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.

Is it fair or even accurate to call ‘my cancer journey’ (sick bags in the usual place, dear readers) a marathon?  Perhaps the only reasonable thing to say is: until you’ve done the thing you don’t know.  But that could be considered cowardice.  Can you learn about something you have not experienced?  Ah, the age-old philosophical question.  It’s rather a simplistic question in my humble opinion, dear readers, but that’s because I’m a psychologist and see the interaction between subjective and objective experience as necessarily blurred.  You can measure my temperature; you can check my white blood count; but that won’t tell you how I am going to feel about the processes I’m going through.  You can infer pain, but you can’t measure it.  Not objectively anyway.

So, what do I know about marathons? I remember my father telling me that when they were first run in the modern age, it was considered an extraordinary achievement very few would ever be able to complete, and certainly not the thousands that plod the streets ever year.  I know you must train slowly and steadily, never over-facing yourself but always pushing forwards.  I know it takes over your life as you need to feed yourself adequately, that you burn off body fat, that some people are better at running than others.  Also, I know it hurts.  For many years watching the London marathon on the television has reduced me to a sobbing heap.  I was unbearably moved by the guts and humanity to push the body to a place I was too frightened to go.  An asthmatic with poor coordination and little confidence to drive myself to achieve, I believed I was never going to test myself in the ways that these people did.  My sobbing was almost a mourning cry, but also a bone deep cry of joy for their sheer courage.  I never thought I’d feel like that, but I did in the few years I rowed.  My rowing career was short and very unremarkable, but it transformed me beyond anything I could have imagined.  I was in my early twenties and joined Thames Rowing Club, almost totally unaware of just how prestigious the club was.  Before that I had benefited from the aerobics revolution spearheaded by Jane Fonda.  I had the tape and the book, and still can only hear the first few bars of ‘Can you feel it’ by the Jackson 5 to be transported back to the days of lycra and stirrup footed leggings.  This fitness developed in my university days and a boyfriend who rowed gave me the confidence to try.  My school sporting career was non-existent, apart from a spectacular house tennis tournament in my lower sixth when the assistant housemaster and I made it to the semi-final round, much to everyone’s surprise. Being tall, uncoordinated, with poor eyesight and lungs that seized up on a warm-up lap, I was not someone who cheered the eye of a PE teacher.   Those terrible adolescent years of finding an identity were neither savage nor extraordinary for me.  I wasn’t rocket science bright, terribly beautiful, gifted musically, a dancer, a great reader or a sports woman.  I wanted to be liked and look like everyone else.  I read Jackie magazine, and listened to Radio 1.   But sport wasn’t for me.  My parents had no interest in me being part of a team that required their input.  My mother was very anti hockey; she remained convinced that the early death of her beloved cousin Eileen, from bone cancer in her 30s, was caused by damage inflicted during hockey.  Eileen had been, by all accounts, athletic and sporty and was very close to my mother despite their age gap. My mother was deeply affected by Eileen’s death, and it coloured so much of her life.  I don’t know whether it was the key factor in my lack of sporting drive but I was no rebel and ‘not being sporty’ was no disgrace, and fitted in with my ‘wanting to be like everybody else’ trope neatly.  Part of that, of course, is looking ‘good’, which for a teenager in the 1970s, and probably still now, is to examine one’s apparent ‘deficiencies’ against a standard and attempt to modify to conform to the norm.  My particular loathing was my legs: I saw them as ugly and fat.  They aren’t a great shape to be honest, but there are few people in the world who have flawless legs without doing any exercise.  Then, of course, there was ‘the tummy’.  Quite what we all saw in those flat little pieces of flesh I don’t know, but I remember agonising about the wobbling dome I believed to nestle above my legs.  As I sit typing with folds of steroid/chemo/lack of exercise expanding flesh folding round my midriff, I try not to berate my teenage self, nor my fifty something self.  At least now I know, I suppose, but I remain sad that the naivety of teenage girls is still exploited horribly by all who envy or want to possess them.  When I became ‘invisible’ in my early 40s (the time when you are no longer noticed by beauty saleswomen in the department stores, or men in the street) I was sad and angry.  Having protested about the objectification for so long, I should have been relieved to no longer be treated thus, but in reality, I was still objectified, just dismissed as I imagine all those Tinder profiles are today.

The story of how I started rowing has been told elsewhere, but I found myself capable and wanted.  I had strength and determination, and most surprising of all, a competitive spirit.  I wanted to win.  The feeling when a four, or even better an eight, was rowed well is incomparable.  It is gestalt, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  However, all crews want to win, and in rowing there is winning or losing and nothing in between.  To achieve the edge you must train, and for the first time in my life I trained in a gym, I rowed in all weathers and I ran.  Admittedly, our Monday night 6-mile run was not a fast affair.  I maintained I needed to run and talk at the same time as it was so boring running.  Our coach was irritated, but I did get fitter and I was good in that boat.  The glittering career didn’t last long, I started late, I got a job that made it hard, and then I married.  Nevertheless, the woman that was revealed on the river was a more authentic version of me than had gone before.  The layers of insecurity that adolescent spreads on our childhood frames were chipped away and I found a strength not seen before.  Well, not seen by me.  Should friends from the time read this, I’m sure they’ll comment that I always was what I am now, but I could not see it.  To me life was fearful, other people were better and I was weak.

A cancer diagnosis is one of those things we fear.  Media representations usually team it with syrupy music and a brave smiling face.  The latest one I saw was the Breast Cancer Now charity (the ad is from 2017, how I’ve not seen it before I don’t know) featuring a young girl building something and getting a young woman (clearly meant to be her mother) to come and sit in the ‘time machine’  The strap line is something about ‘by 2050 everyone with breast cancer shall live.  For some 2050 can’t come soon enough’.  All accompanied by the usual meaningful tune. Heart wrenching and made me utterly furious.  How did they depict breast cancer?  A woman in a dressing gown and some form of head covering.   How about change the stereotypes of people with cancer and not induce this appalling fear with every charity ad?  Yes, cancer is horrible; yes, people lose their hair but not all of us subject the world to ugly scarves and turbans.  Yes, people die, but not all of us.  Time and time again I am asked if I have been very sick, as that stereotype is also the one we all file away about cancer treatment.  I know I’m being a bit awkward (‘a bit?’ I hear you cry as your reach for another slurp of tea), but it seems so unfair that despite all the progress and astounding treatment, fear, pain and ultimate defeat still seem to be the core features sold to the public at large.

The treatment since Christmas has been tough, unexpectedly so.  This is, after all, mop up treatment.  The tumour is gone, there is no evidence of cancer elsewhere in my body, and I have endured three FEC treatments.  I have radiotherapy to come. I have just been for a second planning scan to see if a different technique would be more beneficial.  My Herceptin injections start on March 15^th and carry on for a year.  I believe I am having the best available treatment and my chances of living for 10 years or more are about 90% or more.  Why have I found these last weeks so difficult?  I am not doing those ghastly injections into my stomach; the chemo is through slow injections and not unduly uncomfortable; the side effects are no worse than the ones from the earlier chemo.  It’s the emotional resilience to keep going; to know the treatment is going to make me feel grim and to be grateful for it.  Waking up each day and judging whether I will be well enough to sit up, get up, get dressed, sit on the sofa or even make it out of the house.  Not to think of trips to the cinema, going to the gym, out for a bike ride, what it might feel like to walk into work and not be a welcome visitor.  The trick is to live in the moment, and that takes a lot of energy.  Because how I feel can change quickly.  A flush that starts at the back of my head and envelopes, leaving my hair (all ½ inch of it) wet with sweat.  Walking into a room and having a dizziness, like recovering from flu, come over you and knowing you must stop.  Plans that can and do change.  The endless questioning about whether a headache is because you haven’t drunk enough water or whether you can justify some painkillers.  And resolving to remain cheerful and outward looking because only by doing that can you get through the day.  The fear that lurks in dreams that despite everything, the cancer is back, because all those ads might be right: nothing can really keep it at bay once you’ve got it.

The end doesn’t seem in sight and submitting to the treatments knowing that any improvements you have felt are about to be counteracted by the drugs infused into your bloodstream is not easy.  It’s not impossible and the guilt that I feel knowing I have met several people who will never get better is immense.  Fortunately, I have been able to meet with friends, drink coffee and hold their infant children.  I have been able to chat to DN2 as we watch another episode of Midsomer Murders and laugh over the not-so-challenging plot.  My FLM has continued to phone every day, and updates me on the goings-on at work, so I don’t feel totally remote.  Cards have been sent, and supportive comments on Facebook.  I am holding it together, taking one step at a time, pushing forward and not looking back, not comparing today to yesterday, or even thinking about tomorrow, because I only have the energy for each step at a time.  Soon, they tell me, the end will come into sight but I can’t see it yet, I have today to get through.