Mum's List

by St. John Greene

  “There’s no point in worrying too much until we get the results of the biopsy,” I told Kate. “It might not even be cancer at all. Sit tight while I talk to the lifeguards, and we’ll get straight back up to the hospital.”

  Kate was extremely brave when the needle went in, clenching her teeth and holding my gaze with a steely, determined look that told me generously: “You know I’m a fighter.” She was also incredibly brave when a specialist cancer nurse called us into a comfortable little side room some time later.

  Even though Kate and I had tried to comfort and reassure each other as we sipped warm tea to calm our nerves, I think we both knew it was bad news even before we were invited to sit down in that cozy, pastel-colored room. The atmosphere was choking, and the nurse had a kind but sympathetic look on her face, one we recognized from when we were given Reef’s diagnosis.

  “I’m very sorry, it’s serious,” she said. “I’m afraid there are two lumps, one smaller than the other. We are going to go for a full mastectomy.”

  Kate didn’t cry, she just stared at the floor solemnly. I felt myself falling to pieces from the inside out. My heart was pumping blood frantically around my body, and my brain was pulsing, fit to burst. I could feel goose bumps erupting down my spine, and veins bulging angrily under my collar. I was trembling with shock, and my tears ran into the sweat that was forming on my flushed-red face.

  The cancer nurse looked a bit bemused, seeing me looking so much more visibly upset than Kate.

  “It’s not the worst news I’ve heard,” Kate said calmly, by way of explanation.

  Now the nurse was looking completely confused, and as I held my head in my trembling hands I could hear Kate telling the nurse a bit about Reef, about how his cancer was so rare he was just one of eight in the world to be diagnosed with it.

  “He was given a six percent chance of survival, and he celebrated his fourth birthday last month,” Kate said courageously. “We hired a whole cinema and had a big celebration.” Then Kate broke down, and we both cried in each other’s arms while the shocked nurse slipped out of the room, telling us to take our time and explaining she was going to get us some information leaflets that might be useful.

  In the coming weeks we learned that Kate’s cancer was what is known as “triple negative,” and she would need chemotherapy and radiation after the mastectomy. We were also offered a trial of a new drug called Avastin that could improve her chances of survival, which were eventually estimated at an encouraging eighty percent.

  “I’ll take the lot,” Kate said boldly. “Bring it on. If Reef can beat cancer, so can I.”

  I truly believed she would. There was no question in my mind, and I don’t think there was a shadow of doubt in hers either, not for a very long time. We clung to each other in bed the night before her mastectomy.

  “Will you still fancy me when I only have one boob?” she asked miserably, looking at me with big blue puppy-dog eyes.

  “Are you kidding?” I laughed. “I will never stop fancying you—and I might just fancy you a bit more when you have a boob job.”

  She giggled and kissed me tenderly. “What about chemo? What will it do to me? I’m going to look terrible.”

  “Well, perhaps you could get a sexy, long blonde wig when your hair falls out,” I suggested playfully.

  She thumped me on the chest and hugged me tight. “I love you, Singe,” she said.

  “I love you too,” I replied, kissing her hair. “I wish you didn’t have to go through all this, and I wish we could fast-forward to the end of all this treatment, but we can’t. I suppose we’ve got through it once, and we’ll just have to do it all over again.”

  * * *

  “And here we go again,” I thought, pulling up at Bristol General for Reef’s appointment with Professor Stevens, the enlarged nodes weighing heavily on my mind. Thankfully, Reef seemed to have accepted it was just another routine checkup and didn’t question why we were going back to the hospital not that long after his successful MRI scan.

  “Are we going to the blue floor first?” he asked, knowing the drill.

  “That’s right,” I said as brightly as I could muster, pleased he seemed at ease.

  We both knew the routine so well. After signing in we took an X-ray card, then headed to floor three to wait to be called in for the X-ray. Reef took it in his stride, sitting very still for the radiographer and remembering his pleases and thank-yous. My heart was overflowing with love for him. If I lost Reef too . . .

  “Reef Greene for Professor Stevens,” the nurse called. I felt immediately calmer, seeing Reef in Professor Stevens’ expert hands, but I was still worried sick. We ran though all the usual questions about Reef’s recent health and discussed any temperatures, sickness, stomach trouble or falls he might have had.

  “He fell over in the playground and got a nasty cut on his leg, but of course that’s not unusual,” I reported. Reef was always covered in cuts and bruises as he refused to let his bad leg slow him down. He loses his balance more than most kids, and has had more than his fair share of tumbles as a result.

  Professor Stevens examined the lumps on Reef’s lower abdomen and admitted he was a little concerned and wanted to scan them. The color drained from my face, but Professor Stevens was brilliant, explaining that an infection from the cut leg could have traveled up to the nodes, making them swell as they fought off any invading bugs.

  I gave a quiet sigh of relief, but I wouldn’t be convinced until I got the results of the scan the following week. It felt like déjà vu, waiting for yet more scan results and counting the days and hours until I received them and could, hopefully, resume normal life once more. I busied myself with preparations for our latest camper trip.

  We were all packed up and ready to go on the Monday morning when the phone rang. I’d been willing it to ring before we set off, and I held my breath as I listened to the message being passed on from Professor Stevens.

  “Reef’s lumps are nothing to worry about,” the gentle voice reassured me. “As Professor Stevens had hoped, they are harmless ‘shotty nodes,’ most probably aggravated by Reef’s recent fall.” The words were so soothing I felt as if they had actually pushed themselves out of the phone and physically rubbed the frown from my brow as they filtered through to my brain.

  “Thank you so much,” I said, suddenly gulping in air to compensate for holding my breath. My pulse was racing, and I felt dizzy with relief. I could almost feel my fear bubbling away, being converted into a massive dose of happiness that percolated into every cell in my body.

  I was ecstatic, and I had the biggest smile on my face all the way down to the camper site.

  “We’re going to have such fun,” I told the boys with genuine gusto, and we did.

  Kate had loved this site, because there were always loads of rabbits running round the camper. She watched them with fascination as they chased each other and nibbled the grass and she drank in the views along the Jurassic Coast with wonder in her eyes. It was lovely to remember her like that, but once we’d settled into the holiday I was relieved to find that this trip wasn’t dominated by memories of Kate, like the last camper trip had been. I don’t think the boys mentioned Mummy once, and perhaps that’s because we were with my side of the family instead of hers, but it didn’t seem wrong. Kate would never be forgotten, but life was moving on, and I had a good feeling about the future.

  Chapter 7

  “Celebrate birthdays big time”

  “Am I having a birthday party, Daddy?” Reef asked.

  “Dunno, haven’t thought about it,” I said, unable to suppress a smile.

  “Tell me what it is!” Reef squealed eagerly, knowing immediately I had a trick up my sleeve.

  “Oh, I thought we’d take a boat out . . .”

  “What boat? Our boat? That’s booorring, we do that all t
he time!”

  “Oh well, if boats are booorring, then . . .”

  “Tell me, Daddy!” Reef begged, seeing my smirk and realizing I didn’t mean our boat. He was jumping up and down now, unable to contain his excitement.

  “Tell me, pleeeaaase!”

  “I thought we’d take The Matthew out on the harbor, and invite your whole class. We can all dress up as pirates and fire a real cannon. How does that grab you?”

  Reef was rolling round on the floor now, clutching his sides because he was laughing so much.

  “Is that real? Is it true?”

  I assured him that it most certainly was, and that it was exactly the sort of party he deserved for his very important sixth birthday. Ever since Reef got ill birthdays had taken on greater importance each year as they marked out another leap in his recovery, and there was no way I wasn’t going to celebrate his birthday “big time,” as Kate wished.

  Reef skipped out happily into the conservatory, suddenly intent on finding his plastic pirate’s sword.

  “Good luck, it could be buried deeper than a hidden treasure chest under all those toys you’ve got out there,” I called. “And there’s no X to mark the spot!”

  Reef rolled his eyes. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him telling Finn about his birthday party as he recruited him in the hunt for the sword, and I delighted in hearing Finn giggling with excitement too.

  Six years. I had been a parent for almost six years, and for most of that time I’d lived on a knife’s edge. Looking back, it was as if a black curtain was drawn across our old life when Reef got ill. It blocked out the sun, trapping us in a stifling, frightening, exhausting world of hospitals, operating theaters and chemotherapy suites. Then, just as the curtain started to lift and light chinked through, bloody big shutters fell when Kate was diagnosed too.

  I thought about the nine long months when Reef was poorly but his cancer hadn’t yet been diagnosed. As Reef’s health started to deteriorate Kate found out she was pregnant with Finn. I remember being shocked.

  “How did that happen?” I asked Kate, nonplussed. “You told me you weren’t back in a normal cycle after Reef. You told me you couldn’t get pregnant!”

  “I didn’t see you complaining that night,” she winked.

  It was true. Our sex life had taken a battering since Reef was born and we grappled with sleepless nights, but Kate had seduced me one memorable evening. It was the first time we’d had sex in many months, and I jokingly accused her of getting me drunk and dragging me upstairs to have her wicked way with me. Of course, it wasn’t like that. I never needed dragging into bed with Kate, and we had our wicked way with each other, very willingly. Afterward, Kate confessed she’d chosen that night as she had worked out that, if she did get pregnant, our next child could well be born on Valentine’s Day. “How can I argue with that, romantic fool that I am?” I conceded when the news sank in. I’m as soppy as they come, and Kate knew that all too well, the clever little minx.

  However, as Kate got bigger, Reef got more ill, which clearly wasn’t part of the plan at all. At first his high temperatures only came on at night, when he went floppy and alarmingly pale, but within weeks he became ill during the daytime too. Our little boy, who used to amaze and delight us by crawling through the cat-flap with the stealth of a fox, was practically immobile.

  When doctors suggested his sickness was down to the reactive arthritis triggered by his MMR shot that they suspected, we prayed it would pass, and that Reef would grow out of it, without the need for treatment. It was frightening and almost impossible to accept that we had to wait and see, though there seemed no other explanation.

  But Reef got steadily worse instead of better, and we began to spend more time at the hospital than at home as he underwent a battery of tests to work out why he was becoming increasingly lethargic and unresponsive. Kate went through an incredible amount of stress. Pregnant and pushing a sick child in a stroller, she struggled in and out of hospital again and again, instinctively knowing there was something seriously wrong with Reef and praying that doctors would come up with a diagnosis, and some effective treatment, soon.

  I remember life becoming a blur of heart monitors, X-rays, tubes, injections and tears as the investigations intensified. Kate cried every day, and I barely slept. I did countless night shifts in hospital, drinking Red Bull to stay awake as I watched over Reef whenever he was too ill to come home. As the months wore on he seemed completely sapped of energy, and soon after his first birthday he became so weak he had to be fed through a tube.

  “I can’t take much more of this,” Kate cried so many times.

  “You’re doing amazingly well,” I said. “Look around. There are other parents here splitting up and falling to pieces. You’re so strong. You’re magnificent. We’ll get though this together.”

  She nodded and returned the compliment. “We are tight-knit,” she said, recalling a phrase she used often when we were courting. I hadn’t heard her say it for years.

  “Never to be split,” I said, delighted to remember the second half of the line.

  The breakthrough finally came when, on Kate’s insistence, we got a private consultant to look at Reef. Breakthrough is perhaps not the right word, as it was certainly not positive news.

  “We have found a large lump in Reef’s abdomen,” a voice said.

  It could have been an alien talking, it sounded so extraordinary. Previous scans and X-rays had been carried out on Reef’s knee and hips, but this was the first time his pelvic area had been scanned. Reef was seventeen months old by this time, and bedridden.

  The lump wasn’t just large, it was gigantic. As big as a grapefruit, it filled three-quarters of his abdomen and reached down to his groin. Kate and I clung to each other and wept for a very long time, and through our tears we asked the same hopeful question: “How can it be treated?”

  The discovery of the lump brought mixed, confused feelings. I can recall feeling some peculiar sort of relief to have finally found the source of Reef’s illness after eight long months of uncertainty, but of course it was not good news by any stretch of the imagination. We now had another terrible, nagging worry hanging over us, one we could barely contemplate.

  “Singe, what sort of a lump is it?” Kate sobbed, her eyes searching mine for some desperate shred of comfort. “I’m so frightened. I’m terrified of losing him. I couldn’t live if he died.”

  “Please don’t cry, Kate. You’re seven months pregnant now. Please don’t think like that. Stay positive, it’s the best thing for Reef. He needs you to be strong.”

  Kate just couldn’t help crying. I held her as she sobbed silently in my arms, her head turned away from Reef. He had black rings around his sunken eyes, and was staring into space. His skin was snow-white, and his breathing was shallow. It was very difficult to conjure up words of encouragement for Kate. Neither of us mentioned the “C” word, although it was shadowing us everywhere, a sinister, predatory elephant in the room, threatening to stampede and smash our world apart.

  We had several days to wait for the test results on the lump, and it was absolute agony. I sent Kate home to rest, and stayed in overnight with Reef, watching over him as he slept. He looked pitiful, he really did.

  “Singe, I’m scared,” Kate sobbed over the phone.

  “I know, so am I, but think about our new baby. Try to put your feet up, listen to some music, anything you can to take your mind off things. You have two months to go, and you need to look after yourself. I’m here for Reef. I’ll stay all night and you can come in the daytime, when I’m at work. I love you, acres and acres.”

  We went through two nights and three days like that before Reef was allowed home, test results pending. The weather was filthy, and the sky was heavy with snow clouds. It was the week between Christmas and New Year, and shops and houses were glittering with fairy lights an
d decorations. Kate and I had gone through the motions of exchanging presents and eating turkey with the family, but we didn’t celebrate, not really. We’d expected Christmas to be extra magical once we were parents; instead it was absolute hell, wondering if Reef would live to see another one.

  On December 29 Kate took Reef back into hospital for yet another examination. Her mum and dad drove her to the Bristol Royal Infirmary and back, as I had a job to do a few miles away in Nailsea.

  When my phone rang I was expecting an update on Reef’s condition.

  “Singe, can you come home quick?” Kate said urgently. “I’m in labor. It started on the way home from hospital.”

  “You’re having a giraffe,” I said. It was something I often said to make her laugh, when I meant “you’re having a laugh.” She didn’t laugh this time though.

  “No, a baby,” she said, deadpan.

  “On my way,” I said.

  “Be careful,” Kate warned. “It’s snowing.”

  “I know—how cool is that?” I said enthusiastically, suddenly feeling giddy with anticipation. I was feeling nervously excited, a crazy mixture of emotions rushing in different directions round my body.

  “You were born in a snowstorm!” I said to Kate. “Isn’t that amazing?”

  I was awash with adrenaline and desperately wanted to be with Kate as quickly as humanly possible.

  “Yes, Singe,” Kate said, pausing to let out a little groan. “The snow is amazing, but I was hoping it would be rather more spring-like when this baby arrived!”

  “I know, I know, I’m on my way, I’ll drive carefully.”