The C-Word Read online

  Wig Man handed me a catalogue and told me to point out the styles that appealed to me most. I was tempted to show him a curly black wig reminiscent of The Scousers, but I feared this wasn’t a man to be joking with. (Which, of course, made it even more impossible for P and me to stifle our laughter when ‘Getting Jiggy With It’ came on the radio.) I pointed out a couple of bobs and one or two longer styles to give him an idea of what I would be after, and he pulled down a handful of wigs from the top shelf, sat me in front of the mirror and combed back my hair so it wouldn’t show beneath the wigs I was trying on.

  Oddly, Wig Man referred to each wig as though it were an actual person (‘She’s too square for you, try this – her style is much more suited to your face shape’), but then I guess a little craziness is permitted when you spend your life in a hospital cupboard listening to Crap FM with only mannequin heads for company. Anyway, after quickly realising that the longer wigs made me look a bit like the lead singer from The Darkness, I tried a bob with a parting and fringe a bit like my usual hair, only fuller. And, to be fair, I was pleasantly surprised at how natural it (sorry, she) felt for an acrylic wig. But – let’s be frank, here – I was still staring back at me in a wig.

  Once you’ve chosen your design, you fiddle about with swatches until you’ve found the colour that most resembles your own, then go back in again once your order has arrived. If you like it (sorry, I mean her) you hand over your £60, then take your wig to a hairdresser who’ll hopefully be able to cut it into a style that’s a bit more contemporary. I’m hoping that, when I finally settle on a wig I like (and, let’s be honest, I’m not going to find it on the NHS) I can persuade a fabulous Covent Garden hairdresser to style it, so I can avoid going to some dreadful wig-cutting-for-the-over-fifties place called ‘Hair To Stay’ or ‘Curl Up & Dye’.

  *

  IT STARTED WITH the pubes.

  And, in cancer’s trademark spoilsport fashion, it happened on an otherwise glorious day. Finally able to be left on my own after the first batch of chemo, I was basking in the emancipation of feeling even slightly better after having been so ill. (Just to clarify, feeling good when you’re having cancer treatment is different to the normal feeling good. You’re not up for the usual nights in the pub, you don’t look so hot and you get pretty knackered after, well, most things. But none of that makes it any less brilliant.)

  So I took my chirpy self out for a walk up the road to buy a Frappuccino, wearing my look-at-me Mickey Mouse-emblazoned hoodie. Even walking along my street felt better than it ever had. There I was, walking to the local café like a normal person, having seen off Chemo 1 and looking ahead to the next cycle knowing exactly what was in store. I must have looked like the local crazy, thinking about it. Your average Londoner isn’t that comfortable with the sight of a wonky-boobed, grinning idiot with a spring in her step, as one woman demonstrated by looking me up and down in horror as we passed on the street. ‘What you don’t realise, love,’ I thought to myself, ‘is that the fool you’ve just walked past is actually an amazing woman.’ Then I quickly chastised myself for being so damn cocky and empowered. Apparently cancer was turning me into Germaine Greer.

  The shitty thing about cancer (not the only shitty thing, obviously, but it’s pretty shitty nonetheless) is that it’ll sneak up on you and piss all over your chips the precise moment you think you’re finally in control of it. And so, later that same day, I found myself lying in bed with an embarrassingly musical arse and nagging constipation pains (a problem resolved by breaking the World Prune Eating record), and wondering just how long it would be before I felt sexy again. And then I went to the toilet and (cue chip-pissing) looked down to discover that a handful of pubes had come out on the loo roll.

  ‘Shit,’ I exclaimed, startled at the discovery. ‘And so it begins.’

  I had read that pubes are often the first hairs to go and, in all truth, their falling out was hardly an unwelcome side-effect. It was just what the pube-shedding symbolised: next, it would be the hair on my head. I dragged myself back to bed and told P the news. ‘Why do these things have to happen?’ I whinged, and promptly burst into tears. And, to my surprise, so did he.

  It might have been my hair there on the Andrex, but that didn’t mean that cancer’s uninvited consequences were only having an impact on one person. Because once again I was reminded that this wasn’t just happening to me; it was happening to us. P may not have been wired up to the drugs or experiencing the side-effects or seeing his pubes come out in clumps, but it was clear that he was feeling every bit of it. Arguably more so, thanks to the added frustration of being forced to play spectator, unable to do a single sodding thing about it. Having to watch the person you love go through that kind of stuff must be a horrible, helpless position to be in. But being married to a man who not only understood The Bullshit but felt it all too and, better still, didn’t treat me any differently because of it was a pretty special thing.

  It’s an unusual position to find yourself in, lurching between Major Cancer Event and vapid nothingness. It’s like lying on your back in a field, trying to catch sight of a shooting star – for ages, it’s agonisingly dull, but then along comes a dazzling streak of light and then there you are again, without a schedule, waiting around for who knows how long. And that’s another of the shitty things about cancer (expect to read that sentence a lot): just how utterly boring it can get. As small mercies go, at least my tumour had the good sense to show up in time for Wimbledon, a summer of cricket, the Olympics and the start of the football season.

  On one otherwise dull weekday while P and Dad watched golf on TV, I stood eating lemon curd from the jar and staring out of the kitchen window, worrying that, with so little going on, I’d never again have anything interesting to blog about. I found myself willing something to happen – and there’s the fatal error. Because, when I went into the bedroom to change out of my hooded sweater, I pulled it over my head and with it came a clump of my hair.

  Despite my optimistic hope that my hair would stick around, deep down I guess I always knew that this day would come. But that doesn’t mean it came as any less of a shock. Cue hysterical crying. P and Dad ran in to see what was up – how lucky that two of my favourite boys were around to give me a cuddle (Dad) and instinctively prise the hair from my hands and flush it down the loo (P). The tears continued for a long time, but once I’d got over the shock, I realised that it wasn’t so much the hair loss I was crying about, but more the fact that I could have been so bloody cretinous to think there might be a chance – however small – of getting away with it; of this not happening to me. I hate being wrong at the best of times, but that dumb denial really took the cake.

  So there it was. The hair loss had begun. And while it wasn’t a horribly massive – or even noticeable – clump of hair that came out, it was still enough to know for certain that this was the beginning of the part I had feared most. Declaring my head out of bounds to anyone around me, I was overly cautious for the remainder of the week, desperate to retain as much hair as possible before my next chemo session. No longer would I rub my hair with a towel, or comb through conditioner in the bath. Where I’d usually have washed it most days, now I was letting my hair go without its usual application of shampoo. To my mind, greasy locks were infinitely preferable to a Bobby Charlton comb-over.

  But even comb-overs need washing occasionally and so, three days before my second chemo, I gave it a go. I ran a bath, lit a few candles, put on some chirpy tunes and set to it. I stuck to all the cancer hair-care rules (super-gentle massaging, pH-balanced shampoo, lukewarm water). I even allowed myself to think for a second that I’d got away with it. But when it came to the drying (low temperature, slow speed, wide-tooth comb, yadda yadda), that was where it all unravelled. Literally.

  Even when drying without the necessary combing (if I’d have left my hair to dry on its own I’d have ended up looking like Gene Wilder, and that’s worse than bald), hairs were flying right off my head. Run a comb th
rough it, and they were coming out even easier. Foolish as it may now seem, I carried on drying and combing as little as I could get away with, figuring that for as long as I had hair, I wanted it to look as good as it could. But still it thinned and thinned, covering my back, my shoulders, the floor, the bedspread and filling the baggy left cup of my bra. It was e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e.

  Imagining P’s reaction to our new bedroom carpet, I set about scooping it up and, despite having watched as it all fell out, I couldn’t get over the amount I collected. In fact, I was so surprised by it, that I saved the shotput-sized hairball and put it on the bathroom window-sill so I could later show it to P. Just a couple of days previous I could get away with running a comb through my hair. Now, I could barely stand in a breeze.

  To my surprise, I didn’t cry. I sat and stared blankly at myself in the mirror for a good twenty minutes, testing out headbands to disguise my thinning locks. But when, later that afternoon, I spoke to Dad while I drove into town for an afternoon at work, and he made some minor comment about my hands-free kit and questioned my ability to hear other cars on the road, I totally lost it.

  You know those stupid, niggling worries that you sit on for a while, then in the heat of the moment they pour out of your mouth all at once, at breakneck, Vicky Pollard speed? It usually kicks off with the words, ‘And another thing …’ (or, ‘Yeah but, no but …’). Well, that’s exactly what happened. What I should have said to Dad was that he and Mum had been incredible from day one, that no one could have done more for me than they had, and that I couldn’t imagine how difficult it must be for them to watch their daughter go through this … but could they perhaps remember that while The Bullshit may have been having many effects on me, it hadn’t robbed me of my ability to drive, my ability to make good decisions, or my ability to look after myself in the way my doctors had advised.

  But, of course, it didn’t come out like that. It was more along the lines of: ‘For crying out loud, Dad, just because I’ve got cancer doesn’t mean I’m incapable of driving, you know! And you need to realise that [sniff] I’m not a little girl any more and [snort] I’m doing all the right things and [splutter] the symptoms are [whimper] not. my. fault. The acne’s not caused by fizzy drinks and the piles aren’t down to my sodding diet [sob] – they’re because of the BLOODY TOXIC CHEMICALS in me [snivel] and it’s time you fucking trusted me to look after myself!’

  Dad told me that I was right, that he was sorry, that he trusted me and that parental instinct sometimes made him and Mum say the wrong thing. And, of course, that made me feel even worse. Those things needed to be said (maybe not in the way they came out), but saying them didn’t make me feel any better. Because nobody deserved to be on the end of my criticism less than my Dad. My folks aren’t just parents. They’re my best friends. And, as much as I might sometimes want to tell them to do things differently, I should instead have shut my trap for once and showed gratitude for the millions of things they’d done so brilliantly.

  None of us knew the right way to handle The Bullshit. Cancer doesn’t come with a manual. Every symptom and every emotion feels so different for each bloody unlucky sod who’s forced to live with the shitty disease, so who knows the best way to play it? As for me, I could handle the surgery and the chemo and the illness and the hair loss. But difficult conversations with my family? That was where I drew the line. Let’s just call it the hair that broke the cancer patient’s back.

  CHAPTER 12

  Back in ’therapy

  I keep forgetting how dangerous this disease is. It’s something I’ve been doing all along, even straight after hearing the words, ‘signs consistent with breast cancer’. My immediate reaction wasn’t ‘shit, that’s life threatening’, but ‘bollocks, my hair’. Even in chemo last week, when a number of doctors warned me to keep my arm still for fear of the drugs seeping out of my veins and into my skin, causing massive problems, I still couldn’t help but gesture wildly and continually reach inside my bag to show the nurses my iPhone/magazines/photos/lip gloss.

  I actually think that conveniently ignoring the scary stuff is a damn good tactic. It ensures you never frighten yourself by thinking too far ahead, and forces you to deal with the more pressing business of just putting one foot in front of the other. That wartime ‘keep calm and carry on’ slogan is a design for life, if ever I heard one. (But try reminding me of that after Chemo 2 tomorrow when I’m puking and panicking, and I’ll bite your ear off.)

  While staying in Derby with my folks over the last couple of days (P’s been away with work on a team-building excursion – three words that give me the willies as much as ‘breast cancer’ – I’ve caught up with lots of different people who I’ve not seen since my diagnosis. And, while lovely, their reactions to me have been another reminder that other people seem to be more terrified by The Bullshit than I am. Not that they’ve been overly sympathetic, weepy or pitying – quite the opposite, thankfully. There are a lot of things I want (free iTunes downloads and an hour in a locked room with Dave Grohl for starters) but pity is categorically not one of them. So instead of commiseratory head-tilting, everyone has instead offered giant, beaming smiles that scream out how pleased they are to see me.

  It’s brilliant to be on the receiving end of that kind of reaction (and also makes you feel a bit like a celebrity). I’ve had hugs and kisses, been picked up and squeezed, had heartfelt arm-rubs and meaningful back-slaps. When I saw my eighty-six-year-old uncle, his eyes (and mine) filled with delighted tears as he gave me the loveliest cuddle and said, ‘I’ve been trying so hard to think what you’d look like, but it’s you! It’s still you!’ And he, by the way, has got more than enough to occupy his mind right now, let alone what I look like. His wife, and my amazing auntie, is also in the middle of cancer treatment, and yet is still as magnificent and matriarchal as ever. As she made me a brew, showed off her new wig and gave me a lesson in syrup-shopping, my uncle leaned over to me and said, ‘You know what? I still fancy her more than ever.’ Here’s hoping P says the same when Chemo 2 sees off the rest of my lovely locks tomorrow.

  *

  ‘ARE THESE PRESENTS?’ asked the girl behind the counter in Accessorize, as I handed over £100 worth of headscarves and headbands that I wouldn’t have ordinarily looked twice at.

  ‘Nope. They’re all for me,’ I replied, choosing to spare her my cancer tale and instead allow her to assume that I was some kind of hair-accessory fanatic.

  ‘There ought to be a grant for this stuff,’ I whinged to P as we walked back to the hospital, where my chemo drugs would be waiting for me.

  It was emergency headwear shopping – that morning, another chunk of my barnet had ended up down the loo, resulting in a nice, obvious bald patch right in the middle of my parting – and I resented the expenditure. The following week, I was going to have to fritter a fortnight’s worth of mortgage payments on wigs. Granted, I’d spent twenty-eight years wasting my money on stuff that would barely see me through a season, but that was my choice. Having to splash the cash out of cancer-dictated necessity was just plain unfair. (I have issues with Clearblue for precisely the same reason. Hundreds of pounds’ worth of pregnancy tests, ovulation sticks and digital thermometers, and still no baby? I should have just made like Madonna, saved myself the hassle and bought one on eBay.)

  I had been in Sarcastic Sod mode for much of the day, not helped by the fact that I got sat next to Holy Mary while having my cannula put in. There was so much hanging around and staring at other people in chemo that, having been twice, I’d had the chance to size everyone up. Along with Holy Mary, there was Wonky Wig, Glamazon (pink slingbacks and blingy jewellery), French Stick (skinny Parisienne), Head Honcho (fabulous headscarves) and Speaking Clock, who I adored, despite the fact that she barely came up for breath. (I suspected I was known as Get A Room, on account of the glued-to-my-face husband.)

  It was very stiff-upper-lip in the chemo room; everyone quietly waited their turn and smiled politely, with no dramatics or serious
conversation. Until Holy Mary rolled up, that is. That day, she was having a go at her nurse for not having baptised her children. ‘If they die, they’ll end up in purgatory!’ she shrieked at a volume that wasn’t entirely appropriate for a room in which some of the patients’ days were so obviously numbered.

  Sensing the poor nurse’s inability to find a suitable answer, I butted in. ‘Well, there’s a happy conversation for the chemo room to hear,’ I chirped, as my Irish nurse fiddled with my cannula and – with perfect comedy timing – shouted, ‘I can’t get this little fucker in!’

  Even Speaking Clock was lost for words, and gave me a cheeky wink as we watched a stunned Holy Mary turn more Holy Ghost as her horrified face drained of colour.

  Having a giggle with the nurses from beneath my twat-hat (foolishly, I stuck with it in the hope of clinging on to my remaining locks) made the hours pass that bit faster, and the extra attention I got from them – a seat by the window, extra cups of tea, Fox’s Glacier Mints – suggested that I’d gained a few popularity points as a result. But the fun had to stop sooner or later, and within half an hour of getting back home – too soon, even, to enjoy Mum’s comfort food – I was, as Dad would say, ‘singing into the big white telephone’.

  Later, as I puked into the silver plastic bowl that now made me retch when I saw it, I realised I’d learned nothing from the couscous episode – this time, I’d scoffed a cheese baguette at lunchtime, and the results weren’t much better. In fact, so rank was the smell (not to mention taste) of my cheesy regurgitation that I had Mum take away my bowl, despite not being finished with it. So much for the pristine, white pyjamas that she had so lovingly washed and ironed.

  You have to be careful what you eat pre-chemo. If I’d carried on that way, treating myself to foods I loved on an otherwise grim day, I’d have had nothing left on my Favourite Foods list. But even that was changing by the day, making way for the only things I could stomach at a time when even tea and toast looked as appetising as a dog-turd kebab.