The C-Word Read online

  And, by heck, it did.

  Feeling calmer the following afternoon once my tongue’s usual functions had returned, we headed back to the hospital for our first visit to the radiotherapy department. ‘The reason we’re doing this radiotherapy,’ said Chelsea Consultant (very west-London posh in her Tod’s loafers and a diamond engagement ring that could take your eye out), ‘is that we want to localise the zapping of the cancer cells to the specific area where the tumour was, unlike chemotherapy which works on the cells all over your body.’ All fair enough, I thought. And then came the bombshell. ‘We’ll be aiming the radiotherapy at not just your chest wall, but also your left arm and shoulder, and the left side of your neck. And the reason we’re doing this over such a large area is to increase your chance of survival.’ And there it was. Another cruel reminder of the grim, makes-you-want-to-scream seriousness of breast cancer.

  It suddenly made the illness and the hair loss and the fajita-eating seem like welcome distractions from the fact that, actually, this thing had the potential to kill me. I hated having to think about that. I can’t begin to describe how much of my flagging energy I used not thinking about that, always finding other things to occupy my mind (how do you think the blog came about?). So it came as a horrible, jolting shock when P and I did hear it. It wasn’t that we’d forgotten that I had breast cancer in the first place (hell, I don’t think a minute will ever go by in which I forget that I had breast cancer); it was that we had got so used to it being in our lives that the shock of being forced to reconsider its gravity was a little too much to bear.

  The tattooed dots were going to be a ball-ache. But it was the reason behind having them that terrified me. I decided to look online to find out more about the process from other radiotherapy-experienced people. I’d kept out of online cancer-communities thus far, choosing instead to go it my way and save confusing myself with pages and pages of information that might not be relevant to me. I’d love to take credit for that decision but, in truth, it was Always-Right Breast Nurse’s idea. All that mattered, she said, was dealing with my own experience, and that she or anyone else at the hospital would be able to answer any medical questions I had. And, true to form, she was spot on.

  I quickly found a picture of someone’s radiotherapy tattoos (I was pleased to discover they looked more like navy freckles than medical marks – not that it dampened my resolve to get a design of my own), and then I found myself engrossed in some message boards. But it wasn’t the medical information I found online that left me confused – it was some of the comments in the chatrooms. Whether or not I was looking for it, I don’t know, but I kept finding the following sentence: ‘Getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me.’

  Now I’m the first to trot out the ‘each to their own’ line but, to my mind, saying that kind of thing was completely fucking irresponsible. Granted, I hadn’t seen out the whole of my cancer ride yet – and who knows how I was going to feel at the end of it – but I was pretty damn sure I wasn’t going to thank my lucky stars for having been blessed with The Bullshit. Beckoning in P to read the words staring back from my laptop screen, he angrily confirmed that I wasn’t alone in my opinion.

  I could see the reasons behind people saying it. If their experience of cancer had been anything like mine so far, they too would have had the wonderful, Amélie-like moments where you’re on the receiving end of so much love that the world seems a rosier place. And while all of that definitely helped, it didn’t for a second mean that getting breast cancer was the best thing to ever happen to me. Because for every rose-tinted moment come a lifetime’s share of dark times that leave you lonely and frightened and confused.

  In a blind rage, I took to my blog. I didn’t want anyone to think that getting cancer had been the best thing to ever happen to me, or that it could be the best thing to happen to anyone else, for that matter. It changes your life. It changes your outlook. And it changes you. But that doesn’t make it a great thing. Cancer changes your life because it threatens it. Cancer changes your outlook because it muddies it. And cancer changes you in far more ways than just losing a boob or going bald or getting dots tattooed on your chest. Cancer IS NOT the best thing that could ever happen to you. Cancer, I’m afraid to say, is shit. And I was only part way through it.

  CHAPTER 16

  I’ll be there for you

  There’s every chance you’ll disagree with me, but I find the concept of ‘best friends’ a dangerous one. For kids it’s perfectly acceptable, but when you grow up it’s far healthier to have a group of mates with no person in particular being at the pinnacle. So why, then, have I suddenly started playing favourites with my friends?

  It’s not like I’ve got a Santa-style list of who’s been naughty and nice, or even that any of my friends are aware of this behaviour (at least they weren’t until now, but I’m hoping they’ll let it slide on account of the cancer stuff – yes, that old chestnut). It’s just that with me getting so much attention and support and wonderful gestures and love from so many of them, it’s no wonder that they’ve moved up several places in my mates’ league. Having done a bit of research (read: discussed it with Mum), it seems a lot of people view their friends in a core-of-the-earth kind of diagram, with their best pal(s) in the middle, their closest mates in a circle around that, good friends on the next layer, followed by see-less-often people and then acquaintances near the edge. But mine’s become more of a hierarchy.

  It’s a top-heavy structure we have here at Friends Inc. (less pyramid, more ice-cream cone), and I’m a lucky CEO in that the top level of my hierarchy – director level, if you will – is jampacked with magnificent mates. They keep me going: they’re in constant contact, they make sure I’m up to speed on the world outside my cancer bubble, they don’t treat me any differently, and yet they’re happy to let me have a whinge if ever I need one. In short, they’re brilliant, and they’re all in for a serious pay rise once The Bullshit is over (i.e., the beers are on me).

  But – cue more favouritism – within this level have emerged three friends (they know who they are) who really ought to have a level of their own. They’ve taken magnificence to new heights, this little lot, and if we were all still at school I’d form a special club for them and make membership cards and pin badges and devise a secret handshake.

  Then there’s the management level of friends – they also keep in regular contact, but probably not so much as the directors. They’ll send the odd text and the occasional Facebook wall post, but they’re always up to speed with my progress, love ’em, despite asking fewer questions than the directors (the blog helps a lot on that front).

  Next is the shop floor. These small few are still in contact about as much as they ever were but, thus far, have made absolutely no mention of The Bullshit, despite being well aware of it. And that’s fine (though it is a bit like me suddenly getting a bright green mohawk and them asking where I bought my shoes). In some ways even, I secretly appreciate it. Besides, at least the shop-floor few are still in touch, unlike the cleaning staff at Friends Inc.

  The cleaning staff comprises a much, much smaller number of people who have suddenly stopped showing up for work and disappeared off the radar completely. I’m not just talking about a handful of ‘mates’ here, but mainly acquaintances who’d normally be in contact from time to time. ‘Facebook friends’, if you will – y’know, the ones who make up the numbers. Those same numbers that I suspect will suddenly dwindle as soon as I hit ‘publish post’. (For the record, I’m not expecting folk to befriend me just because I’ve got cancer. That would make me the human version of Timmy from South Park and, thanks to the steroids, I suspect I’m more Cartman.)

  Guilty fun as it may seem, I don’t want to rank my friends in a Eurovision Song Contest-style league table, and I’m not daft enough to think that the world has stopped turning just because I’ve got breast cancer. Everyone’s still out there, leading their normal lives, buying groceries, arguing about where to spend Chris
tmas, shouting at referees, ironing holes in their shirts and elbowing space-hogging commuters on the District Line. It’s a comforting thought, actually, so I’m hardly going to strike anyone who puts their regular routine in front of sending me an email off my Christmas-card list, ferchrissake. But that doesn’t stop a mischievous part of me from wanting to update my Facebook status with: ‘Lisa has still got breast cancer, in case you were wondering.’

  *

  I CAUSED A bit of a stir with that post. (‘I thought I’d better send an email this week before you relegate me to the cleaning staff,’ said one mate. ‘I’d better be at director level, lady, or I’ll be handing in my notice,’ said another.) And I was strangely pleased it had, because writing that post was cathartic – not just that, it also cleared up a few issues I’d hitherto been sitting on.

  The fact that I was suddenly having to answer a hundred emails, though, was indicative of an obviously true chord I’d struck. There was no getting around it: while some friends had admirably stepped up to the mark (the overwhelming majority, actually), others were suddenly MIA. The best friends, however, were the ones who were still making themselves known even at this stage, three months past diagnosis when my cancer news had become fish-and-chip paper. And this, it turned out, was the time when I needed them most; the time at which I needed a big old push into my second phase of chemo.

  Three months isn’t a long time. If I’d fallen pregnant at the same time as discovering I had a tumour, for example, I’d have only just been getting around to telling people about it by now. And yet within that short time, cancer had done its dirty work – I was bald, bloated, boob-less and pretty bloody fed up about it. Everything had become so much of an effort – getting out of bed every day; trying to stay positive despite the obvious cancer concerns; convincing myself that every little twinge I felt and pain I endured wasn’t a return of the cancer, but merely part of the treatment’s effects.

  One night I even convinced myself that an outbreak of blackheads signalled the growth of a new tumour. I had been warned to expect this kind of paranoia – and if I told you it had since waned, I’d be lying – but even I could see that worrying that blackheads = cancer was bordering on the ludicrous. But I still managed to whip myself into such a panicked frenzy that P had to physically lift me away from the mirror and put me in bed with tight sheets tucked around me like a mental patient.

  I found it equally difficult not to look at myself in mirrors, especially since my flat is covered with them. But one evening before bed, while changing into my pyjamas, I caught sight of my mutilated boob and balding head in the mirror, and my ugly reflection hit me like a demolition ball. While I allowed myself the occasional sob about it, I worked hard at not getting too bogged down with fretting about my appearance, since there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. But that night I really let it bother me, and ranted to P about how unattractive, freakish and undesired I felt. What I hadn’t bargained for was how hurt P was by my comment: I couldn’t understand why he took it so personally. And so, in my grumpy tiredness, I got the hump about it and stormed off to hide under the duvet, slamming the bedroom door behind me and ignoring the one piece of marriage advice my dad offered us in his speech at our wedding: never go to bed on a bad word.

  Dad was right, of course (I don’t call him Yoda for nothing). Rather than discussing why P was upset, I instead got angrier and angrier as I lay alone in bed. ‘Why the hell should it upset him?’ I thought. ‘I’m the one suffering here – he looks as handsome as ever while I’m busy being beaten with the ugly stick.’ But of course it upset him, and not just because I didn’t look like I used to. Let’s just reverse the roles for a minute: if it had been me watching P go through this, it’d have been equally difficult for me to see him suffer from the physical effects as it would be to stand by, helpless, as he took such a massive hit to his confidence and self-esteem.

  Cancer can be so isolating sometimes and at that moment I’d forgotten that I wasn’t alone; that this was affecting other people too. Rowing with P was a harsh way to be reminded that it’s better to be angry together while cuddling in bed than it is to be angry in separate rooms. And so, in the early hours, that’s what we did. P told me how cross he was that The Bullshit was so impossible to reason with, and I told him how cross I was about it coming along at a time when I had the most to lose: the plans we had for our future, the twenty-something fun I was busy having, and the looks I’d never appreciated.

  I was livid (I still am, as it goes) that my body had been ruined by this awful fucking disease, and I constantly worried about other people’s reactions to it. My in-laws were due to arrive to stay with us for a few days (P and I gave my folks Chemo 4 off, thinking it was time they went a whole six weeks without having to hold a sick bowl for their daughter), and I was scared that they’d be horrified by the change since they last saw me: back in July, I was just one chemo in and still had all my hair. Man, were they in for a shock.

  It’s a shitty state of affairs, worrying about whether or not your appearance might upset people, and worse when you don’t have the energy to do very much about it. I knew from my conversations with Smiley Surgeon that a common initial reaction to being told you have cancer is, ‘What will it do to the way I look?’ But you’re encouraged not to think about it too much, and instead to concentrate on your treatment schedule, keeping free from infection and staying as mentally strong as you can. But isn’t having confidence in the way you look part of that mental strength? There’s no way to avoid thinking about what you look like when it’s there in the mirror, staring you in the face every sodding day.

  Which is why, of all the help I had been offered on various leaflets and websites from numerous cancer charities, I only really paid attention to one: the one that confronted the appearance issue. Everything else, I figured, I could find my own way through. But this? This I needed some help with. Not least with Jamie and Leanne’s wedding just three weeks away. I needed someone to show me how I could make the best of what I had been left with, and send me back out into the world feeling confident and beautiful. And that’s exactly what I got.

  Look Good, Feel Better is designed to help women manage the visible side effects of cancer treatment. Having been given some information on the charity by Always-Right Breast Nurse (who else?), I sucked up the tears and booked myself in for one of their workshops. Met at the door by a representative from the charity (who did a double-take that had ‘but you’re so young’ written all over it), I was ushered into a small conference room with six other women, each of whom gave me the same look. Not surprising, considering I was the youngest there by a long chalk. (I almost felt a bit of a fraud, actually, like Marla Singer in Fight Club, pretending to be a cancer patient just to pick up a few make-up tips. Thankfully the wig and a brilliantly timed hot flush gave me away.)

  We each took a seat around a conference table and were given a sizeable bag full of make-up and skin-care goodies – all donated by the beauty industry – with different products to suit our skin tones, after which we were taught all the tricks that would fool strangers into thinking we were normal, healthy women. Looking after your skin at its most sensitive, drawing on eyebrows when yours have done a bunk, evening out your skin tone and covering up the blotchy red bits, making your eyes stand out when you haven’t got eyelashes to rely on, hiding the dark circles … all the seemingly surface-skimming things that women with cancer really want to know but often feel daft asking about, considering the weight of the ‘serious stuff’ we were supposed to be focusing on. And yes, beneath the slap and the wig was the same old self-conscious me that cried at the sight of her body in the mirror. But knowing that it was possible to work a bit of make-up magic to make myself feel even temporarily terrific was worth its weight in gold eyeshadow.

  CHAPTER 17

  I shall be released

  October 2008

  Well, this is weird. My legs don’t work too well, the signals from my brain are much slower in getti
ng to my body parts, my heart is thumping, my bones are painful, I’ve got a dodgy tummy, I’ve been put on more than double my usual amount of bloat-inducing steroids (alas, it looks like it will be George Dawes doing a reading at Jamie’s wedding) and I’ve got a weird taste in my mouth that’s like sucking on coins. But I can’t remember the last time I felt this happy.

  Drumroll please … I’ve not thrown up! I still feel like complete shit, but at least it’s a different kind of shit, thanks to my new type of chemo. Apparently a change is as good as a rest. From the moment Chemo 4 began making its way through my drip and into my veins, it felt totally different. I felt sicker sooner. But rather than it getting worse within an hour of me reaching my sofa, it instead began to ease, and the sick feeling sank from my mouth to my stomach, where I’m happy for it to stay. It even allowed me a crackerbreads-and-soft-cheese interval. And even the hallucinations gave me a break long enough to watch The Goonies and Sex and The City. I did have a weird delirium in the night, though, where it felt like my teeth and tongue were growing too big for my mouth – but still, it was only the one, and this time it came without that pain-in-the-arse voice in my head. (It was always an older version of my voice I heard, annoyingly trying to coach me through the worst and give me ill-founded advice on what to do, like an embarrassing parent on the sidelines of a Sunday League football game.)

  Actually, the whole process of chemo yesterday was better than it has ever been. Dare I say it was almost fun? Granted, Chemo Friday started as it usually would (this time I inflicted the crying fit on my in-laws), though P avoided the usual coping-strategy bollocking thanks to me directing my anger at the loo roll instead. It was doing that bloody irritating new-loo-roll trick where the layers separate and it only comes off in ripped chunks. I like my toilet paper neatly perforated, dammit, so I made it known by throwing the roll across the bathroom and watching as it landed in a wet-feet patch outside the shower. Which made me even angrier, of course, because I then had to do the pre-wipe, knees-together walk to the other side of the room to fetch it.