The C-Word (15 page)

P told me recently that it was all he could do not to snap back at me in those moments, and that he was as frustrated as I was that he was having to force me to get into a one-way cab to hell. He hated not being able to do more to help, which was probably why, as soon as I was able to get back out of bed again after each round of chemo, he went into helpful-husband overdrive.

With my taste buds as obliterated as my hair, we had figured out that it took around four days for me to be able to taste anything. Everything between Chemo Friday and Tuesday tasted like carpet. Cancer leaflets tend to liken taste to cardboard, but I always found that lacking a bit, since food in those first few post-chemo days actually tastes of nothing. Not cardboard. Not even carpet. Just nothing. Whatever I was eating might have tasted like wax or feet or concrete or fabric softener for all I knew.

Being the chef around these parts, P devised Fajita Tuesday – his method of finally doing something constructive. For two chemos running, it had proved a sizzling success. And despite the fact that not even my favourite lunch (a cheese-and-crisps sandwich and a mug of tea, simpleton that I am) had hit the flavour-spot earlier on in
the
day, I was becoming impatient to get my favourite sense back with P’s chilli remedy. But this time, nothing doing.

‘Doing the trick, love?’ he asked, expectant hope glistening in his eyes.

‘Mm-hmm,’ I replied, keen not to ruffle the chef’s feathers. (Even on a normal day, if P gets a verdict of anything less than ‘absolutely delicious’ for the meal he’s cooked, he’s in a strop for the rest of the night.)

‘I put loads of spice into this one, you see, but I didn’t want it to blow your head off.’

‘No, no, not at all, babe – it’s just the ticket,’ I said, pushing peppers around on my plate and nodding my head a little too vigorously.

P put down his fork. He meant business. ‘It’s not working, is it?’

I said nothing.

‘It’s not bloody working. You can’t even get any joy from fucking food any more, can you? Stupid. Sodding. Bastard. Cancer.’

The Bullshit’s screwing with my scran was the last straw for P. He’s not just the head chef in our household, but a bloody brilliant one to boot. P takes his cooking
very
seriously and, like every successful chef, he’s a competitive little bugger. And he wasn’t going to be beaten to the palate punch by my chemo drugs. So he picked up our plates, stormed back into the kitchen, emptied the fridge of vegetables and started waving a huge knife around like Crocodile Dundee at a blade-throwing class.

‘I’m going in for the kill,’ he shouted back to the living room. ‘And this one’s going to work.’ I kept out of the way for as long as I could hear expletives, and sheepishly headed in an hour or two later to find a huge pan of super-spicy, master-blaster, chock-full-of-chilli soup on the stove.
‘Leave
that there overnight,’ he said, when I enquired whether I’d be expected to see off the lot there and then. ‘By tomorrow, that little baby’s going to sort you out.’

And, by heck, it did.

Feeling calmer the following afternoon once my tongue’s usual functions had returned, we headed back to the hospital for our first visit to the radiotherapy department. ‘The reason we’re doing this radiotherapy,’ said Chelsea Consultant (very west-London posh in her Tod’s loafers and a diamond engagement ring that could take your eye out), ‘is that we want to localise the zapping of the cancer cells to the specific area where the tumour was, unlike chemotherapy which works on the cells all over your body.’ All fair enough, I thought. And then came the bombshell. ‘We’ll be aiming the radiotherapy at not just your chest wall, but also your left arm and shoulder, and the left side of your neck. And the reason we’re doing this over such a large area is to increase your chance of survival.’ And there it was. Another cruel reminder of the grim, makes-you-want-to-scream seriousness of breast cancer.

It suddenly made the illness and the hair loss and the fajita-eating seem like welcome distractions from the fact that, actually, this thing had the potential to kill me. I
hated
having to think about that. I can’t begin to describe how much of my flagging energy I used
not
thinking about that, always finding other things to occupy my mind (how do you think the blog came about?). So it came as a horrible, jolting shock when P and I
did
hear it. It wasn’t that we’d forgotten that I had breast cancer in the first place (hell, I don’t think a minute will
ever
go by in which I forget that I had breast cancer); it was that we had got so used to it being in our lives that the shock of being forced to reconsider its gravity was a little too much to bear.

The tattooed dots were going to be a ball-ache. But it was the reason behind having them that terrified me. I decided to look online to find out more about the process from other radiotherapy-experienced people. I’d kept out of online cancer-communities thus far, choosing instead to go it my way and save confusing myself with pages and pages of information that might not be relevant to me. I’d love to take credit for that decision but, in truth, it was Always-Right Breast Nurse’s idea. All that mattered, she said, was dealing with my own experience, and that she or anyone else at the hospital would be able to answer any medical questions I had. And, true to form, she was spot on.

I quickly found a picture of someone’s radiotherapy tattoos (I was pleased to discover they looked more like navy freckles than medical marks – not that it dampened my resolve to get a design of my own), and then I found myself engrossed in some message boards. But it wasn’t the medical information I found online that left me confused – it was some of the comments in the chatrooms. Whether or not I was looking for it, I don’t know, but I kept finding the following sentence: ‘Getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.’

Now I’m the first to trot out the ‘each to their own’ line but, to my mind, saying that kind of thing was completely fucking irresponsible. Granted, I hadn’t seen out the whole of my cancer ride yet – and who knows how I was going to feel at the end of it – but I was pretty damn sure I wasn’t going to thank my lucky stars for having been blessed with The Bullshit. Beckoning in P to read the words staring back from my laptop screen, he angrily confirmed that I wasn’t alone in my opinion.

I could see the reasons behind people saying it. If their experience of cancer had been anything like mine so far,
they
too would have had the wonderful,
Amélie
-like moments where you’re on the receiving end of so much love that the world seems a rosier place. And while all of that definitely helped, it didn’t for a second mean that getting breast cancer was the best thing to ever happen to me. Because for every rose-tinted moment come a lifetime’s share of dark times that leave you lonely and frightened and confused.

In a blind rage, I took to my blog. I didn’t want anyone to think that getting cancer had been the best thing to ever happen to me, or that it could be the best thing to happen to anyone else, for that matter. It changes your life. It changes your outlook. And it changes
you
. But that doesn’t make it a great thing. Cancer changes your life because it threatens it. Cancer changes your outlook because it muddies it. And cancer changes
you
in far more ways than just losing a boob or going bald or getting dots tattooed on your chest. Cancer IS NOT the best thing that could ever happen to you. Cancer, I’m afraid to say, is shit. And I was only part way through it.

CHAPTER 16

I’ll be there for you

There’s every chance you’ll disagree with me, but I find the concept of ‘best friends’ a dangerous one. For kids it’s perfectly acceptable, but when you grow up it’s far healthier to have a group of mates with no person in particular being at the pinnacle. So why, then, have I suddenly started playing favourites with my friends?

It’s not like I’ve got a Santa-style list of who’s been naughty and nice, or even that any of my friends are aware of this behaviour (at least they weren’t until now, but I’m hoping they’ll let it slide on account of the cancer stuff – yes, that old chestnut). It’s just that with me getting so much attention and support and wonderful gestures and love from so many of them, it’s no wonder that they’ve moved up several places in my mates’ league. Having done a bit of research (read: discussed it with Mum), it seems a lot of people view their friends in a core-of-the-earth kind of diagram, with their best pal(s) in the middle, their closest mates in a circle around that, good friends on the next layer, followed by see-less-often people and then acquaintances near the edge. But mine’s become more of a hierarchy.

It’s a top-heavy structure we have here at Friends Inc. (less pyramid, more ice-cream cone), and I’m a lucky CEO in that the top level of my hierarchy – director level, if you will – is jampacked with magnificent mates. They keep me going: they’re in constant contact, they make sure I’m up to speed on the world outside my cancer bubble, they don’t treat me any differently, and yet they’re happy to let me have a whinge if ever I need one. In short, they’re brilliant, and they’re all in for a serious pay rise once The Bullshit is over (i.e., the beers are on me).

But – cue more favouritism – within this level have emerged three friends (they know who they are) who really ought to have a level of their own. They’ve taken magnificence to new heights, this little lot, and if we were all still at school I’d form a special club for them and make membership cards and pin badges and devise a secret handshake.

Then there’s the management level of friends – they also keep in regular contact, but probably not so much as the directors. They’ll send the odd text and the occasional Facebook wall post, but they’re always up to speed with my progress, love ’em, despite asking fewer questions than the directors (the blog helps a lot on that front).

Next is the shop floor. These small few are still in contact about as much as they ever were but, thus far, have made absolutely no mention of The Bullshit, despite being well aware of it. And that’s fine (though it is a bit like me suddenly getting a bright green mohawk and them asking where I bought my shoes). In some ways even, I secretly appreciate it. Besides, at least the shop-floor few are still in touch, unlike the cleaning staff at Friends Inc.

The cleaning staff comprises a much, much smaller number of people who have suddenly stopped showing up for work and disappeared off the radar completely. I’m not just talking about
a
handful of ‘mates’ here, but mainly acquaintances who’d normally be in contact from time to time. ‘Facebook friends’, if you will – y’know, the ones who make up the numbers. Those same numbers that I suspect will suddenly dwindle as soon as I hit ‘publish post’. (For the record, I’m not expecting folk to befriend me just because I’ve got cancer. That would make me the human version of Timmy from
South Park
and, thanks to the steroids, I suspect I’m more Cartman.)

Guilty fun as it may seem, I don’t want to rank my friends in a Eurovision Song Contest-style league table, and I’m not daft enough to think that the world has stopped turning just because I’ve got breast cancer. Everyone’s still out there, leading their normal lives, buying groceries, arguing about where to spend Christmas, shouting at referees, ironing holes in their shirts and elbowing space-hogging commuters on the District Line. It’s a comforting thought, actually, so I’m hardly going to strike anyone who puts their regular routine in front of sending me an email off my Christmas-card list, ferchrissake. But that doesn’t stop a mischievous part of me from wanting to update my Facebook status with: ‘Lisa has still got breast cancer, in case you were wondering.’

*

I CAUSED A
bit of a stir with that post. (‘I thought I’d better send an email this week before you relegate me to the cleaning staff,’ said one mate. ‘I’d better be at director level, lady, or I’ll be handing in my notice,’ said another.) And I was strangely pleased it had, because writing that post was cathartic – not just that, it also cleared up a few issues I’d hitherto been sitting on.

The fact that I was suddenly having to answer a hundred emails, though, was indicative of an obviously true chord
I
’d struck. There was no getting around it: while some friends had admirably stepped up to the mark (the overwhelming majority, actually), others were suddenly MIA. The best friends, however, were the ones who were still making themselves known even at this stage, three months past diagnosis when my cancer news had become fish-and-chip paper. And this, it turned out, was the time when I needed them most; the time at which I needed a big old push into my second phase of chemo.

Three months isn’t a long time. If I’d fallen pregnant at the same time as discovering I had a tumour, for example, I’d have only just been getting around to telling people about it by now. And yet within that short time, cancer had done its dirty work – I was bald, bloated, boob-less and pretty bloody fed up about it. Everything had become so much of an effort – getting out of bed every day; trying to stay positive despite the obvious cancer concerns; convincing myself that every little twinge I felt and pain I endured wasn’t a return of the cancer, but merely part of the treatment’s effects.

One night I even convinced myself that an outbreak of blackheads signalled the growth of a new tumour. I had been warned to expect this kind of paranoia – and if I told you it had since waned, I’d be lying – but even I could see that worrying that blackheads = cancer was bordering on the ludicrous. But I still managed to whip myself into such a panicked frenzy that P had to physically lift me away from the mirror and put me in bed with tight sheets tucked around me like a mental patient.

I found it equally difficult not to look at myself in mirrors, especially since my flat is covered with them. But one evening before bed, while changing into my pyjamas, I caught sight of my mutilated boob and balding head in the
mirror
, and my ugly reflection hit me like a demolition ball. While I allowed myself the occasional sob about it, I worked hard at not getting too bogged down with fretting about my appearance, since there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. But that night I really let it bother me, and ranted to P about how unattractive, freakish and undesired I felt. What I hadn’t bargained for was how hurt P was by my comment: I couldn’t understand why he took it so personally. And so, in my grumpy tiredness, I got the hump about it and stormed off to hide under the duvet, slamming the bedroom door behind me and ignoring the one piece of marriage advice my dad offered us in his speech at our wedding: never go to bed on a bad word.