The C-Word Read online

  CHAPTER 7

  Save Ferris

  July 2008

  Nobody ever enjoyed ill health (in particular the attention it brings) quite like my grandad. After having heart surgery, he spent the subsequent few years sitting in his chair breathing loudly, with a hand placed purposefully over his heart, just itching for someone to acknowledge it.

  After my diagnosis, I joked that perhaps I could attract the same kind of attention by walking about with my hand constantly on my left tit. And ta-dah! Here I am, sitting in the chair beside my hospital bed, typing with my right hand while grabbing my prosthetic boob with my left. My left arm remains pretty screwed – to the point of not being able to tie my hair back and needing someone to dress me – so holding onto my prosthetic tit is as good a use as any for it, eh? Call it physiotherapy.

  But yes, the falsie. Cancer really does get more glamorous by the day, I tells ya. Just as I was enjoying the joyful moment of being unplugged from my various wound drains before being discharged from my five-day hospital stay, in comes my very lovely (and always-bloody-right-about-everything) breast nurse to fit me for the bra that I must wear, day and night, until someone tells me otherwise. Believe me, this brassiere is no Agent Provocateur contender. But more of that later.

  What the bra does have, however, is a handy little pocket to house the prosthetic boob that I’m currently sporting (keep an eye out for them next Fashion Week). It’s round and foamy and stuffed with lambswool, and it feels a bit like a novelty clown’s nose (honk honk). And while I’m thankful for it in the meantime so I don’t have to look all wonky-chested in my high-necked clothes, I’ll be more enthusiastic when we can eventually get round to the fun of inflating my currently flat saline implant. (That said, it’ll be limited fun – it’s only got my usual B-cup level to imitate, so we’ll hardly be putting it to the Dolly Parton test.)

  Speaking of inflation, there’s been a weird side-effect on that front that I hadn’t really bargained for. You’ve seen Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, right? (The kinda crap ’70s one, not the trippy Johnny Depp one.) Well, think of Violet Beauregarde filling with blueberry juice after eating that dodgy chewing-gum, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of how my left side has felt since my wound drains were taken out. Always-Right Breast Nurse warned that my skin ‘might begin to feel like a filled-up hot-water bottle’ and, true to form, she’s not wrong. Fortunately Smiley Surgeon has got the Oompa Loompas on hand to drain me next week. And hopefully after that, this damn bra will become a bit more comfortable. Not that my newly deflated left side will make my cancer-patient lingerie look any more passable in the fashion stakes, you understand.

  From a distance (the other side of a football field, let’s say) it looks a bit like a training bra, or a cropped gym top (the really show-offy kind that you see those leathery women in their sixties wearing while jogging over Chelsea Bridge in rush hour). Up close, mind, it looks like something that could have had a previous life on my nan’s washing-line. It’s off-white (naturally, it doesn’t come in any other colours) with wide straps and nondescript flowers embroidered onto it, the like of which you’d normally see on a naff B & B bedspread. This bra is all the proof you need that the medical world just ain’t used to dealing with breast cancer in twenty-somethings. It is the anti-sexy. Poor P’s already got bollocks like cricket balls and, with this lingerie look, it doesn’t look like being remedied any time soon.

  *

  ‘BLIMEY, YOU’RE POPULAR, ain’tcha?’ said my cheery postie, handing over a wedding-day-worthy pile of mail at my front door as she had done most days since people started hearing about The Bullshit. The recurring birthday I’d joked about with Smiley Surgeon was showing no signs of slowing, particularly since I’d been home from hospital, and I struggled to keep up with the baffling tidal wave of niceness that was heading my way.

  I couldn’t believe the kind of things people were doing for me. Sending huge packages filled with things that might help, flying from abroad to visit, sorting out a car service to take me to and from my hospital appointments, calling Charles Worthington’s PA to find out who he’d recommend to be entrusted with my pre-chemo, lop-off-the-length haircut … ah-may-zing stuff. I was half expecting to see my name on a blimp, in a newspaper headline or on a scoreboard at the baseball, Ferris Bueller-style.

  It was all so staggeringly lovely – and a massive help to boot – but I struggled to figure out up to what point should I accept it? It’s not like I wasn’t milking my position when I had the chance, mind you. In fact, I was fast coming to realise that this illness seemed like the perfect excuse for absolutely any kind of behaviour whatsoever – and I was going to use it. Someone reluctant to give way on the road? I’d pull out first anyway: ‘Fuck it, I’ve got cancer.’ One slice of pizza left? ‘Fuck you lot, I’m having it – I’ve got cancer.’ It may have been a hopeless case of sifting for gold in a pile of dog poo but you’ve got to grab your fun where you can in times like these. But sometimes, even despite my enthusiasm to exploit cancer for all it was worth, the treatment I was receiving from other people was just so overwhelming that I felt compelled to make it stop.

  When I’d question their kindness, they’d tell me that they were doing it because they loved me and that, if I weren’t so nice in the first place, they wouldn’t want to bother. But I worried that, actually, they’d got it all wrong, and that their spectacular efforts were wasted. Because the thing is, I’m really not always that nice.

  I can be a real grumpy/selfish/bitchy/lazy/stubborn/sensitive/manipulative/cheeky cow when I want to. I got the hump when Princess Diana died and ruined my eighteenth birthday. I hardly ever make a brew for my colleagues. I once used someone’s office for a purpose other than work. I’m late for EVERYTHING. I’ve taken refunds on clothes that I’ve worn. I’ve cadged more fags than I’ve bought. I bunked more uni lectures than I went to, and made up poor excuses to get my deadlines extended. I continually correct people’s grammar, and carry around a red pen to scrub out rogue apostrophes on posters/menus/birthday cards.

  I lie as well. I’ve been known to do it on my CV, but it’s mostly in situations where I know it’ll embarrass the arse off someone. Like the time I told P that OutKast were from Pontypridd, not Georgia, then watched as he tried to persuade other people of the same. Or when I called my brother in a rage, incensed that the New Year Honours list included a knighthood for Vernon Kay, in recognition of his charity work. (Sir Vernon Kay! I ask you! Apparently the more ludicrous the lie, the better the result.) Or in Freshers’ Week when I began a rumour that I’d turned down a place in the Spice Girls to study for a degree. Or the day I told some kids at school that my dad was an ex-Derby County player. And then there was the night when my brother was having a house party, so I got my mate to call him up, pretending to be the police reporting a noise complaint. The result was magnificent: Jamie’s mates have never let him forget it, and it still makes me feel fantastic. With a piss-taking history like that, it was a wonder anyone even believed the earth-shattering news from the girl who cried cancer.

  It was a strange old time, the week after getting out of hospital. Suddenly, it seemed, The Bullshit wasn’t a mere news story any more, but an actual, live-feed, twenty-four-hour event that everybody wanted to get in on. And it couldn’t have felt more surreal. Back in my pre-cancer life, I’d hear the word ‘cancer’ and leap to all the assumptions that such an ugly word carries – that it must be excruciating; that it must make you feel horrific; that you’d obviously know you had it before you were even told. But, of course, it doesn’t work like that. And, in the early stages at least, it’s not the cancer that makes you feel so dreadful, but the treatment. And the treatment was what I had in store next.

  The trouble was, I didn’t feel like I had cancer. If anything, I felt like I’d had a bit of cosmetic surgery and, stitches and swelling and stiffness aside, I felt oddly fine. So, despite the fact that I had a disease that could kill me before I was thirty, I was queuing up ep
isodes of Coronation Street on Sky+. And despite the fact that I’d had a life-threatening tumour growing beneath my nipple mere days before, I was busy filling my diary with pre-chemo lunches, pub visits and dinner parties with my mates. In fact, I was more popular than I’d ever been. Breast cancer, it seemed, had made me interesting.

  Which was strange, because I’d always felt rather uninteresting. If my school had created a yearbook, I’d have been the Girl Most Likely To Have A Normal Life, and I appreciated and objected to that in equal measure. I’d always done everything exactly as it was expected of me; exactly as I’d planned it. GCSEs by sixteen. A levels by eighteen. Bachelor’s degree by twenty-one. Master’s degree by twenty-two. Magazine editor by twenty-five. Married by twenty-seven. All strictly by the book. No truancy, no shoplifting, no tattoos, no inappropriate piercings, no arrests, no unwanted pregnancies, no off-the-rails drugs binges, no havoc-filled gap years, no weekend-long illegal raves, no hopeless romances with a bad-influence bass guitarist (dammit). So had my lack of Drew Barrymore-esque, wild-child teens or reckless, selfish twenties somehow mutated into a rebellious tumour? As a kid, I’d adored the ‘Solomon Grundy’ poem. Was The Bullshit my ‘took ill on Thursday’?

  Don’t get me wrong, I’d enjoyed all the foolish, unscheduled fun that a twenty-eight-year-old lass ought to be able to check off her list, and in the process earned my Brownie badges in tequila shots, one-night stands and puking from cab windows, but all of it had been done within the kind of perimeters that meant nobody got hurt. (‘Fun with rules’, as P would call it.)

  I was happy with my life as it was. But I had occasionally wished I could be that little bit more interesting. Well, guess what? Now, I was interesting – but I didn’t want any part of it. Lovely as it was to be getting so much ego-flattering attention, every now and then I’d remember the reason why I was getting it in the first place, and the reality would leap up to bite me on the ass like a rabid dog. Within seconds, I’d lurch from smugly arranging beautiful bouquets of flowers to collapsing into frustrated tears at the kitchen sink, alarmed that my treatment had got so swiftly underway and terrified about what it might have in store.

  My treatment at the hands of cancer was, of course, the reason for my treatment at the hands of my friends and family. They were spoiling me with kind gestures because it was the only thing they could do. They couldn’t take the cancer away, nor could they fraudulently endure the treatment on my behalf like some kind of twisted driving-test scam. But what they could do was let me know – on a scale grander than you’d ever experience at Christmas or on a birthday or at your wedding – just how much they loved me, and assure me that, whatever nasty surprises The Bullshit had lined up, they’d be there for me to fall back on; the safety net beneath my swinging trapeze.

  CHAPTER 8

  The no-kids clause

  Smiley Surgeon and Always-Right Breast Nurse were on good form at my mastectomy-follow-up appointment today. They’re right on my wavelength that, whatever news they have to deliver, it surely can’t be worse than what they told me three weeks ago. Hence, they’re always very chipper and matter-of-fact, and keen to talk tennis before cancer.

  There was a great moment today when my dressings came off for the first time, and we were all able to admire Smiley Surgeon’s handiwork. Man, that guy should set up an alterations business – his stitching is the nuts. I’ve got one slightly diagonal scar on my back that’s about the length of a Curly Wurly, then one under my armpit that’s a bit shorter than a KitKat finger (thankfully not the Chunky version). They’re both super-neat and healing fast, and they won’t be the kind of thing I’m embarrassed about being visible in the future. (Low-back tops are back on the shopping list. Or at least they would be if I could carry them off in the first place.)

  But – drumroll please – the mother of all wounds is at the front. And what a corker it is. I’ve never been a tits-out-for-the-lads kind of girl, but now I might just become one. In my mind, I had envisaged some sort of heinous, purple X-shaped gash with bruising all around it and stitches poking out at untidy angles, crusty blood still hanging off. (Enjoying your dinner?) In reality, though, my boob looks precisely like it should, considering what it’s been through. In short, my nipple has been lopped off (technical term) and replaced with a graft of skin from my back. Imagine it all as a slightly-squashed oval shape with a circle the size of a Quality Street Toffee Penny in the middle, and you’ve got the picture. Not bad, eh? No wonder the four of us were cooing over it this morning. ’Tis a beautiful thing.

  But onto the rest of the follow-up. (Consider all of the above ‘talking tennis before cancer’.) Because the remainder of today’s hospital visit concerned the serious stuff of histology reports and treatment timelines. So first, the good news:

  Despite the tumour having pushed dangerously close to my skin, that biopsy came back clear. And, let’s be honest, I could have done without skin cancer as well.

  I’m healing quickly, in every sense. I shan’t be doing the ‘YMCA’ for a while, but at least now I’ve got an excuse for being the miserable git who won’t participate in a Mexican wave.

  The tumour is gone. Next week’s CT scan (that is worrying me more than I care to admit) will determine whether there is any further spread, but that bulky bitch of a lump that caused all this fuss in the first place is out.

  And then the not-so-good news:

  For a grade-three cancer, this is one aggressive motherfucker (Smiley Surgeon may have phrased that differently): it had spread to twenty-four out of twenty-five of my lymph nodes at what appears to be an alarmingly fast rate. (I bet that twenty-fifth node was a right cocky bastard.) And so the upshot is, we’ve got to move fast on the chemo.

  My cancer is more hormone-receptive than we might have thought. So the quick pre-chemo course of IVF as a means of ensuring that we’ve got options when it comes to having kids is now off the menu, as is any hope of freezing eggs prior to my next phase of treatment. We just can’t hang around waiting for my ovaries to cough up the good stuff and risk my cancer spreading any further.

  But that’s not all. The hormone-receptive stuff could perhaps be, in one way or another, my fault. Almost exactly a year ago, I had the first of two miscarriages, so there’s a chance that my getting pregnant in the first place could have exacerbated the cancer. (See, kids, SEX IS DANGEROUS.) There’s no definite way of knowing whether or not either pregnancy was to blame for The Bullshit, but we cannot ignore the fact that they could have given it a leg-up. Either way, it turns out that oestrogen might just be my kryptonite.

  *

  I’M STILL BAFFLED by the immediate way in which P and I reacted to the blow to our fertility. Much like the truth about cancer’s spread to my lymph nodes, it felt rather like conceding a penalty when we were already ten-nil down. There was almost, dare I say, a dark comedy to it. I couldn’t help but think about an exceptionally unlucky bloke I used to work with. If there was a hole, he’d fall down it. If there was broken glass, he’d step on it. If there was a burglar in his town, his house would get robbed. If there was a hooligan at a footy match, he’d be the one who got punched. So, rather predictably, he earned the nickname Lucky. And here we were: Mr and Mrs Good Fortune. First the miscarriages; then a lump; then cancer; then an aggressive spread; then fertility issues. Ha ha ha.

  ‘I’m starting to wonder whether I might have been a Nazi leader in a former life,’ I said to P as we lay side by side on our bed, staring at the ceiling in disbelief. ‘Seriously. What can we possibly have done to deserve such a monumental run of bad luck? You haven’t killed anybody and not told me, have you?’

  P rolled onto his right side to get a bit closer. ‘Not that I know of, love,’ he said, resigned. ‘But with all this happening to us I might yet. So much for sodding karma, eh?’

  The thing was, with the looming, unknown prospect of chemotherapy a matter of days away, there just wasn’t space in our heads to squeeze in yet another stomach-punching blow from The Bullshit,
and so instead we kind of ignored it, with a ‘well that’s that, then’ attitude, however ridiculous that might sound now. It’s particularly ridiculous, I suppose, when you consider that pre-Bullshit, everything for P and I was geared towards having a baby.

  But, the way we saw it, had we been told in the course of our post-miscarriage fertility checks that we wouldn’t be able to have our own children, that would have been a genuinely gut-wrenching disappointment. We’d have cried and mourned for the kids we’d already named (Maisy Jean for a girl, Cameron Thomas Arthur for a boy) and immediately got our names on an adoption register. But now, things were different. Because, aside from the fact that this news was rather on the woolly side (‘having kids could be dangerous to you’ is an altogether different prospect to the straightforward ‘you can’t have kids’), there were bigger issues at hand. Y’know, like staying alive and stuff. Not to mention my much more time-pressing worries about what chemo would do to me … whether it would work, how it would make me feel and what it’d do to my looks.

  I remember having a recurring dream in which, almost every night, a different boy I knew would learn that I had breast cancer. He’d then take an ill-looking me out on a date and, at the end of the night, kiss me meaningfully, as though he were trying to prove that he was cool with the C-word. Granted, this wasn’t a nightmare – and it was a welcome change to my usual dream where I have to wait ages in the toilet queue of a busy club, only to find when I get to the front that the only available cubicle has no door – but I couldn’t help but wonder whether it had something to do with my fear of becoming completely unfanciable when all the hair-loss and steroid-swelling fun began. Because – kids or no kids – nothing was more important to me than having P around.