The C-Word Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: An apology

  Chapter 2: Reality bites

  Chapter 3: Let me get this off my chest

  Chapter 4: The longest day

  Chapter 5: New balls, please

  Chapter 6: The equaliser

  Chapter 7: Save Ferris

  Chapter 8: The no-kids clause

  Chapter 9: The science bit

  Chapter 10: The shape I’m in

  Chapter 11: Getting wiggy with it

  Chapter 12: Back in ’therapy

  Chapter 13: Does my bum look big in this?

  Chapter 14: My Super Sweet 29th

  Chapter 15: Old red eyes is back

  Chapter 16: I’ll be there for you

  Chapter 17: I shall be released

  Chapter 18: Pull out the stopper

  Chapter 19: Something changed

  Chapter 20: Lonely hearts club

  Chapter 21: One step beyond

  Chapter 22: I got my head checked

  Chapter 23: To boldly go

  Chapter 24: Escape to the country

  Chapter 25: Wig out

  Chapter 26: And never brought to mind

  Chapter 27: Rehab

  Chapter 28: To the end

  Chapter 29: Restoration

  Chapter 30: What’s my age again?

  Chapter 31: Dotting the i

  Chapter 32: Fitting image

  Chapter 33: A change of season

  Chapter 34: Happy birthday

  Chapter 35: Best foot forward

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  ‘The frustrating, life-altering, sheer bloody pain-in-the-arse inconvenience of getting breast cancer at 28’ laid bare.

  What do you do when you discover you have advanced breast cancer in your twenties? Well, after throwing more than a few (justified) tantrums, dissolving over the prospect of losing your hair and saying goodbye to your left boob, you might just blog about it. Well, you certainly do if you’ve a gob as big as Lisa’s.

  The last thing Lisa had expected to cross off her ‘things to do before you’re 30’ list was beating breast cancer, but that’s what she’s stuck doing. So while she had to park her life, blogging about dealing with the crap of cancer became an outlet that helped her to cope and keep friends and family updated.

  Lisa’s raw emotion and dark humour combined to make for very compelling reading. And now, in this brilliant, brave and insightful book, Lisa tells her whole story as it really was. Whatever you face in life, whatever the curveball you’ve been dealt, reading this will make you laugh, cry and feel hopeful again.

  About the Author

  Lisa Lynch is a journalist and magazine editor. At the age of 28, while editing her second interiors title, Lisa discovered a lump in her breast – a lump that spawned not just cancer, but a blog (www.alrighttit.com), this book and a writing career. Talk about milking it.

  For Cyril and Jean

  Introduction

  On my lengthy ‘Things To Do Before I’m Thirty’ list (see Northern Lights, get pregnant, write book, lose stone, own Christian Louboutins), I hadn’t factored in beating breast cancer. But them’s the breaks.

  The ball-ache was less about having to add such a hefty task to my list than it was about the sheer bloody inconvenience of it taking precious time out of my late twenties. I had lots of very serious business to attend to, thank you very much, like shopping sprees and Wonderbra-wearing and romantic weekends away and getting drunk over dinner with mates (not that that’d help on the losing-a-stone front, mind). But while I had to concede that The Bullshit (as I’ve come to refer to it) would have to come first for a while, I was determined to get the good times back, and not allow it to take away anything more than my hair. (And let’s be honest, that was pissing on my chips quite enough.)

  I’ve always worked on the assumption that, whatever it is, it’s better to know about it. (The truth may hurt, but it’s always preferable to know when your skirt is tucked into your knickers, right?) Nor have I ever been one for keeping my mouth shut. So I started a blog, Alright Tit, on which I kept a journal of my cancer experience. And writing while fighting is a strategy that’s worked – not only have my friends and family been kept informed on all the stuff they’d never hear from Kylie (or Brave Kylie, to give her her full name), but it’s also been a cathartic method of keeping me out of the therapist’s chair (for the most part).

  I’m not pretending to be the only twenty-something in the world who’s had a breast cancer diagnosis. I’m just probably the one with the biggest gob. But everyone needs a strategy, and mine has been to write my way through The Bullshit (and come out the other side walking taller in a fabulous pair of Louboutins).

  *

  Carrie Bradshaw fell in Dior, I fell in Debenhams. It was May 2008, and it was spectacular. Uncomfortable heels + slippy floor + head turned by a cocktail dress = thwack. Arms stretched overhead, teeth cracking on floor tiles, chest and knees breaking the fall, legs flailing about like a mid-tantrum toddler. It was theatrical, exaggerated, a perfect 6.0. And it was Significant Moment #1 in discovering that I had grade-three breast cancer.

  Significant Moment #2 came a month later, when my husband and I were play-fighting. On the outside, we’re a professional London-based couple with mortgage protection, a cafetiere and one eye on our Air Miles. Behind closed doors, we draw on one another’s foreheads, have noisy Beatles-album sing-offs and tickle each other until we can’t breathe for laughing. Attempting to fight back while slowly losing each of my nerve endings and trying to hang onto a full bladder, I thought I’d buy myself some time by adding ‘and remember I’m still in pain from my fall’ to the ‘I’m a girl, go easy on me’ card I’d already played. But when you’re married to The Most Competitive Man In The World, such pathetic excuses mean nothing, and he went in for the kill by holding my arms behind my back and reaching for my Debenhams-bruised left boob. When P called time on our scrap because the playful boob-grab had hurt me more than it ought to, and he’d copped a feel of more than his usual handful, I knew something was wrong. (P never gives up first.) And that was precisely the moment at which the fun stopped, and my cancer journey began.

  Actually, that’s an odd choice of words, since I loathe the term ‘journey’ when applied to cancer. Journey implies a pleasant trip to the seaside, a magical mystery tour or an epiphany during some life-changing experience. Cancer isn’t a journey. Cancer is a nuclear bomb dropped in the centre of your lovely world – in this case with sod all warning. There’s nothing liberating or celebratory or enlightening about it.

  Being diagnosed with cancer is like being told you’ve got twenty minutes to revise for an A level in a language you’ve never learned. (Parlez-vous chemo?) You walk into your appointment assuming your cramming days are behind you, and come out blinded by need-to-know, baffling terminology that’s as unfamiliar as a snowman to a Fijian. The literature is all so delicately written; packed with noncommittal information (‘you might find …’, ‘there’s a possibility that …’, ‘you may discover …’, ‘if you feel …’), and a sugary, hey-it’s-really-not-so-bad attitude, like a flimsy net curtain attempting to disguise a bloody great elephant.

  I don’t want to be told that losing my hair will give me extra time in bed in the morning where I’d otherwise have been blow-drying, or that buying a range of wigs will give me the chance to try out different personalities in the bedroom (both of which I read in an ‘uplifting compilation of quotes’ from breast cancer survivors). Nor do I want to give anyone else that impression. It’s irresponsible and, frankly, it’s com
plete crap – even before I’d experienced any of the things the contributors were talking about, I knew that wasn’t how it was going to be. I’d have given up all the lie-ins in the world to keep my lovely locks. And not only do chemo drugs tend to starve you of a sex life, but breast cancer treatment hardly does wonders for your body image either. (I don’t recall ever seeing a twenty-something lass with a bald head and missing boob on FHM’s ‘100 Sexiest Women’ list.)

  So stuff the clichéd, just-not-fucking-funny cancer quips (‘think of all the money/time/effort you’ll save on mascara/your hair/shaving your legs’), the saccharine, truth-masking ‘information’ sheets and the earnest, life-improving self-help books. It’s time someone told it how it really is.

  And that’s precisely what I’ve done.

  CHAPTER 1

  An apology

  June 2008

  From a lack of decent conversation and a tendency to curiosity, my first (unsuitable) boyfriend and I fell into a routine of rarely speaking and instead used each other for experimentation. It didn’t always feel good and wasn’t always done right, but we were fifteen and fed up and keen to impress our mates. One over-enthusiastic afternoon in an otherwise empty house, I somehow ended up with a hurt right nipple. How? God knows. But the subsequent few weeks were experimentation-free, while the boob-scab healed and my unsuitable boyfriend found someone else to experiment with.

  Thirteen years on, and I still silently blame this episode for my right boob being my least favourite. Not by a long chalk, mind – I’ve always been happy with my lot boobs-wise, and reckon that the few people who’ve seen them have been bloody lucky to do so – but we all play favourites, right? (Or left?)

  And so today, I’d like to make an apology to my right breast. First off, for calling it a ‘breast’ just then. ‘Breast’ is just one of those words that I inexplicably hate, hence the inverted commas.

  But mostly, I’d like to apologise to my right boob (ah, infinitely better) for always preferring the left, when that’s the one that’s gone and got cancer.

  Is it too late to switch sides?

  *

  ‘ANOTHER G&T, LIS?’

  Me and my mates had met up for a swift half (translation: three hours’ worth of booze on an empty stomach) outside our favourite London pub. It was that glorious, once-a-year evening when the weather was finally good enough to swap leggings and boots for bare legs and open-toed wedges, and I was feeling good. I was wearing my first summer dress of the season, had covered my pins in suspiciously gravy-like fake tan and had just styled my newly grown-out fringe into the kind of sweeping side parting that makes you feel like Jessica Rabbit (but actually makes you look like you’ve only got one eye).

  ‘Better not,’ I answered to a jury of baffled looks. ‘Seriously. I’m at the doctors in the morning. I’ve got a cyst that’s giving me gyp in my tit, here.’ For some reason I pointed to the offending boob; one too many G&Ts insisting that I give my friends a biology lesson. Nobody seemed the least bit concerned. I wasn’t either. Because a lump in your tit at my age is obviously a cyst, right? And anyway, I was much more perturbed that my early appointment was putting paid to me pushing on till last orders. ‘Let’s catch up when I’m back from my hols, eh? When I’ve got a real tan to show off,’ I said, kicking out a streaky orange leg and slinging my bag over my shoulder while zigzagging my way to the nearest available taxi.

  The concern didn’t even stretch to my GP. ‘Yep, I’m sure it’s a cyst,’ she said. ‘It’ll have disappeared by the time you’re back from your holiday.’

  P and I had spent months planning our trip: first to LA to visit Ant, one of my best mates, and then on to Mexico for some serious Corona-drinking, sun-worshipping, nacho-scoffing relaxation. Secretly, we both assumed it would also be where we struck pregnancy gold. (Following two miscarriages in six months, baby-making was fast becoming an obsessive pursuit.) So neither of us was prepared to let a pesky, pain-in-the-arse (nay, boob) cyst ruin our sun-filled shagging schedule.

  But one week of uncomfortable bikini-wearing and batting P’s hand away from my left boob later, and the lump had begun to worry me. It was hardening, painful to the touch and, frankly, ruining the line of my spaghetti-strap summer dresses. I mentioned it to Ant.

  ‘Can you move it about?’ she asked as we ate our fro-yo on Venice Boardwalk. I slipped my hand beneath my top and poked the lump, figuring that with Muscle Beach directly opposite, nobody would notice a pale Brit fondling her left tit.

  ‘Um, yeah, I guess so,’ I said, wondering whether too much prodding might cause the lump to explode like a shampoo bottle at high altitude.

  ‘Then it’ll be a cyst,’ she assured me. ‘Have it checked out again when you get back and I bet they can even remove it there and then.’

  And so I did, albeit not immediately. For while we were in Mexico, we received the news I’d been dreading ever since my beloved Nan died the year before: Grandad had joined her. It’s particularly strange getting that kind of call on a balcony overlooking the ocean in the blistering morning sun. Your folks explain what’s happened, then eventually run out of stuff to say, forcing normal conversation with ‘are you having a nice time?’ and ‘what’s the weather like?’, neither of which you know how to answer. I wanted to come home immediately, but nobody was having it. There were only a few days left until we were heading back anyway and, as this was something we’d all been expecting for months, there was nothing in particular I could have done. And so I sobbed in the sunshine until I got back on home soil, where I sobbed in the drizzle instead. With a funeral to arrange and attend, and a thousand brilliant stories of Grandad’s days as Derbyshire’s grumpiest cricket umpire (The Grumpire) to tell, the cyst would have to wait. Not that I was worrying about it any longer anyway. If bad luck had been on the way, losing Grandad was surely it.

  A week after his funeral, I finally got around to getting my lump looked at once more. I headed back to see my GP, forcefully suggesting that if it wasn’t a cyst, it must instead be the early signs of pregnancy. (Having twice been knocked up, I knew that the hormones would shoot straight to my bust.) ‘You might be right,’ she said, rubbing her fit-to-burst baby bump. ‘But I’m going to send you for a needle biopsy anyway, just in case.’

  Everything froze. Either I’d suddenly found myself in an episode of Heroes, with Hiro Nakamura-style powers of time-stopping, or my GP has just used the word ‘biopsy’.

  ‘Sorry, um … biopsy?’ I stuttered, still sitting bra-less and bolt-upright on the bed. She gestured to me to get dressed, assuring me that it was nothing to lose sleep about, given my age (twenty-eight) and zero family history of breast cancer. Even the eight-week NHS wait for the needle biopsy (standard for ‘low-risk’ cases) didn’t concern her. But, adding mention of the word ‘biopsy’ to my tendency to procrastinate my way to insomnia after as little as a late-night episode of 24, an eight-week wait seemed like a millennia, and I asked for a referral to a private specialist. Eight weeks shrank to forty-eight hours.

  P had come with me to my second GP appointment – perhaps more for an early finish from work than out of any serious concern – and we took our chance to enjoy the late-afternoon sun as London’s commuters made their way home. Supping our lager shandies on a bench outside our local pub, we faked nonchalance as best we could, making light of the biopsy that weekend. Once a year, P has to work Saturdays and this, of course, was it. ‘No bother,’ I said, ‘It’ll just be a quick in-and-out with a needle. They can’t shed any light on it then anyway.’

  I called my folks when P went in for another pint. ‘So she’s sending me for a needle biopsy on Saturday,’ I recounted breezily, to uncharacteristic silence.

  ‘Right,’ said Mum, eventually. ‘Um, okay. I see. Right. How are you getting there?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got the car because P’s at work so I’ll just drive myself round,’ I said, sensing the worry in her voice but thinking little of it, given that Mum has a tendency to fret in much the same wa
y if I mention that I’m crossing the road, getting on the night bus or meeting a friend for a drink.

  Dad was in the background, butting in. ‘Tell her we’ll come down tomorrow night. Tell her we can be there in the morning if she needs us.’ Mum reiterated his words.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ I insisted. ‘Stop worrying.’

  I told P how Mum had sounded. ‘Your mum’s a worrier by nature,’ he said. ‘Look at you; you’re fine. Everything’s going to be fine.’

  As it happened, that Saturday was far from fine, but not necessarily because of the biopsy. The morning had begun with one of the only two rows P and I ever have (the other being our regular Paul v John Battle of The Beatles): he’d rolled in narnared at 3 a.m. – which wouldn’t have been a problem had he not told me he’d be home by 11.30 and dropped his BlackBerry in a urinal – and I’d started an already twitchy day by giving him the hairdryer treatment for leaving me fretting like a nervy mother at midnight on her teenage son’s first night out on the town. He headed out to work, a furious flea ringing in his ear, and I drove to the hospital, more than a little pissed off.

  In the tiny consultation room, I was met with the now-standard reassuring words – again citing my age and lack of family history – as the smartly dressed consultant sunk a needle into my boob. He wrote his number on a business card. ‘I’m sure I can get the results by as early as Tuesday,’ he told me. ‘Give my secretary a call and she’ll squeeze you in that afternoon.’ And, jolt as it was that I’d have answers so soon, I figured it was better than two months’ worth of crankiness and nail-biting.

  As I drove home, I thought about the following week’s unusually busy schedule at the branded content agency in which I was an editor – client meeting all day on Monday, press deadline on Tuesday – and for once found myself grateful to have so much to occupy my time. A noise distracted me from my thought. Clack-clack-clack. ‘What the …?’ I said, as I noticed the driver behind me gesturing wildly, making downward-pointing motions with his index finger. ‘What’s your problem, dude?’ I snapped into my rear-view mirror, speeding up a bit down the hill that leads to my street.