There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You (7 page)

Then the barrage of questions began. The main one being what kind of cancer did I have? I have been criticised by some people for not responding with the truth, but I was still in shock, and it was not my choice to put myself in the spotlight like that. The public and the press assume that all actors and everyone in show business court publicity as a matter of course, but that really is not the truth of the matter. I, personally, have always been wary of the press and for good reason. Many times they have tried to creep up on me, or my family, and I am often misquoted. I guess it is par for the course, and when I sign a contract for a job there is always a clause stating the actor must do a certain amount of PR. This I understand, but in general I would rather be left alone and judged on my work, not my social life. Nowadays the whole social media thing is a nightmare, and we are all tarred with the same brush. It is assumed that anyone in the public eye must expose themselves to minute scrutiny, and divulge every facet of their private life. Many ‘celebrities’ thrive on it. Well good luck to them, but that is not the answer for everyone, and certainly not me.

However, I have had enough experience of the media to know that if I did announce what sort of cancer I had there would be endless discussions about it, even if I was not present. Especially if I was not present. How many times have you seen someone on the sofa of a morning television programme who has been dragged in because they have similar symptoms to whoever is ill? Someone with the same cancer? There they are professing to have intimate knowledge of another person’s illness. I did not want that, and anyway my body is my body, and why should I share everything with the world? So I declined to comment.

Then the attention turned to my hair colour. The papers made such a fuss about the fact I had gone grey, well white, when I appeared on
This Morning
. It was mad. I had tried to explain that the reason I had returned to my natural colour was because I had been hoping to do this play,
A Passionate Woman
, and wanted my hair to be grey and didn’t want to wear a wig. Little good it did me. No one was interested in the truth! I spent the next month trying to come to terms with my situation. I was mortified that I had let down the two Davids and Kay Mellor. But they promised they would not do it without me, which made me feel a million dollars and gave me such inspiration to fight back.

However, it still left me with a gaping hole in my life and an uncertain future. Suddenly I was no longer in control of my life.

5

A TEXTBOOK CASE

July–September 2013

My new regime began in earnest. I was given various pills to take every day and lined them up on the kitchen counter. What a palaver. I had anti-sickness pills, painkillers, indigestion pills and the telltale sign of approaching age: blood pressure pills.

Without going into too much detail the one big problem I was facing was the bowels. Oh what joy to wait in anticipation for movement, then when it happened it was not exactly pleasant. Do not fear, dear reader, I will stop there but it is important to note that unfortunately, due to the nature of bowel cancer, there is a good deal of attention centred on things of that nature. One needs a sense of humour to get through it all and I want to be as honest as I can to get the message out there.

Justin Stebbing had explained to me that there would be side effects to the chemo which was something to look forward to. However, initially, through the first couple of weeks, things were not too bad.

Two days after chemo I have to take an injection for the white blood cells. I am pretty good with needles and such like, but couldn’t quite bring myself to do the injection personally, so my dear husband took on the role. I must say he seemed to relish the job, which surprised me as, like most men, he can be such a wimp about needles when it comes to his turn.

The side effect of the injection, however, was three days of flu-like symptoms and I must say I felt pretty rough. It also made me feel a bit depressed about the whole bloody cancer business. As long as there is no obvious pain or signs of illness I could push all negative thoughts aside, but feeling grotty was not helpful. I even had hay fever. I mean, come on God, give me a break!

By the second session I had started to develop pins and needles in the tips of my fingers and toes. It was not unpleasant but distracting all the same. The skin on my hands and fingers was starting to peel and by the end of my third session I had no ridges to my fingers and the fingerprint recognition feature on my laptop no longer recognised me – I could have committed murder and left no evidence. How quickly one is forgotten. Never mind the public, even my appliances refused to acknowledge me.

The worst effect was that for a day after chemo, every time I swallowed it was as though I had a row of razor blades at the back of my throat slicing away at anything that came its way. It was agonising. The pain only lasted for a few seconds, but I would keep forgetting and take a sip of a drink, or something, and nearly hit the roof. There was also a problem now with cold things. If I took something from the fridge or freezer I got cold freeze burns. This resulted in very strange looks in the supermarket as I would put on gloves on a boiling hot July day to pick up my frozen food from the cabinet. The air conditioning in these places is ridiculous at the best of times but now, for me, it was like a mission to the North Pole!

I was also suffering mouth ulcers, so had to gargle three times a day with salt water. My eyes started to weep and go all crusty, my nose would either bleed or drip at any random moment, and I was still having to monitor my bowel movements which became an art in itself. The painkillers make you constipated so then you would have to take something to loosen the bowels, but then, after chemo, it would all run away with itself again and I would be back on the Imodium trying to slow it all down again. It was a never-ending saga. What makes me smile now is when people come up and whisper very solicitously to me, ‘How’s it going?’ I feel like saying, ‘Oh the cancer is great, thank you, but let me tell you about the chemo, mate.’

Then there was the question of my teeth. I had struggled for many years with teeth as I had wonderful strong teeth with no fillings but awful, crap gums which were not going to do the job of keeping my teeth in my head for much longer. I had had several procedures to cut away some of the gums and had learned the hard way about flossing to keep gums healthy. As a sixties child, society was great at dealing with the pill and sexual freedom, but it would seem dentistry had a long way to catch up with the beautiful people. By the time I finally summoned up the courage to get my teeth whitened it was all in vain, because thanks to the good old chemo I could no longer use the process as it is not on the list of recommended things to do.

The good news (oh thank God for that I hear you all breathe a sigh of relief) is with this particular chemo I was not going to lose my hair. I was rather fond of my new silver fox look so that was great news, and as work was difficult to get there was no point in pushing the networks for a starring role in the next season of
Breaking Bad
, though I must say I had rather fancied myself as an English Eccentric growing skunk out in the wilds of the desert. Me and Walt could have had a good thing going there.

Excuse my ramblings but the actress in me is never far away, which is why it is tough having to include all these unattractive physical aspects to my already ageing body. Getting old in itself is a difficult enough issue for any woman to face. I had been trying for a while to be positive and embrace the positive aspects of ageing, though they are few and far between. I went to see my gynaecologist, the most incredibly wonderful Marcus Setchell who has now become Sir Marcus Setchell having delivered Prince George. I have been looked after by him and his fantastic assistant Carole for many years, and was never really quite aware of just how important he was. I feel very honoured that he has kept me blooming with implants of HRT. I asked him if they would have to stop as well now that I was undergoing cancer treatment. The answer was absolutely not, which was a great relief because I was not sure I could also cope with the change of life at this point. Hot sweats
and
runny poo would be just too much to bear! I must say though that all these annoyances were minor in the great scheme of things. This was now literally about life or death, so a few ups and downs had to be tolerated.

One does become obsessed with oneself in a rather unattractive way. I soon learned to keep all my ablutions to myself for the sake of the rest of the family’s sanity, but in a way it was also the only thing to do to feel I did have some control on my body. I hated taking all the medications and started to investigate alternatives.

I have two or three very dear friends who wrote to me with their suggestions for a natural approach to my diet, which was proving troublesome. I tried to eat healthily but so much food now tasted of absolutely nothing. Unfortunately the two things that never let me down in taste were salt and sugar, both the Devil’s work. I was still following Deborah Morgan’s instructions, following our week with her in Majorca the previous October, and Michael and I were on the juicing regime. I had also been advised that lemons were the ultimate fruit for cancer. The suggestion was to keep a bag of lemons in the freezer at all times and use the skins grated on food and in hot water and drinks as much as possible.

So my diet had become a regime of waking up with hot fresh lemon and honey. Then I made a juice for Michael and me of spinach, courgettes, ginger, celery and a couple of apples. It wasn’t a great taste and it took me a while to get the ingredients just right. The temptation was to make fruit smoothies with strawberries and blueberries and all things sweet, but they should only be a treat as they are fructose which is another form of the dreaded sugar. The secret is to have fruit for sweetness, but always have a vegetable in there as well. I finally cracked it, and my best offerings are carrot, orange and fresh ginger or spinach, courgette and fresh pineapple, with ginger and celery and kiwi or fresh mango.

I discovered Ottolenghi cook books and boy did I go to town, especially after I received the most amazing hamper from my lovely gorgeous friend Linda Scott. I was having trouble sleeping so I would creep out to the kitchen in the middle of the night and cook these amazing dishes using lentils and beetroot and cauliflower. My cauliflower fritters became legendary. The whole family was put on this diet and bless them they indulged me. But they did enjoy most of it, I think, although every now and then I caught my stepson Bradley with a KFC or Domino pizza, and my son Robbie would disappear up the road to the Chinese. My lovely husband stuck with it but his meals were tempered with white wine. I do have the odd glass of red wine from time to time, with my oncologist’s permission, but it is easy to succumb.

I absolutely became obsessed with cooking and would lie in bed dreaming up my meals for the week. It is amazing how running a household can take up so much time and my family do eat so much. Robert, Bradley and Michael often pop home just coincidentally around dinner time, and my dear husband only likes proper meals of meat and vegetables – no pasta or casseroles for him, thank you very much – which means I have to think of lots of meal variations. My sister, Jean, often joins us for Sunday lunch and my friend Pat and, of course, my grandson too. I now had my Tesco shopping online down to a fine art and my weekly walkabout round Waitrose for treats was great fun. Previously when I was working all shopping was done at a gallop like I was in my own version of
Supermarket Sweep
. Now I strolled round picking things up and reading all the labels. I bumped into Tom Wilkinson one morning doing exactly the same thing and couldn’t resist suggesting to him it was a far cry from Hollywood where his very successful career had taken him.

He smiled and said, ‘Ah, but Lynda, I get so homesick for North London and my Waitrose weekly wander.’ And off he strolled happy as a sandboy.

Unfortunately for me I was starting to develop stomach cramps which nobody could explain. Then when I went in for my next chemo the nurse couldn’t find my port to inject me. After much rather painful pressing and pulling it was announced the port had twisted over, a very unusual occurrence apparently, but Hello? It’s me, isn’t it? Her of the good fortune, not. So there was no chemo that day and I was admitted to the clinic to have another port put in. I didn’t feel great about going back into hospital, I felt I had done enough of that now, thank you very much.

Lovely Professor Stebbing came to visit and told me some good news for a change. Every chemo day, before the treatment actually starts, the nurses check your blood and take blood tests to check your white and red blood cells. This then gives them an idea of how well the chemo is working at keeping the tumours at bay especially in the secondaries. If these markers go up it means the combination of drugs is not working and they will then try a different combination. Ultimately, the one sure way to find out what is going on is to have an MRI scan and after a series of chemos, usually a course of twelve, they will take a scan, check the state of play, and then either give the patient a break for a while or decide on a different cocktail. Apparently, the good news was that I was a textbook case, and responding to the chemo brilliantly.

We also talked about my food regime in relation to the stomach cramps and Justin reckoned it was not doing me any good so I made an appointment to see the clinic dietitian next time I was in the clinic.

The following week was tough. The stomach cramps were getting worse, and I was not sure what I should be eating, but as I was feeling sick most of the time food was not really my number one priority. But on Wednesday 11 September I had an MRI scan and the results were great. Cancer markers were down by 50 per cent and the tumour was visibly reduced. So onwards and upwards!