That afternoon Sarah, Julie and I made our way to the chemist’s. I was shaky with lack of food – again I had only managed to keep green tea down – but I was determined to get there. The pharmacist came out from behind the counter with the tablets. I knew her quite well: her mother had been Richard’s head teacher.
‘Mrs Bohan?’ I could see from her expression that she knew exactly why I needed this drug. ‘Take these every four hours on the days you feel you need to. You’ll find if you purée food you may be able to keep it down.’ Ugh. The idea of food made me feel ill again, but I appreciated her advice. I took the first tablet as soon as we got home. It worked, and although I could feel my body rebelling against the foreign chemicals that had been injected into it, I was no longer wracked with days of vomiting. But I didn’t like the idea of taking too many drugs, particularly on top of the chemo, and I managed to reduce the Zofren to one and a half days. What more would I discover in these books? Like a contestant on Mastermind, cancer was my special subject and I was fast becoming something of an expert.
My weeks and months started to take on a certain shape. I would go in for chemo on a Thursday, after which I would be feeling so rotten I would need to go to bed until the Sunday. Gerard would take the Thursday and Friday off; on Saturday Sarah would be at home to help; then the whole family would be around on the Sunday. For those first four days I would be unable to do anything at all, feeling nauseous, weak and isolated, but I would be determined to be up again on the Monday so as to be able to look after Julie and take her to school during the week. I would then have nearly three weeks to get my strength back, before going for the next chemo session on the next allotted Thursday – although my feeling of dread would increase as the day approached. During those precious days when I felt a little stronger, I read and I went to all the lectures and talks I could find on health generally, and on cancer specifically. One day I’d be sitting in a draughty church hall, on another in a smart hotel or a busy health-food shop, and perhaps the following week in an adult education institute. I wasn’t fussy, just hungry for information, desperate to figure it all out. And all the while I was mindful of keeping my strength up, of not pushing my body too hard when my white blood cell count was low, of avoiding crowds just after the chemo sessions. The last thing I wanted was to be laid low on any of my ‘well’ days, although it did happen once and I had to go back to bed with a stomach bug. I was furious that I had been robbed of a few good days.
‘Ger,’ I began, soon after the chemo had started that August, ‘I am going to have to make some changes to my diet.’
‘Oh yes? Like what?’ He was reading the paper and wasn’t really concentrating.
‘Well, I’m going to have to cut out dairy foods for a start. I’ve read in loads of places about what’s in cow’s milk, like hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and chemicals. It’s quite hard for our bodies to digest, apparently. This book here is by a scientist who got breast cancer, and she points out that the incidence of breast cancer is almost non-existent in Japan where cow’s milk just isn’t part of their diet. She cut it out and recovered.’
‘That doesn’t prove it to me. Let me have a look.’ He flicked through the book for a while. ‘OK, well it’s up to you. What about cheese – I thought you loved that?’
‘I do, but I’m realizing that some of the things I have been eating might be making me sicker. I’m also worried about what milk might be doing to Julie. I know Richard and Sarah don’t really drink much of it these days, but I always thought it was a healthy drink for kids and she drinks loads.’
‘Fine,’ he said, doing his best to be supportive. ‘I think you should give it a go – what can you both have instead?’ I told him about soya milk, which I had seen in health-food shops, but a few months later I switched to rice or oat milk, which is easier to digest. Like the juicing, this did not seem to be a radical change, once I got used to the taste of the new kind of milk. I missed cheese at first, but I quickly found foods to replace it with.
At the same time I had given up caffeine and alcohol, and I was starting to cut down on meat and fish. Again, they are hard for us humans to digest. I did it by putting smaller and smaller portions on my plate until it got to the point, after about six months, that I was having just a tiny square of what I by then thought of as ‘cooked flesh’ on my plate. I realized that it was so small it simply wasn’t worth it, and I was more than happy to fill the space left by meat with more salads and raw vegetables. Of course I still cooked meat for the family, and the smell of good sausages on the barbecue would never fail to make my mouth water, just as the smell of freshly brewed coffee would make me long for a cup. Nowadays, I find the smells are enough – if I am foolish enough to try a taste, it makes me retch. I tried to get the family to make some changes along with me, but I found that was not so easy – it caused more arguments than I could handle. I didn’t want them to feel I was criticizing them, nor did I want to force my new diet on them. The only thing I could do at that point was to lead by example, and like all mothers – who after all only want the best for their children – I tried to sneak in some changes without their noticing.
Making foods easier to digest was part of the secret, I was discovering, as it would free up my immune system to concentrate on getting rid of the cancer. Not only that, the mega doses of enzymes, vitamins and minerals – particularly the cancer-fighting anti-oxidants – were giving me a huge boost, and I was discovering all sorts of delicious juicing combinations now that I had invested in a new, more efficient juicer. Even Gerard and the kids were enthusiastic about the drinks I made them.
Sleeping was a problem, and I used the relaxation techniques I had learnt years before in my yoga classes – although in yoga you are supposed to stay awake, relaxed and ‘mindful’. Me? I just wanted to sink into the oblivion of sleep. As soon as I got into bed I would go through the routine, and as I got better at it, so my sleep improved. Gradually I would tense and relax every single part of my body, starting with my toes and working my way up to the top of my head.
I think I became one of those irritating patients who like to think they know more than the health professionals treating them – and that was before the internet really revolutionized the lives of patients. People I see these days at my talks are incredibly well-informed and up-to-date on the latest research. One thing I used to do, for example, each time I was given the chemo, was to ask the nurse to check that she was giving me exactly the right dose. After all, I had three separate injections, and I knew all the nurses were rushed off their feet. I had also read about someone being given the wrong chemo, with disastrous results. Once, this interfering stance did pay off.
‘What’s that you’re putting into me now?’ I asked at one session that autumn.
‘Hold on,’ the nurse sighed, ‘I’ll check it for you.’ I bit my lip, knowing she was annoyed. ‘It’s just the steroids,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Steroids?’ I gasped. ‘I’m not supposed to have them.’ The nurse was incredibly apologetic. ‘I’m terribly sorry, so I am. I see now it is in your notes. Most people do have the steroids as a matter of course, and I should have checked properly.’
My menopausal symptoms had started to appear – with a vengeance. I was over at my friend Lorna’s house one night with a group of girlfriends, and suddenly became totally overwhelmed with heat. ‘Bernie, you’re flushing up,’ said Mel and Helen. ‘I know, and I’ve got palpitations too. It’s this damn chemo.’ I stripped my top off and soon I was sitting there in my bra. Everyone laughed at me, but for me this was the best way to cool down, and – frankly – losing my composure in front of a few good friends was the least of my problems, and these particular women were among the best of their kind. Lorna handed me a large glass of iced tap water, and I drank it gratefully. Then I remembered a leaflet I had picked up a few days earlier on the water supply – it was still in my bag and I dug it out. ‘Listen to this,’ I said to them, reading it out.
‘Irish tap-water is fluoridated with untreated agri-fertilizer waste. Dispensed by 450 Irish water schemes to over 2.7 million consumers, it is contaminated with lead, arsenic, mercury and chromium.’
I read on, and then passed the leaflet around. It made very uncomfortable reading, yet none of us could really believe that honest-to-goodness Irish tap water could be poisoning us and our children as this leaflet seemed to suggest. There was a website and a phone number. I’d have to look into this further when I had the energy, and meanwhile I’d start buying bottled water. (I later found out that this was not a good move either.)
I did not tell my oncologist what I was doing to help myself – somehow I felt he would pooh-pooh most of it as faddy, unsubstantiated nonsense. I realized that his special area of expertise was the medical treatment of cancer and, like all medically trained doctors, he would have had less training in nutrition than the average weight-loss counsellor. This was borne out to me that October. I remember it well because it was the day he told me I was to start radiation.
Across the road from the hospital was a little health shop which I often popped into if I had some time to kill before appointments. They had a nice range of products, and ran courses on yoga, reiki and so on. I had picked up their monthly newsletter that day – as always, I read anything I could get my hands on – and was still reading it when my name was called.
‘You’re doing well, Bernadette,’ stated my oncologist, looking at the results of that day’s blood test. He could see too that I was not losing much weight, and although my hair was much thinner it wasn’t falling out in chunks like some people’s did. I thought this was because of the digestive enzymes and the juicing – I was retaining many more of the nutrients my body needed than I otherwise would have been able to do. But I said nothing. ‘I think we can start you on the radiation a week on Monday. You’ll be in every weekday for five weeks, and of course the chemo will still continue every third Thursday.’
‘Is there anything I should know before I start?’ I ventured to ask.
‘Not really. Your appointments will be in the mornings, so if I were you I’d plan to give yourself plenty of rest afterwards. You’ll be feeling quite tired.’ Jesus, if he warned me that I’d be tired that meant I’d be totally bloody exhausted.
I inadvertently left the newsletter on my chair as I got up to leave. He seized it and waved it scornfully at me, reading out the headline: Shock News: Anti-perspirants and deodorants may cause cancer. ‘Christ Almighty, some of us have to get PhDs before we can advise people suffering from cancer and this guy just sets himself up over the road. None of this is proven.’ I knew he was wrong, but did not have the facts at my fingertips – as I do now.
I was very nervous when I went in for the first radiation session, not knowing what to expect. Nurse Angie tattooed some tiny black marks around my breast, pinpointing the area where the radiation would be applied. She showed me where to lie, directly underneath the huge machine, and then she left me alone in the room. ‘Don’t move,’ she warned. Dear God, I thought, how on earth do they get children to lie still for this? The machine was lowered by an invisible operator until it was a few centimetres above me. The actual radiation itself lasted for a few minutes and at first I felt nothing. Then, after a few days of this, I saw I had what looked like sunburn. A week later I was very, very burnt – and I wasn’t even half-way through the treatment. I would go round the house with a soft T-shirt on, no bra underneath. One Sunday lunch I was so sore I said to Richard, ‘Would you mind if I took my shirt off? It’s so painful; the chafing of the material is agony.’
‘Oh Mum, no!’
‘Please, please,’ I begged him. ‘At least let me unbutton it. You don’t have to look.’
‘OK, but you can pay for the therapy later,’ he grumbled. Fair enough, I realize now as I write this: at eighteen you don’t really need to get an eyeful of your mum’s breasts. But at that point – sick with the chemo, worn out by the radiation – I was too sore to worry about his sensibilities.
Some people get sick with radiation. It didn’t hit me that way, but the oncologist was right about the tiredness: it totally floored me. It sapped every last ounce of energy. Each morning I’d drop Julie off at school if I had enough time before my appointment, or if not, Sarah would take her in. There would always be a wait of around half an hour, then with luck I’d be home by around 11am. I’d go straight to bed and set the alarm for 1.00pm, so I could wake and go to fetch Julie at 1.30. I knew I couldn’t opt out of her life for five weeks – it was important for us both that I carried on as best as I could. At least I had no trouble sleeping during the radiation.
‘Mama, are we going trick or treating next week?’ asked Julie one morning. My heart sank – of course she’d want to do this, as it was something we always did together. There aren’t many kids down our way, but the neighbours always laugh at what Julie and I turn up wearing, and make sure they have a little treat for her. I was determined that she wasn’t going to miss out that year, so I got us both kitted out as Morticia and Wednesday Addams. As I checked my thin, wasted reflection in the hall mirror before we left, Julie clutching her goodie bag, I thought ruefully that I would have made quite a realistic ghost.
I started to learn visualization techniques, so that when I was lying under that terrible machine I could imagine myself elsewhere. Starting with my relaxation exercise, I would end by taking myself to a cool green forest where I would hear birdsong and the rushing of waterfalls. Inside my head I had my own private paradise: it was simple, but it did help me cope with the fear and the worry, and it made me feel that I had some control over what was being done to me. I felt that this, at that point, would help me more than prayer.
There were times during the treatment, particularly when I had the radiation and chemo simultaneously, that I felt like giving in. It was so hard, I felt so low and worn out, I looked wretched, a useless shell of a person. I was learning to support myself physically – a process I now think of as ‘changing over’ – but mentally I felt I was falling apart. Gerard and the kids were fantastic throughout, and I used to lie in bed listening to their noise and chatter downstairs and wish more than anything that I could be down there with them. I was so grateful, too, for the support of friends and neighbours who were always dropping round or calling to find out if there was anything they could get for me, or anywhere they could drive me to. Throughout that year I was constantly being reminded of how much women help each other in times of need: they just get stuck in and do whatever it takes. In particular, Patricia, Grace and Sharon were unwavering and totally unselfish in their help and I don’t know if I could have got through it without them.
Patricia lives some way from my house, in a village just outside a town called Swords. It’s real country out there – she grows her own vegetables and has a cow and a horse. I bumped into her at the supermarket just after I had been diagnosed the second time.
‘I don’t suppose you know anywhere I can find organic fruit and vegetables?’ I asked her, thinking that with her countryside connections she might well know. I was starting to worry that the pesticides and fertilizer residues in ‘normal’ fruit and veg would be getting through to me in higher doses because of juicing. She didn’t – in those days (only five years ago!) it was hard to find organic produce – but as soon as she realized I was sick she promised to help me. The supplier we found was quite a drive away, so Patricia would go shopping for me on the days I was laid low with chemo, bringing me all the supplies I needed for my juicer.
Grace was with me for several of my appointments, and often took me to the hospital when I was too weak to drive myself. I don’t know how she managed to keep me smiling, but she did. What we went through together cemented what was already a good friendship. Sharon is my sister-in-law, married to Ger’s brother Paul. These days I don’t see her much, but that year she was there, almost miraculously, whenever I needed her. She would appear on the Saturdays after my chemo and just get stuck in to w
hatever needed to be done – she walked the dog, cleaned the bathrooms, did the shopping, and – best of all – played with Julie. Sometimes she would go home looking like a dog’s dinner, with her hair all over the place after Julie had been playing hairdressers with her; other times she would drive off with her face painted with wild squiggles and zigzags. She would just shrug her shoulders and grin. When I talk to her on the phone I always end by saying, ‘I love you.’ She was embarrassed at first, but now she’s used to it and tells me she loves me too. She is eight years younger than me, but our birthdays are on the same day, and I always add her name to my cake.
It may sound corny, but I have learnt that you have to take the opportunities to tell people you love them. Life is precarious, and we have a choice as to how we deal with the knowledge that people we care about may not be here next year, next month, or even tomorrow. I believe it is up to us to give out as much love as we can. During my illness I decided never to be one of those people who say uselessly, ‘But I never told him how much I loved him.’ I had made this mistake with my father, and I regretted it bitterly.
The Choice Page 13
