Happy Now?

 The phone call came on the Wednesday of half term as I was sipping my morning coffee.  I was off later to see my friends in Suffolk as part of the pleasures of the week.  The timetable of my half term was unfolding to plan.  I didn’t pick up the call as there was no identification number or name.  Too many times have I answered briskly to be met with a fractional delay and a script declaimed with faulty intonation.  However, this time there was an answerphone message, not a nuisance call then.  Far from it.  The message was from the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital bookings and could I call them.  My heart leapt.  Could this be my surgery?  Yes, it was. 

“I can offer you a date for your surgery”

“Yes, please, when?”

“27^th February”

10 days!  Having waited for the original appointment for some months, I was given a date in March 2020 only to have it cancelled as the first wave of the pandemic overwhelmed.  I had thought it would be until at least next year before my name came up to the top of the list.  I hadn’t reckoned with NHS systems.  Patients waiting more than two years are a stain on the hospital.  Therefore, the N&N was running Sunday operating lists in the Arthur South Day Procedure unit to attempt to cut the numbers.  I was one of those numbers.  I should have felt joy, or at best relief.  I felt neither. 

 

Radiotherapy: a life saving circle of hell

In the waiting room for radiotherapy there is a hand bell.  It sits on a table between the groups of bolted down chairs, one end of the alcove that is designated as the waiting room off to the side at the end of the long corridor.  At the other end, high on the wall there is a television, muted, showing news in subtitles.  Depending on how much you want to divert yourself from the room you find yourself in, you can read the subtitles.  On a good day you can just sit and chat amiably to the couple sitting nearby.  It is not always obvious which member of the couple is about to go and change.  When the name is called, sometimes you are surprised by who gets up.

The Wall

I am aware the metaphors are being thrown around somewhat indiscriminately in this blog thread.  Some days it’s all about a show in five acts; today I draw upon the marathon analogy of ‘hitting the wall’. I haven’t run a marathon and probably never will now.  My last boyfriend was training for a marathon when we got together; it added to his glamour.  To be possessed of such resilience and determination clearly singled him out as someone special; to tackle such a difficult feat for the first time in his fifties also, so I told myself, suggested someone ready to take on a new way, moving forwards into the future.  Fortunately, my then psychotherapist warned me kindly that he was in a period of change and I was probably a transition after the end of his marriage and when he had settled again, I would be cast aside.  At the time I tried not to think of the warning, but it was prophetic.

FEC! (as Father Jack might say)

Chemo has started again.  Having braved the procedures last year, was it easier to walk through the doors of the chemo ward?  The answer to that is, unsurprisingly I’m sure, both yes and no.  A friend who had not accompanied me before was at my side for this first of three FEC chemotherapy treatments.  Whilst FEC is a standard breast cancer treatment, this day would be new to me and I felt something like a first former having moved up a year, the walls of the classroom were the same but the books were very different.  To add to the novelty, my appointment was for a Friday at 3pm rather than a Wednesday at 8.30am.  I wasn’t one of the new patients for the new day: the rhythms were well established, the comfy seats occupied and the biscuit basket had made many laps of the ward already.

Intermission

I’m in another ‘downtime’ phase after the excitement of my histology results.  They were almost as good as they could have been, with no cancer in the lymph node, the tumour completely removed, and evidence that the chemotherapy had killed more than 90% of the cancer cells.  I was genuinely surprised, because I had to have a therapeutic mammoplasty rather than a lumpectomy, as the footprint of the tumour appeared largely unchanged from MRI data.  I was bracing myself for more surgery, disappointing chemo results and spreading cancer, but none of this has happened.  It seems that the only reliable evidence is when you get to see the tumour for real and the histopathologist can do his (it was a ‘his’ in this case, not my casual sexism) analysis.  It felt like the horizon was opening up in front of me, such was the relief that enveloped me.  Nevertheless, my mood has changed as I deal with the practicalities of life now and what comes next.

Act 2: Beginners Please

My attitude approaching surgery has been different from preparing for my chemotherapy, partly because surgery seems more comprehensible than the potions of the physician.  The surgeon is going to cut the cancer out.  We can all get our heads round that; no need for bewilderment at the technicalities of the chemicals that make up those black covered bags, the contents of which have been pumped into me.  Of course, the surgery is anything but simple, but the concepts are easy to grasp, and therefore the reactions post-surgery should be easier to deal with.  Maybe.

Rollercoasters

Even in the midst of treatment for cancer I have found something to admonish myself for. Part of my soul is relieved as, since I found that lump at the end of June, I seem to be reinventing myself as a wise and content woman of strength, dealing maturely with the challenges that have been thrown up. I can now assure you that inside all that dressing there still lurks a very frightened child screaming ‘why me?’ and ‘it’s all my fault; I deserve this’. Yes, very confusing I agree. So what disappointment has simultaneously soothed and reprimanded? The fact that I promised myself (and by extension my band of readers) a blog at each stage of this process and yet weeks and events have passed with my fingers not reaching for the keyboard. I have thought about writing a number of times and even, unusually for me, thought of a title for the blog before setting finger to keyboard; but it is only now, when I know I’ve ‘let myself down’ that I can get to the job of writing. Why? What is happening now?