The C-Word (16 page)

Dad was right, of course (I don’t call him Yoda for nothing). Rather than discussing why P was upset, I instead got angrier and angrier as I lay alone in bed. ‘Why the hell should it upset him?’ I thought. ‘I’m the one suffering here – he looks as handsome as ever while I’m busy being beaten with the ugly stick.’ But of course it upset him, and not just because I didn’t look like I used to. Let’s just reverse the roles for a minute: if it had been me watching P go through this, it’d have been equally difficult for me to see him suffer from the physical effects as it would be to stand by, helpless, as he took such a massive hit to his confidence and self-esteem.

Cancer can be so isolating sometimes and at that moment I’d forgotten that I wasn’t alone; that this was affecting other people too. Rowing with P was a harsh way to be reminded that it’s better to be angry together while cuddling in bed than it is to be angry in separate rooms. And so, in the early hours, that’s what we did. P told me how cross he was that The Bullshit was so impossible to reason with, and I told him how cross I was about it coming
along
at a time when I had the most to lose: the plans we had for our future, the twenty-something fun I was busy having, and the looks I’d never appreciated.

I was livid (I still am, as it goes) that my body had been ruined by this awful fucking disease, and I constantly worried about other people’s reactions to it. My in-laws were due to arrive to stay with us for a few days (P and I gave my folks Chemo 4 off, thinking it was time they went a whole six weeks without having to hold a sick bowl for their daughter), and I was scared that they’d be horrified by the change since they last saw me: back in July, I was just one chemo in and still had all my hair. Man, were they in for a shock.

It’s a shitty state of affairs, worrying about whether or not your appearance might upset people, and worse when you don’t have the energy to do very much about it. I knew from my conversations with Smiley Surgeon that a common initial reaction to being told you have cancer is, ‘What will it do to the way I look?’ But you’re encouraged not to think about it too much, and instead to concentrate on your treatment schedule, keeping free from infection and staying as mentally strong as you can. But isn’t having confidence in the way you look part of that mental strength? There’s no way to avoid thinking about what you look like when it’s there in the mirror, staring you in the face every sodding day.

Which is why, of all the help I had been offered on various leaflets and websites from numerous cancer charities, I only really paid attention to one: the one that confronted the appearance issue. Everything else, I figured, I could find my own way through. But this? This I needed some help with. Not least with Jamie and Leanne’s wedding just three weeks away. I needed someone to show me how
I
could make the best of what I had been left with, and send me back out into the world feeling confident and beautiful. And that’s exactly what I got.

Look Good, Feel Better is designed to help women manage the visible side effects of cancer treatment. Having been given some information on the charity by Always-Right Breast Nurse (who else?), I sucked up the tears and booked myself in for one of their workshops. Met at the door by a representative from the charity (who did a double-take that had ‘but you’re so young’ written all over it), I was ushered into a small conference room with six other women, each of whom gave me the same look. Not surprising, considering I was the youngest there by a long chalk. (I almost felt a bit of a fraud, actually, like Marla Singer in
Fight Club
, pretending to be a cancer patient just to pick up a few make-up tips. Thankfully the wig and a brilliantly timed hot flush gave me away.)

We each took a seat around a conference table and were given a sizeable bag full of make-up and skin-care goodies – all donated by the beauty industry – with different products to suit our skin tones, after which we were taught all the tricks that would fool strangers into thinking we were normal, healthy women. Looking after your skin at its most sensitive, drawing on eyebrows when yours have done a bunk, evening out your skin tone and covering up the blotchy red bits, making your eyes stand out when you haven’t got eyelashes to rely on, hiding the dark circles … all the seemingly surface-skimming things that women with cancer really want to know but often feel daft asking about, considering the weight of the ‘serious stuff’ we were supposed to be focusing on. And yes, beneath the slap and the wig was the same old self-conscious me that cried at the sight of her body in the mirror. But knowing that it was
possible
to work a bit of make-up magic to make myself feel even temporarily terrific was worth its weight in gold eyeshadow.

CHAPTER 17

I shall be released

October 2008

Well, this is weird. My legs don’t work too well, the signals from my brain are much slower in getting to my body parts, my heart is thumping, my bones are painful, I’ve got a dodgy tummy, I’ve been put on more than double my usual amount of bloat-inducing steroids (alas, it looks like it
will
be George Dawes doing a reading at Jamie’s wedding) and I’ve got a weird taste in my mouth that’s like sucking on coins. But I can’t remember the last time I felt this happy.

Drumroll please … I’ve not thrown up! I still feel like complete shit, but at least it’s a different kind of shit, thanks to my new type of chemo. Apparently a change
is
as good as a rest. From the moment Chemo 4 began making its way through my drip and into my veins, it felt totally different. I felt sicker sooner. But rather than it getting worse within an hour of me reaching my sofa, it instead began to ease, and the sick feeling sank from my mouth to my stomach, where I’m happy for it to stay. It even allowed me a crackerbreads-and-soft-cheese interval. And even the hallucinations gave me a break long enough to watch
The
Goonies
and
Sex and The City
. I did have a weird delirium in the night, though, where it felt like my teeth and tongue were growing too big for my mouth – but still, it was only the one, and this time it came without that pain-in-the-arse voice in my head. (It was always an older version of my voice I heard, annoyingly trying to coach me through the worst and give me ill-founded advice on what to do, like an embarrassing parent on the sidelines of a Sunday League football game.)

Actually, the whole process of chemo yesterday was better than it has ever been. Dare I say it was almost fun? Granted, Chemo Friday started as it usually would (this time I inflicted the crying fit on my in-laws), though P avoided the usual coping-strategy bollocking thanks to me directing my anger at the loo roll instead. It was doing that bloody irritating new-loo-roll trick where the layers separate and it only comes off in ripped chunks. I like my toilet paper neatly perforated, dammit, so I made it known by throwing the roll across the bathroom and watching as it landed in a wet-feet patch outside the shower. Which made me even angrier, of course, because I then had to do the pre-wipe, knees-together walk to the other side of the room to fetch it.

But from the moment we left the flat, everything went well. We had a smoother ride to the hospital by choosing to go in our own car, rather than suffering the questionable driving of the World’s Dodgiest Cab Firm. When we got there, the receptionist gave us a Golden Ticket in the form of a free parking pass, thanks to my ongoing treatment (see, cancer’s not without its upsides). I also decided to overdress for the occasion, beginning my new life-tactic of saving nothing for best. And I went prepared by uploading series two of
Gavin & Stacey
onto the iPod.

Things were even pretty fun in the chemo room itself. All the coolest nurses were on shift, including my favourite who swears as much as I do. There was a real Friday Feeling, too – it was
quieter
in there than usual, which meant more banter between the nurses, good sweets out on the counter, a bit of flirting when the male doctors came in and a whiff of gossip in the air.

And so, ill and old and wobbly on my feet and slow in the typing department as I feel at the moment, I’m also pretty excited. Actually, excited doesn’t even nearly cover it. I’m emancipated. I know I may be speaking too soon (fave nurse warned me that the ‘buggery bit’ of this kind of chemo may come between days three and nine), but even the possibility that I may never again have to endure Puke Friday (at least, not of chemo’s doing) is the best news I’ve had in ages. Knowing I’ve got all three cycles of that first f-u-c-k-i-n-g h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e chemo type out of the way is, I reckon, as close to the undoubtedly wonderful feeling of being told you’re cancer-free as I can get right now. For the first time since The Bullshit began I feel that
I’m
back in charge. I can handle this. I’m on top of it. I’ve pulled one back. Is the worst of it over?

*

STUPID, STUPID GIRL.
Had I not learned that the Spoilsport God of Cancer would be reading that post? Within three days of assuming that the non-sickness of Chemo 4 made it an obvious improvement on the three that had preceded it, along came the gift of a brand-new menu of side-effects – excruciating bone pain, headaches, earache, loss of balance, thrush (both vaginal and oral, as a special treat), pins and needles and that same old impenetrable fog of depression.

I’d had enough.
Everything
was pissing me off, from the state of my tongue to the squirrels in the back garden and even people’s well-wishes. I was an idiot for saying that the aftermath of Chemo 4 had been any better than the last –
not
just in the statement itself, but in the resulting contact it elicited from delighted friends and family. They’d make calls and write emails and send messages to say how pleased they were that things were looking up – and all just in time for the ‘buggery bit’ that my nurse had warned me about. I wanted to strangle each and every one of them, but I barely had the energy to think it, let alone do it.

Whether it was out of sympathy or intimidation, people would continually tell me that having cancer entitled me to a whinge whenever I wanted one. So I found myself taking advantage of their kindness and cranking up the moano-meter at every opportunity. So much, in fact, that I soon became sick of it myself. In fact, I was bored of it all. Bored of whinging, bored of the side-effects, bored of the enforced sitting around … bored of cancer. The novelty had well and truly worn off.

As much as I’d probably have taken a vicious swipe at anyone who tried it, what I secretly wanted was for someone to finally have enough of it, kick me up the arse and say, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, stop your whining, will you?’ My mate Leaks did once courteously include me on a group email about a pub meet-up, despite knowing full well that I couldn’t make it. ‘Who’s in?’ she asked, to which I replied, ‘I can’t – I’m washing my hair.’ She fired an email straight back: ‘You’re not still trotting out that old cancer excuse, are you?’ And I loved her for it.

The thing was, despite The Bullshit having been part of my life for months, I still
could not believe
that I had cancer. You’d think that all the boob-and-hair-loss fun would have made damn sure the reality had sunk in, but no. It was just such a fucking ridiculous idea: me with breast cancer. Yeah, right! I wanted to laugh, it seemed so ludicrous. I was still half expecting to find out that it was all some kind of huge,
Truman Show
-style experiment
that
Channel 4 were secretly filming. And no amount of me actually saying the word ‘cancer’ was making the truth any more believable. And it really should have, considering the fact that I said it all the sodding time.

It still came as a shock to hear other people say ‘cancer’ with reference to me. Shortly after the ‘buggery bit’ hit, in yet another of my pathetic, long-faced, sympathy-seeking moments, P pulled a blanket over me as I lay on the sofa, and I looked up at him with those pity-me eyes (that even
I
was annoyed by) and whinged, ‘P, I’m pooooorly.’

‘Well yes, of course you’re poorly,’ said P, with the patience of a saint on death row. ‘That’s because you’ve got cancer.’

I almost slapped him. ‘What’s he talking about?’ I thought, before remembering that it was, in fact, the case.

Not everyone was comfortable saying the word ‘cancer’. Even the nurses in chemo tried not to say it out loud, instead calling it ‘it’ or purposely missing it out of sentences altogether. (‘Yeah, it’s different with each day in here. All the women here today have got breast. Mondays is ovarian. And on Thursdays everyone’s prostate.’) One day I even caught Mum mouthing the word ‘cancer’ mid-sentence, in that over-enunciated, speaking-through-glass way that some people still revert to when saying ‘lesbian’ or ‘black’.

But being able to say it aloud like Harry Potter says ‘Voldemort’ didn’t mean I was any better equipped at handling it. This should have been a joyous, exciting time – Jamie’s wedding was just days away, but not only was I unable to fully enjoy the anticipation of the happiest day of his life as I would have ordinarily, but I felt increasingly guilty for trumping my family’s matrimonial excitement with my stupid bloody illness.

With my chemo schedules timed around the big day, things had been planned so that I’d be feeling better and ready to party just in time for the nuptials. But, anxious as I was to get to that stage, with Chemo 4, the getting better was more of a struggle. It was the movement thing, mostly – with my bones aching to a point where I was convinced some of them must be broken, I was shuffling about like a geriatric Quasimodo. And, with little more than a week to go before I had to pull my huge hat, strapless dress and four-inch heels out of my wardrobe, I was convinced that, come the wedding, I’d look more Neanderthal than
Homo sapiens
.

Jamie’s wedding was the only thing pulling me through my depressive lull. And depression was what it was. I had thought that all my whinging was just me taking the opportunity to have a moan, and letting the bubbling-under-the-surface anger have its moment but, as my procrastination became more painful, I had to concede that it was more than that. I was cross with myself for confessing it. I
hated
having to say it. Depression was a word I loathed. Like ‘stress’, I saw it as a term that was bandied about too much by people with no sense of its meaning. To my mind, telling people I was depressed made me look weaker than I liked to think I was. It was admitting defeat. But it was the truth.