course, that made me feel even worse. Those things needed to be said (maybe not in the way they came out), but saying them didn’t make me feel any better. Because nobody deserved to be on the end of my criticism less than my Dad. My folks aren’t just parents. They’re my best friends. And, as much as I might sometimes want to tell them to do things differently, I
should
instead have shut my trap for once and showed gratitude for the millions of things they’d done so brilliantly.

None of us knew the right way to handle The Bullshit. Cancer doesn’t come with a manual. Every symptom and every emotion feels so different for each bloody unlucky sod who’s forced to live with the shitty disease, so who knows the best way to play it? As for me, I could handle the surgery and the chemo and the illness and the hair loss. But difficult conversations with my family? That was where I drew the line. Let’s just call it the hair that broke the cancer patient’s back.

CHAPTER 12

Back in ’therapy

I keep forgetting how dangerous this disease is. It’s something I’ve been doing all along, even straight after hearing the words, ‘signs consistent with breast cancer’. My immediate reaction wasn’t ‘shit, that’s life threatening’, but ‘bollocks, my hair’. Even in chemo last week, when a number of doctors warned me to keep my arm still for fear of the drugs seeping out of my veins and into my skin, causing massive problems, I still couldn’t help but gesture wildly and continually reach inside my bag to show the nurses my iPhone/magazines/photos/lip gloss.

I actually think that conveniently ignoring the scary stuff is a damn good tactic. It ensures you never frighten yourself by thinking too far ahead, and forces you to deal with the more pressing business of just putting one foot in front of the other. That wartime ‘keep calm and carry on’ slogan is a design for life, if ever I heard one. (But try reminding me of that after Chemo 2 tomorrow when I’m puking and panicking, and I’ll bite your ear off.)

While staying in Derby with my folks over the last couple of days (P’s been away with work on a team-building excursion – three words that give me the willies as much as ‘breast cancer’
–
I’ve caught up with lots of different people who I’ve not seen since my diagnosis. And, while lovely, their reactions to me have been another reminder that other people seem to be more terrified by The Bullshit than I am. Not that they’ve been overly sympathetic, weepy or pitying – quite the opposite, thankfully. There are a lot of things I want (free iTunes downloads and an hour in a locked room with Dave Grohl for starters) but pity is categorically not one of them. So instead of commiseratory head-tilting, everyone has instead offered giant, beaming smiles that scream out how pleased they are to see me.

It’s brilliant to be on the receiving end of that kind of reaction (and also makes you feel a bit like a celebrity). I’ve had hugs and kisses, been picked up and squeezed, had heartfelt arm-rubs and meaningful back-slaps. When I saw my eighty-six-year-old uncle, his eyes (and mine) filled with delighted tears as he gave me the loveliest cuddle and said, ‘I’ve been trying so hard to think what you’d look like, but it’s you! It’s still you!’ And he, by the way, has got more than enough to occupy his mind right now, let alone what I look like. His wife, and my amazing auntie, is also in the middle of cancer treatment, and yet is still as magnificent and matriarchal as ever. As she made me a brew, showed off her new wig and gave me a lesson in syrup-shopping, my uncle leaned over to me and said, ‘You know what? I still fancy her more than ever.’ Here’s hoping P says the same when Chemo 2 sees off the rest of my lovely locks tomorrow.

*

‘ARE THESE PRESENTS?’
asked the girl behind the counter in Accessorize, as I handed over £100 worth of headscarves and headbands that I wouldn’t have ordinarily looked twice at.

‘Nope. They’re all for me,’ I replied, choosing to spare her my cancer tale and instead allow her to assume that I was some kind of hair-accessory fanatic.

‘There ought to be a grant for this stuff,’ I whinged to P as we walked back to the hospital, where my chemo drugs would be waiting for me.

It was emergency headwear shopping – that morning, another chunk of my barnet had ended up down the loo, resulting in a nice, obvious bald patch right in the middle of my parting – and I resented the expenditure. The following week, I was going to have to fritter a fortnight’s worth of mortgage payments on wigs. Granted, I’d spent twenty-eight years wasting my money on stuff that would barely see me through a season, but that was
my
choice. Having to splash the cash out of cancer-dictated necessity was just plain unfair. (I have issues with Clearblue for precisely the same reason. Hundreds of pounds’ worth of pregnancy tests, ovulation sticks and digital thermometers, and still no baby? I should have just made like Madonna, saved myself the hassle and bought one on eBay.)

I had been in Sarcastic Sod mode for much of the day, not helped by the fact that I got sat next to Holy Mary while having my cannula put in. There was so much hanging around and staring at other people in chemo that, having been twice, I’d had the chance to size everyone up. Along with Holy Mary, there was Wonky Wig, Glamazon (pink slingbacks and blingy jewellery), French Stick (skinny Parisienne), Head Honcho (fabulous headscarves) and Speaking Clock, who I adored, despite the fact that she barely came up for breath. (I suspected I was known as Get A Room, on account of the glued-to-my-face husband.)

It was very stiff-upper-lip in the chemo room; everyone quietly waited their turn and smiled politely, with no
dramatics
or serious conversation. Until Holy Mary rolled up, that is. That day, she was having a go at her nurse for not having baptised her children. ‘If they die, they’ll end up in purgatory!’ she shrieked at a volume that wasn’t entirely appropriate for a room in which some of the patients’ days were so obviously numbered.

Sensing the poor nurse’s inability to find a suitable answer, I butted in. ‘Well, there’s a happy conversation for the chemo room to hear,’ I chirped, as my Irish nurse fiddled with my cannula and – with perfect comedy timing – shouted, ‘I can’t get this little fucker in!’

Even Speaking Clock was lost for words, and gave me a cheeky wink as we watched a stunned Holy Mary turn more Holy Ghost as her horrified face drained of colour.

Having a giggle with the nurses from beneath my twat-hat (foolishly, I stuck with it in the hope of clinging on to my remaining locks) made the hours pass that bit faster, and the extra attention I got from them – a seat by the window, extra cups of tea, Fox’s Glacier Mints – suggested that I’d gained a few popularity points as a result. But the fun had to stop sooner or later, and within half an hour of getting back home – too soon, even, to enjoy Mum’s comfort food – I was, as Dad would say, ‘singing into the big white telephone’.

Later, as I puked into the silver plastic bowl that now made me retch when I saw it, I realised I’d learned nothing from the couscous episode – this time, I’d scoffed a cheese baguette at lunchtime, and the results weren’t much better. In fact, so rank was the smell (not to mention taste) of my cheesy regurgitation that I had Mum take away my bowl, despite not being finished with it. So much for the pristine, white pyjamas that she had so lovingly washed and ironed.

You have to be careful what you eat pre-chemo. If I’d
carried
on that way, treating myself to foods I loved on an otherwise grim day, I’d have had nothing left on my Favourite Foods list. But even that was changing by the day, making way for the only things I could stomach at a time when even tea and toast looked as appetising as a dog-turd kebab.

I was fast developing other favourites – my chemo survival kit, if you will. Marmite was right at the top (and, Marmite haters, don’t knock it until you’ve been through chemo); the one thing I fancied in chemo days one to three. Ice cubes, too. The relief of an ice cube dripping water onto your tongue when you’ve been barfing all evening and your mouth feels like the inside of a hamster cage can’t be beaten. And then there was ginger. Ah, lovely ginger. Ginger biscuits, ginger tea, ginger sweets, crystallised ginger … I even had ginger bath foam.

Not that knowing how best to survive made Chemo 2 any easier than #1. Though I definitely managed the physical stuff better the second time around. During the first cycle, I couldn’t believe that it was possible to feel that lousy and come out the other side. But, of course, you do. And that meant less panicking the second time around. (If not less swearing. Some things will never change.) What it didn’t mean, however, was less of the mind-messing, or less of the depression. Because Chemo 2 didn’t just bring with it the same old side-effects as last time. This time it took my hair as well.

Suddenly, with hair falling out entirely of its own accord, the hairball on my bathroom window-sill seemed pathetic in comparison. And it wasn’t even falling out evenly. Instead, it seemed to be coming mostly off the crown, leaving me with a balding patch on the top of my head and longer strands still holding their own at the sides – think
Andy
from
Little Britain
, or Keith from The Prodigy. Now I wasn’t just a cancer patient – I
looked
like a cancer patient. And now, the wig-shopping wasn’t just a game – it was a
necessity
.

As hard as I tried to turn it into a joke, there was a horrible truth beneath the humour. Because, if I was going to stick to my guns of being as honest as possible about my breast cancer experience – to my family and blog readers alike – I was going to have to ’fess up about just how difficult it was becoming. ‘This blog isn’t a performance or a novel,’ I wrote. ‘It’s my
life
. My real life. Hence this is doubtless an often frustrating, up-one-minute-down-the-next read. But that’s got to be the way it is, because that’s the way my life is.’

I hated admitting the depths I’d sunk to, but it was important that I did. And so I recounted on my blog the morning on which I woke up at 5 a.m. in floods of tears.

‘What’s wrong, angel? Was it a bad dream?’ said P, rolling over to give me a cuddle.

‘No. I woke up,’ I replied. ‘And I didn’t want to.’ I was livid with the world for allowing me to wake up, and for putting me through cancer’s shitty ways for another miserable day. As much as it disgusts me to admit it, at 5 a.m. that day, I’d rather have packed it all in.

I’m ashamed that I woke up feeling like that. Because that’s not how I think. It’s not how I do things; it’s just not me. Kissing me on my bald patch, P held my tearful face in his hands. ‘I never want to hear that from you again,’ he said. ‘Because if there’s no you, there’s no me either.’

‘I’m sorry, darling,’ I said, ‘But—’

‘But nothing,’ P interrupted, now crying himself. ‘Nobody said this was going to be easy. But you’ve got to do it. You’ve
got
to. I
need
you to.’

We both knew that some days were going to be like this. Some days I just wasn’t going to have enough energy to feel like I could keep going. And, as difficult as that was at the time, for me and everyone around me, sometimes, it was just going to have to be that way. ‘Difficult’ doesn’t do it justice, of course. This wasn’t difficult. It was near fucking impossible. Because, when the shock of the diagnosis goes away and all the initial attention you get dies right down, what are you left with? A big, ugly, horrible, grim, morbid mess to scrap your way through, and nobody can fight it but you.

But I’d do it. Of course I’d bloody do it. And despite the lows I’d been feeling, I didn’t mean it any less. What choice did I have? This awful, awful thing came along, and it changed the course of my lovely life – of
our
lovely lives. We didn’t ask for it, we hadn’t planned for it, we’d done nothing to deserve it. We HATED it. But I loved my life more than I loathed that cancer. And I was going to get it back.

CHAPTER 13

Does my bum look big in this?

As I type, I’m looking down from my bed at a foreign, furry, blonde rodent, otherwise known as my new wig. It’s balanced carefully on a stand on the floor and, despite the low light in here, it still looks glossy and healthy and wholesome. It’s everything I’m not.

Next week it’s my birthday, and the one thing I wanted was to still have fabulous hair by that point. (I wanted a gift-wrapped Dave Grohl too, but apparently you can’t always get what you want.) Next best on the birthday wish-list, then, was to have a fabulous, non-NHS wig. Ta-dah! Today, I got exactly what I asked for. And I hate it.