Seconds Out

Of the many tangled issues to deal with when living with cancer (oh, doesn’t that sound like the start of an advert ridden click bait you’ve just idly opened), the biggest issue is one of time.  You either have too much or too little of it.  For me, before treatment started there was the creeping anxiety that my grade 3 tumour was going to spread too fast to catch it, and now, I want it all done and over with.  I’ve had one cycle of chemotherapy, I’ve been brave walking forwards into the unknown, now is the time to be told ‘it’s fine, you’re ok’.  It isn’t like that.

The key fact that most people know about chemotherapy, apart from the fact your hair falls out, is that it takes several cycles of treatment before any decision can be made as to whether the chemo is working.  The way the disease is understood now, as far as I know, is that they can’t predict how well the treatment will work on each individual, the same way they can’t predict the side effects.  There are parameters.  It’s the old ‘nature/nurture’ issue yet again, although I think we all realise it’s a great deal more complex than such a binary question.  If my brain were up to teaching speed I’d be ranting on about epigenetics by now, but it’s not, because I have started my second cycle of chemotherapy, and my mind is drawn to dealing with more practical things, such as ‘if I know it hurt last time, does mean it will it hurt more now’?

This week we have had to deal with a lot of emotion here at home, and, oddly, I am not the main protagonist in this scene.  In a way it’s a great deal easier for me because I live with the diagnosis, I am the one that gets treated like a hero for not complaining at receiving life saving treatment at the kind hands of experts.  Watching how other people deal with my diagnosis has been, at times, overwhelming.  I went to choir on Monday and stood up at the interval (having asked the Secretary if I could) to explain about my cancer diagnosis and the choir.  I didn’t want there to be any secrecy about the cancer, and I was pretty sure several the members had direct or pretty close experience of what I am going through.  So, I said that I wanted to carry on singing but that two things would stop me; first my own tiredness which might mean I have to leave at half time some weeks and secondly being vulnerable to infection.  I continued that I couldn’t dictate whether people came to choir but if they think they might have something to keep away from me.  The little speech was well received, and I was told I was brave.  I countered with the usual ‘I’m a teacher, standing up and speaking to people is my job’.  Perhaps, I am merely surfing the zeitgeist, but I don’t want to be secretive about the cancer I have, and, most importantly, I don’t want pity.  Rachel Bland died a week ago, aged 40 of breast cancer leaving behind a two-year-old son.  I haven’t been able to listen to her podcasts, which are apparently inspiring, because it is just too painful for me.  I’m just a bit too close, it makes me too anxious.  I’m having treatment, I am told, that has a great success rate, but I don’t know if I’m going to make the cut.  So much as I can talk about my treatment, the fact that it could fail is not something I want to discuss.  Not now.  As Scarlet O’Hara, that gorgeous, flawed character I have identified with on so many occasions, says ‘I’ll think about that tomorrow, for tomorrow is another day’

So, Monday was blood test prior to the next round, and on Tuesday I started my steroid tablets ready for chemo on Wednesday.  This was different from last time when I had an IV infusion of steroids.  I was feeling quite well, and the steroids made me feel organised and energetic.  The pile of household paperwork that had built up had to be dealt with before the next round started.  I knew that my brain slowed during the first cycle, as my energy was concentrated on dealing with the discomforts around the treatment, but still, as a sentient adult, bills need to be paid.  There is an argument that everyone should have a steroid infused day once every three months to clear the backlog of jobs that need doing.  Not only did I clear the paperwork, I made soup (and successfully froze it in sensible containers), did the laundry and organised bits in the garden.  Whether it was just the steroids, or the fact that I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up with such things I can’t tell you, but it was good to have the jobs done prior to the Wednesday arrival at the chemo ward.

My FLM phones daily to keep me in touch with goings on at work and to make sure I’m ok, and she is adamant that I’m not going to the chemo ward alone.  She cannot be with me now term has started.  I have protested that I am fine, but when she’s in one of her phases, there is no moving her (believe me, I have tried) and it is best to give in gracefully.  So, she contacted our retired colleague and friend (RCF) to do the chemo run with me on Wednesday. My RCF taught Health and Social care for many years and was quite pleased to come to the hospital as she frequently runs into ex-students on her visits there and has the opportunity of that lovely moment of finding out ‘what happened next’.  Sadly, last Wednesday there were no ex-students on the chemo ward, but we chatted and drank coffee whilst the drugs were pumped into my system.  It was a much shorter day than last time, but still plenty of time for people watching.  Years of classroom work means I can pick up conversations without looking like I am, so I can decide whether ‘intervention’ is necessary or the students in question really are looking at a pencil sharpener, or the checking the spelling of ‘receive’, or other innocuous acts, or not.  This skill (which still, irritatingly, can let me down I might add) means that in a situation like the chemo ward, I can build a picture quite quickly of what is going on.  What is all this leading to?  The chemo ward is for all types of cancer, not just breast cancer, and one of the most obvious things to say about cancer is it is indiscriminate.  There are no children on this ward, not on a Wednesday anyway, but apart from that, all human life is represented in the patient body.  Kit, my breast care nurse, talked of ‘living with cancer not dying from it’ and, although all of us patients are living with it, but the inescapable truth is that some will die from it despite the best efforts of all concerned.  By my reckoning there were at least two people around me who were in advanced stages of cancer having palliative care.  One of them looked desperately like my father, with a man who had to be his son, sitting with studied casual care beside him.  I remember the situation well, I remember being the daughter by his side, watching my father fall asleep almost exactly 12 minutes after his chemo infusion started.   My father had inoperable pancreatic cancer, and my husband left me just after my father’s diagnosis, for those of you who don’t know.  To be on a chemo ward as the patient, albeit a different chemo ward, is an odd experience for me, but equally, coming to the treatments a second time has proved to be surprisingly stressful.

How was I going to deal with it all this time when I had an idea of what was coming?  Would it be the same?  Would it be worse? Certainly, my hair is falling out faster, and without doubt, I have that look of ‘someone with cancer’ when I don’t have my wig on.  Do I ‘play up’ to the symptoms, as my ex-husband would have implied.  Making too much of them because I am frightened and want attention.  The attention that is freely and generously given by so many people.  You are probably shouting at the blog in disagreement, but to someone who was told she was ‘needy’ for more than twenty years by her ex-husband, and far worse by the ex-boyfriend who encouraged her to move to Norwich, the kindness of friends, the genuine niceness of others continues to give me pause.  There is a part of me that knows I could not have recognised such goodness without the cancer.  I find people usually quite nice anyway, but the life affirming purity that has been shown rarely gets a chance to be demonstrated by all those involved with my ordinary extraordinary storm in a teacup.

So, I have the juxtaposition of my friends, on social media and in person, heaping kindness upon me and mine in generous spoonful’s, and yet the father to my children has been engaged in a ‘three-way battle’ with his daughter for an hour and a half of his time once a month.  I have written much about this man who broke my heart the first time, but I find myself in a different frame of mind these days: one of relief.  I never thought I would ever be released from carrying the emotional burden of his loss from my life, and yet now I find I am.  There is a big difference between being content despite what has happened to you and being content.  There’s a lot written of, frankly guilt inducing, articles about how you ‘live in the moment’:  how you deal with the existential crisis of existence, be it with faith, substance abuse or just plain bad temper (other alternatives are available).   But nothing prepares you for meeting your own ‘edges’, your own sense of what is important until you do.  I know by moving into this second cycle I have left the fear of the unknown and moved to being more aware of just what I am doing, and what is really important in my life.  Or at least that’s what it feels like this time round.