The C-Word (25 page)

*

WHEN I POSTED
a not-far-past-bald photo of myself online, I was overwhelmed with messages.

‘This is
exactly
the right thing to do,’ assured Tills.

‘I’m a bit scared to tell you this in light of you having banned this word,’ said Weeza, ‘but that’s a brave thing you’ve done.’

But the truth, I fear, was that uploading the photo was done more out of cowardice than bravery.

It began with a new-year get-together at our place. With Ant home from Los Angeles for the holidays, we invited the old gang – Tills, Si, Polly, Martin – round to the flat for a festive curry and cava session. It was the first time Ant had seen me since my trip to LA in the time between finding my
lump
and discovering what kind of havoc the lump was capable of causing.

‘Oh, Mac!’ she exclaimed as I opened my front door. ‘You still look exactly like you!’

‘I bloody hope not,’ I said. ‘I don’t particularly
want
to look like this!’

‘Oh fuck off,’ she answered, thrusting a bottle of cava into my hand. ‘You’re gorgeous. End of.’

Now, I adore Ant, and I adore her even more for complimenting me on the way I looked when I was wearing a dodgy wig (this being a special circumstance, I left the headscarf in a drawer) and a dress that was a couple of sizes too small. But Ant, on this occasion, was wrong. I didn’t look gorgeous. I looked horrendous. But I didn’t realise quite how horrendous I looked until Ant uploaded the photos of her trip onto Facebook.

‘Antonia tagged a photo of you,’ said the email.

‘Oh shit,’ I thought, clicking on the link. ‘This can’t be good.’

June 2008 to January 2009 had been a mostly photo-free zone; only at Jamie and Leanne’s wedding did I accept that a camera would be pointing in my direction and, since that was after a spray-tan and professionally applied make-up, I was prepared to let it go.

‘You’ve GOT to delete that photo,’ I pleaded with Ant in an email immediately after un-tagging myself. ‘That photo isn’t of me. That photo is of a fat lass in a wig. And I DO NOT want people to see me that way.’

I’m not one for
ever
having cross words with my friends, and I knew that Ant would be surprised by my unusually angry tone. It wasn’t cool, kicking up a fuss in that way, and after pressing send I instantly felt bad for writing such a narky email. But in truth, I was seething.

This was supposed to be my fresh start; the beginning of not just a new year, but a new life, too. But on that day, crying into my laptop at the sight of what The Bullshit had done to me, it couldn’t have felt further from that. There I was, sobbing at a photograph of myself effectively in disguise, when what lay underneath it was just as unpleasant. And so, figuring that it was time to slowly come out of hiding my appearance, I took the first photo of myself
sans
wig, posted it online and sent it to Ant with an apology.

My cancer disguise wasn’t without its uses, mind you. The following week, towards the end of radiotherapy, with my session having overrun by about, ooh, three weeks, I ran (okay, walked quickly) back to the car to find a traffic warden standing over it, tapping away on his ticket machine, licking his lips and circling my Astra like a hungry bird of prey. You know how parking attendants always tell you they’ve already started making out your ticket and can’t possibly stop, even though you’re back now? Well, THEY LIE. Because this dude stopped and scarpered. And I swear it was because of my headscarf.

It wasn’t the first time that my headscarf got me preferential treatment. Earlier that morning, in the packed radiotherapy waiting room, a woman gave up her chair for me. ‘Oh here, love,’ she smiled. ‘You have this seat – I’m not a patient.’ And the previous week, on my way back from the hospital in a minor traffic jam on Chelsea Embankment, I managed to silence a very shouty, road-raged woman who was shrieking abuse at anyone in her path from the window of her MX5, and refusing to let anyone in despite them blocking up the adjacent lane. When our cars aligned, with windows rolled down, I looked calmly in her direction and said, ‘Just what have
you
got to
moan
about, lady?’ She had nothing to say. And, by ’eck, it felt good.

Grateful as I was for such minor cancer upsides, I started to wonder whether there was a moral question here. While I was sure that nobody would deny a cancer patient taking advantage of some assistance whenever they could, at what point did accepting assistance become milking it? When it came to playing the cancer card, what were the rules? It isn’t exclusively a cancer game, of course. There’s a range of suits in this deck: cancer, health, age, sex … And it’s perfectly acceptable, is it not, to play the pregnancy card – whether for a seat on the tube or a free upgrade on the train. So, by that token, is the cancer excuse fair game? (I’ll see your stomach cramps and raise you a bald head.)

There’s no point giving you my poker face here – breast cancer was an excuse I had been known to use on occasion. But not half as much as I could have done, or even as much as I’d like to have done. I’m a long way off getting comfy on the moral high ground. Because while I believe that the cancer card should be reserved only for mischief purposes on special occasions, like a pair of red heels you keep for big nights out, I sure as eggs is eggs wouldn’t begrudge anyone using it whenever they bloody well wanted.

When driving to my daily appointments, I often wondered what I’d do if I got pulled over for speeding. There was every chance I would, as well, given the insufficient time I left myself to get to the hospital every morning (who am I kidding – the insufficient time I leave myself to get
anywhere
). And there was no doubt about it – with no cleavage card at my disposal, hell yeah, I’d have dug deep for the cancer cop-out. And I’d be willing to wager that you’d do the same.

The thing was, in my second calendar year of cancer, I reckoned I’d paid my dues. I’d served my time, done the
stretch
of torturous treatment and got The Bullshit on my permanent record. I’d earned it – that card was mine to play. Cancer doesn’t exactly come with benefits. Your consultant doesn’t set the ball rolling with, ‘Well, I’m afraid you’ve got cancer. But hey, at least the Sainsbury’s delivery man will carry your groceries through to the kitchen.’

P was never so quick to play the cancer card. Not that he hadn’t considered it, mind. One day he came home from work with a bee in his bonnet about a colleague who’d pissed him off all day with her vocal, reasonless whinging. ‘What about?’ I enquired.

‘Oh, I dunno. The weather or her waistline or a bad hair day or something. All I wanted to do was grab her by the neck and say, “Shut the fuck up, woman. Do you know what I’ve been going through?”’

But he didn’t. Because P is better than that. In fact, very few people in his office even knew that he was nursing his wife through breast cancer. It was something he kept as quiet as he could in his professional life, wishing simultaneously to avoid anyone’s pity and to continue in his work as he always would have done.

When something like cancer muscles in on your life, you don’t half find yourself low on patience for other people’s dubious gripes. So I’d even go so far as to say that I think it’s okay for someone to play the cancer card on your behalf. (Within reason, like – I don’t want you to go missing a deadline tomorrow and blaming it on me.)

Having cancelled two holidays and countless other days out last year because of me, my folks booked themselves a well-deserved, pre-Christmas long weekend in New York. At check-in, they could see that the flight had been over-booked and the attendant was busy bumping people off the plane.

‘What will we do if they try to stop us getting on?’ asked Mum.

‘That woman will hear
exactly
what kind of year I’ve had,’ replied my old man. And good on him.

CHAPTER 28

To the end

One mastectomy, five months of chemotherapy, six weeks of radiotherapy, and I’m done. My active cancer treatment (if you don’t count the last bit of surgery and five years of Tamoxifen) is over. Finished. And I swear I just saw a tumbleweed roll past my bedroom window.

The other day, I was sitting on the sofa with Mum, reading the comments that people have left on my blog.

‘I can’t believe all this has happened,’ she said.

‘I know, it’s ace, right? All these people I’ve never met being so nice to me – I don’t know what to do with it,’ I replied.

Mum looked puzzled. ‘Well, yes, that is lovely, but I didn’t mean that,’ she explained. ‘I meant all of this. Breast cancer. I can’t believe it’s happened to you.’

As it goes, neither can I. It’s almost eight months since my diagnosis, seven months since my mastectomy, six months since chemo began and six weeks since my first radiotherapy session. Eight whole months of talking and worrying and crying and obsessing and blogging about cancer, and I’m not sure whether I should be deliriously happy that it’s over or really fucking angry that it happened in the first place. I’m furiously
flitting
between hyperactive, party-seeking emancipation and disbelieving, panic-stricken remembrance of the whole hideous ordeal. But mostly I’m numb. Weepy and exhausted and numb.

Has the reality of having breast cancer really only just hit me? It feels like I’ve been thrown straight back into that same black hole I found myself lost in at the beginning, in that awful, helpless time between diagnosis and treatment when there’s nothing to do but read frightening things on the internet and try to convince yourself that you’re not going to die. Then, on the eve of my final treatment, I had a panic attack. At least I think I did. I’m not certain I’ve had one before. But I had that same gut-wrenching, pulse-racing, heart-sinking, colour-draining, future-fearing feeling I had back in June.

I want this to be an uplifting story. I want to pick myself up, dust myself down and get on with whatever it is I’ve got to get on with now. So does everyone around me – whatever they say, I’m sure I can sense their frustration that I’m not quite well enough (physically or mentally) to bounce back into life as we all knew it. And fair enough – while I’ve talked and worried and cried and obsessed and written about The Bullshit for almost eight months, they’re the ones who’ve had to hear it all. They’re as sick of it as I am. They must feel like they’re on the receiving end of a proud parent’s single topic of conversation. But I also want this to be an honest story. And the honest truth is this: at the end of treatment there’s as much to mourn as there is to celebrate.

There’s a terrific Macmillan-run online cancer support community that I discovered recently, called
What Now?
And, to the untrained, unaffected-by-cancer ear, that’s just a simple, snappy, easy-to-remember title. But, to anyone who’s walked in my size sevens (spot the Louboutins hint), calling a cancer support community
What Now?
is actually a stroke of brilliant, heart-of-the-truth genius.

*

‘TILLS? WHAT THE …?’

‘Happy end of treatment day!’ she squealed, hoisting a giant, ribboned bottle of cava in the air as I walked towards my radiotherapy treatment room for the final time.

‘You sneaky bugger,’ I said, grabbing her for a hug. ‘Who told you where to come?’

‘Well, P was in on it,’ she said. ‘He gave me the directions and times and all that. Oh, and I spotted the fit boy on reception, by the way.’

‘Ha, yeah. I thought P had been quiet,’ I said, taking a seat beside her in the waiting room, and placing the assorted cupcakes I’d baked for the staff on the floor in front of my feet. ‘Actually, I wondered why he hadn’t volunteered to come himself today, but I guess I can let him off now, eh?’

‘Absolutely,’ asserted Tills. ‘Anyway, I didn’t want you going straight home on your own after this, so I’m taking you out for lunch instead.’

‘You are a
wonderful
mate, Tillface,’ I said, pinching her knee.

As only a close friend can, Tills knew without me even having to mention it that my final day of radiotherapy had the potential to be a rather emotional one. Finally at the end of my meticulously choreographed treatment routine and being released from capture, she knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t quite know where to put myself once I didn’t have a hospital-issued timetable telling me where to go next. Getting out of the habit of planning ahead had been the first hurdle for me to negotiate after my diagnosis – despite it going against every grain of my being, the only way to keep myself sane was to bow to the cliché and take
every
day as it came. Which was precisely what I’d been doing for seven months – but now, I had to switch it off again and find a route back to my old way of life. And it wasn’t quite as easy as it sounded.

‘Are you going to be okay for the rest of the day?’ asked a concerned Tills after we left the Yo! Sushi in which I’d cried over my tempura.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry today wasn’t more celebratory, especially after you made all this effort.’

‘Lady,’ said Tills with an arm around my shoulder, ‘I think we know by now that The Bullshit doesn’t let us celebrate when we want to. But our time will come. You know that, right?’

‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘And hey, in the meantime I’ve got a magnum of cava to work my way through and there’s a Krispy Kreme stall across the road with my name on it.’

‘That’s my girl,’ chirped Tills, leading me back towards the car park.

Having finished radiotherapy on a Monday (as if to prove that cancer treatment never ends neatly), the remainder of the week was just as unsettling. And, as it turned out, my pre-finale panic attack wasn’t to be my last. I had always assumed that panic attacks were like fits: palpitations, tunnel vision, dizziness, passing out and calling a doctor. Much like cancer, I had filed them under It’ll Never Happen To Me and got on with my life. But throughout the week it became clear that they were muscling in on things, too; these unpleasant, terrifying, uncontrollable moments that would overwhelm me, take my breath, make me shiver and reduce me to dizzy tears in the rare times that I wasn’t keeping myself busy.