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.

I’m not sure whether the surgery is classified as major or minor, but it has been life changing for me.  That could be said of having a nasty wisdom tooth out, but this surgery has had more ramifications and, as the days pass I find myself dealing with the ups and downs of my post-surgery world.  At first, I bled a lot, and the first community nurse who came to change my dressings was unhappy that there appeared to be a gap where the skin was joined with stitches.  I didn’t want to see the wounds; not in a strong, shouting, rejecting way; it was just the surgery was proving more emotionally challenging than I had anticipated.  I was helped by the fact that the wounds were dressed the whole time and I wore one of my new comfort bras 24 hours a day.  I didn’t have to connect my body with these wounds.  I had handed over responsibility for their welfare to the medical staff and, whilst I did what I was told, I still didn’t have ‘ownership’ of my own body.  I think this is partly my mind’s way of dealing with the stress of surgery.  To cope I had to trust the medical staff, and to their credit they respected me and treated me kindly.  I had a rush appointment back in, outside clinic times, for a ‘check over’.  My kind surgeon came through the general surgical waiting room in his blue scrubs, looked for me and waved and smiled. 

The general surgical waiting room is one of those places where the fear is palpable.  A number of clinics run simultaneously but nobody is there for the joy of seeing doctors and nurses.  I try to look as normal as possible when I’m there because I remember my first appointment and being so scared by the sight of a woman with a nearly hairless head topped by a homemade pork pie red hat.  She looked angry and so ‘other’.  She made me fearful of what I might become with a cancer diagnosis.  Was my identity about to be stripped away?  How difficult was it going to be?  Was there any hope?  As you will know if you’ve been following this blog, yes there is hope. However, it has, and will continue to be, difficult and my identity is not what it was.  Nevertheless, I think it isn’t fair to the newcomers in the waiting room to find me looking ‘other’.  The Big C provide you with a wig and a make-up course, if you want it.  Part of coping with the process of dealing with cancer is knowing when it is important to you to ‘style it out’.  If one more person gets to their consultation without feeling quite as sick as did, then that has to be a good thing.

I was called into the consultation room and the surgeon was all efficiency and kindness.  He put in some more stitches and dressed the wound with instructions not to touch the dressings until he saw me again.  Over that time things got a bit sore, and slightly smelly, and when I met him again, he was once again efficient and kind.  The left-hand side wasn’t doing as well as the right-hand side, so I went back on antibiotics and the community nurses needed to come in every other day to change dressings and apply some form of stuff, that looked iodine based, to the wounds.  When I saw him for the last time he seemed relaxed at the progress and admitted to me that the wound had been a bit of a concern.  I had gathered that, but one of the bonuses of handing it over to the medical staff is I was doing as I was told, and not worrying that I might be hideously scarred forevermore.  Just before this appointment I had finally looked at the scars that could be seen, and it wasn't very comforting.  My surgeon has assured me that things will change, especially after radiotherapy and he will see me again once all the treatments are finished to check the wounds and the healing.  I am very grateful for that, as I feel I have a support system still in place.  But then my treatment isn’t over.  Far from it.

Contemplating more chemotherapy is not a pleasant pastime. I have three cycles of FEC over nine weeks followed by three weeks of radiotherapy.  I have had to wait longer than I wanted for my oncologist appointment, and no doubt everybody else thinks it’s lovely that I don’t have to start chemo until after Christmas.  I was torn, because although I didn’t want to ‘ruin Christmas’ every day I wait is a day added to the finish of this thing, and I have had enough.  My hair is starting to grow again, my taste buds have reverted to normal, my energy levels are up on what they were.  I’ve started cycling again, but I can’t do anything else because of the surgery.  Weeks and weeks of healing before I could make it to the gym, and that’s if I wasn’t facing more chemotherapy.  I know I should be grateful I have had such wonderful treatment, but waiting for it to hurt again is not an agreeable pastime.  I have the additional worry of money.  It is possible my sick pay will have to go to half salary before this is over and, if I could have started my chemo before Christmas, I might have avoided that.  I don’t know if that will be the case, but once again, being single is penalised, or at least that’s what it feels like.  There is no backstop but me, no-one to hug me quietly in the morning, or bring me a mug of tea and a piece of tea loaf when they come in from work, to listen to me prattle about my day with love in their eyes.  I know plenty of people in relationships don’t have that either, but I am getting angry about just how hard this really is.  I could take a deep breath, look up serenely and think of rollercoasters, but is it wrong to get angry?  It’s difficult for others around you, and especially difficult as a woman.   In my experience an angry woman is told to behave herself, an angry man is seen to be expressing his point of view and accommodated.   Still, I do know that getting angry will not bring this experience to a close any faster and will stress those around me.  I have spent the last few days displacing my anger onto other things.  To counteract this I have tried to put my life in context with the sufferings of the world: to think of the homeless on the streets of my city; the women in cultural ‘bondage’ all over the world; the people who can’t get access to the treatment I have; and all I feel is more guilty.  I think it is not wrong to be angry and it might yet be valid to be angry, but I’m frightened of letting go, frightened of being unreasonable and selfish, frightened in case my courage, which has propped me up so far, suddenly vanishes.

I look at my scars every day now.  They revolt me, but I’m trying to accept myself as I am.  My hair is growing again, it is even beginning to look shiny.  I hate it, its colour and its lack of length, but it will fall out again with the next chemo treatments, along with the rest of my eyebrows and eyelashes, no doubt.  I cannot say ‘the waiting is the worst part’, for it isn’t.  Nor is it the injections, the tests, the surgery or the boredom.  What I really hate is the fact that I have cancer and what I have become while the disease is removed from my body.  I am not fighting ‘it’, ‘it’ is not an alien invader, ‘it’ is a part of me that is maladapted to kill me if it has a chance.   Thankfully through the marvels of modern medicine, it probably won’t.  However, it has changed me.  Let’s hope that’s the good that comes out of all this.  There has to be something that makes this worth all the effort.  Don’t shout at the screen; I know you all think there is, but on a grey day in January, that thought takes a lot of imagination.