I go to meet Rhodri at the beach a bit later. It’s about a ten-minute walk and when I arrive, I cannot believe my eyes. It is the most beautiful beach I’ve ever seen – miles of sand with very few people on it, big rocks and rock pools, some swings, and it’s all so clean. There’s not a single bit of litter anywhere and it’s not because they have people picking it up, it’s because French people are bloody civilised and take their rubbish home with them or put it in the bin.
Ahh, it’s heavenly here. I started walking up the beach looking for a man with two small children and a red pushchair. Not a great feat, you would think, but half an hour later I’m still looking. I have already approached two men with two small children and red pushchairs. One I was so convinced was Rhodri (although I didn’t have my glasses on at the time) that I sat down next to him. It’s a wonder he didn’t get the French police out as I must have seemed very strange – good job I didn’t start taking the baby out of the pushchair! Anyway, I eventually found them (about five feet from where I started in the first place), looking all happy and sunny and pleased about the beach, as if they had discovered America.
July 27, Thursday
The period from hell continues. It is impossible for me to contemplate swimming, so I sit by the edge of the pool, never taking my eyes off Elis. The pools are lovely, but deep, over my head in places, and Elis has much more confidence than ability. God, how old will they have to be before I am sitting by the side of a pool sipping a cocktail and not worrying myself into an even earlier grave than cancer could put me in, wondering whether they will make it to the end of the fortnight? Am I mentaI? I see danger everywhere and I just feel that Rhodri is lackadaisical about their safety. If anything ever happened to either of them, my life would not be worth living.
July 28, Friday
This place is lovely. I’m trying to calm down a bit; maybe it’s just the whole cancer thing that is making me so bloody edgy. I am reading The Breast Cancer Prevention and Recovery Diet book by Suzannah Olivier, and Dr Susan Love’s Breast Book as I need to clue myself up on everything, but they serve only to remind me of my situation and Susan Love’s book can be a bit scary, to be honest. Went out for a pizza earlier as there are only so many super food salads, as recommended by Suzannah Olivier, a couple can take in one holiday.
Bretons love children, and they don’t look at you as if you have two heads when your child starts getting a bit naughty in a restaurant. Just as well really, as when Osh takes it upon himself to run about it is very difficult to keep him in his chair. Oh well, next year he’ll be older and not so much trouble, and might actually sit down for more than ten minutes.
July 29, Saturday
Sue and Mario and their two children Ollie and Lewis (Sue works with Rhodri) are in Brittany at the same time as us and we all met up for the day. We drove about an hour and they drove about an hour. It was just perfect; the weather had been a bit overcast but when we got there the sun came out and we all went into a restaurant on the sea front and had a meal, and all four children behaved like normal children. They sat down and ate their food perfectly – the God of Mealtimes was looking down on us once again. We went on the beach for the day and the children ran in and out of the water like mad things.
Rhodri and I have been playing a trivia quiz most nights since we arrived. We are also only drinking one bottle of wine a night between us; this is unheard of, but it means that for once in my life I am sober when I am doing the quiz and I keep winning. I can tell that Rhodri just can’t believe it and he keeps saying in a very patronising voice, ‘well done, Shell,’ just like I’d say to Elis if he managed to actually draw something that was recognisable. Rhodri can’t stand it that I am better at something than he is. He grew up mainly watching Welsh language telly and his cultural references are different from mine – I am excusing his lack of trivia knowledge now. Also, I am very good at retaining relatively useless pieces of information that serve neither man nor beast unless they are the answer to a trivia question. No matter – I feel all superior and clever.
July 30, Sunday
Spent the day on the beach. I think I am a pervert. There is a lifeguard there who is a Brad Pitt look-alike. I think he might actually have some inkling that he is sex on legs as he is ever so slightly peacocky, in a cool way, though. God knows how old he is, it’s difficult to tell – in his late twenties I guess. Behind the anonymity of my sunglasses I am shamelessly ogling him – it’s hard not to – you would not be human if you didn’t notice how gorgeous and how full of vitality and hormones he is. I am Mrs Robinson!
Not, of course, that he would ever even notice me in my size 14 Marks & Spencer swimsuit, which I guess is a good cover, as he wouldn’t think I’d be perving him up as he was looking out to sea for people to rescue. I am sure there was a time when I would have been desirable to a man like French Brad, but that really was a long time ago. Oooh, maybe I should get into ‘difficulties’ so he can come and rescue me. I will try to lose about two stone and buy a new swimsuit first, though. Surely that is achievable within the next four days or so?
July 31, Monday
Kerry has had her baby by C Section. Baby Daisy. Richard C rang to tell us. Mother and baby doing well. Unzip them and get them out – I’m all for it.
August 1, Tuesday
I feel so alone. Last night I finished reading The Kite Runner – a book that is not for the faint-hearted and certainly not for someone like me who is verging on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Anyway, I was sobbing when I finished reading it, and it became something of a release for me as I haven’t really cried about myself. Rhodri had already gone to bed and was sleeping so I slipped into bed to be with him, and I woke him up and said, ‘I was reading The Kite Runner and it was so sad,’ and then I blurted out, ‘I don’t want to die,’ and I was crying and he mumbled, ‘I’m really tired, you woke me up.’
I am confronting my worst nightmares and my husband tells me he is tired. I couldn’t believe it! He is so bloody selfish – he does not have a clue what is going on in my head. He is wrapped up in himself and the only thing he cares about is how anything affects him. He is emotionally stunted, he always has been. I don’t know why I expected him to miraculously change overnight just because I have cancer. I left the bedroom, I couldn’t speak, I was crying so hard and went to sleep in with Elis. I hated Rhodri at that point, I just hated him, and I thought I could never forgive him for not being there in my darkest hour.
He came into the bedroom and said, ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry, you woke me up and I didn’t know what I was saying,’ which I think is crap. I think he knew exactly what he was saying; he just thought, Shit I shouldn’t have said that. Whether it was because I wanted to believe him or because I didn’t want to be alone and needed the touch of another person, I went back to bed with him but I am wounded by it and don’t think I will ever be able to forget it. I feel as if I have no one I can talk to, and that’s it. I don’t want to die; I want to live and I wish this would all just go away.
August 2, Wednesday
Went to a children’s play park today called the Parc du Loisirs which Rhodri and I kept referring to as the Parc du Losers which upset Elis and we had to be quiet as he said he didn’t want to be in a park for losers. He’s just like his father – no sense of humour. Osh and a little French boy kept going up and down this slide which had some steep steps. The little boy’s father kept helping Osh up – God, he was gorgeous, tall, dark and handsome and French, that bloody accent just sends me crazy. His wife was so thin.
I’m always looking at wives of handsome men, hoping they are a size fourteen to sixteen but they never are. All the women smoke in France; that’s why they are so thin. Although I have a handsome husband and I’m not thin. I wonder if there are French women looking at my husband and then looking to see if he has a thin wife and spotting me and thinking, What’s he doing with her?, except they would be thinking it in French and I have lost my French phrasebook, so can’t transla
te that.
I have discussed with Rhodri telling Elis about my operation. I want to tell him because he will pick up on it or will hear someone talking about it, but I don’t want him to be freaked out about it and think there is something terrible wrong with his mummy. Shit, actually there is something terrible wrong with his mummy. It is just easy to put this at the back of my mind in this place as everything is so normal and nothing has actually happened yet.
Elis and I were lying on the beach, Rhodri had taken Osh off for a walk and I said, ‘Mummy needs to have an operation on her booby. There is a little lump in there that will make me ill so they are going to take it away and make me better again.’
‘Oh,’ he said, and was quiet for a minute. ‘Do you mean an operation like Rhodri had on his back?’
‘Yes, that’s right, a similar thing but on my booby.’
‘Hmm,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Actually, I’ve got a bit of a bad back today,’ and off he strolled towards Rhodri and Osh. So much for my angst in having to tell him. He is six – why would he be worried about it? I am glad that he is not older so that he can’t understand what is happening.
August 3, Thursday
We have brought a mini DVD player with us and Osh’s favourite film, Winnie the Pooh, and even though it is a beautiful film, it makes me feel incredibly sad. It starts off: ‘Once upon the last day of a golden summer . . . ’ and I wonder if I will ever have a golden summer again after this one. And there is a song that Christopher Robin and Pooh sing which also makes me feel very sad, where Pooh is saying he is lost without Christopher Robin. And when he sings it, my heart feels as if it is breaking because I too feel so utterly, utterly lost and I wish someone would come and find me.
August 4, Friday
We leave Brittany today. Well, we almost didn’t leave Brittany today as we were supposed to park the car on the other side of the barrier as it doesn’t open until seven and we needed to leave at six thirty, so we had a blind panic and I suddenly realised what the French woman who came to make sure we had not trashed the caravan had been on about. I thought. I conducted that perfectly well with my few French phrases and a bit of give-us-a-clue, but what she was actually telling us was to park the car the other side of the barrier.
As luck would have it, I saw her cleaning the shower block and it is amazing how my command of the French language kicked in when we needed the barrier opened to enable us to get to the ferry port on time. It was all fine in the end and she opened the barrier and we got there with about half an hour to spare. To sum up my holiday, Brittany is sooo beautiful. I really want to come back here and if I ever had any money I would love to buy a little cottage on the sea front in Plouscat.
August 5, Saturday
Back in Wales, our holiday a distant memory now, I have washing and cleaning and an operation for a cancerous tumour to occupy my mind.
August 6, Sunday
I am packing for my trip to the hospital. Bizarrely, it feels as if I am going on a mini-break, which I jokingly said to Julia, my sister. The last time I packed a hospital bag was when I had Osh – and the time before that was when I had Elis. In my innocence, I really did think that it was going to be like a mini-break, until the reality of having a newborn baby who did nothing but cry 24/7 hit home. I realised that my days of mini-breaks were over, except that my lovely mother and father have made sure that I was able to have a few mini-breaks with Rhodri over the years. I have books and nice smellies and two pairs of my new pink gingham pyjamas and my little case and lots of healthy snacks. I seem to be forgetting the bit that I actually have to have the operation and that I have an illness that could kill me.
August 7, Monday
Rhodri’s brother Owain and his girlfriend Eva get married a week Saturday. I am hoping that I am going to be well enough to go. I have a lovely dress which I got off eBay from China, don’t you know, and it looks really lovely. We have a room booked for two nights in the St Bride’s Hotel and if I can’t go, Rhodri will take the boys on his own. That will be a bloody shock for him because I don’t think he has ever had the both of them on his own overnight before.
I am in hospital tomorrow; you have to go a day before, to have various tests done – God knows what – so I’m all geared up to go. The children are up at my parents’ farm so it was just me and Rhodri. I can’t say he is the greatest help really. I just think he’s a little boy sometimes and doesn’t know what to say or do. We don’t talk about anything.
August 11, Friday
I am home from hospital. On Tuesday morning I went to see the woman who did my biopsy at the Heath Hospital and she had to scan me and put a mark where the tumour was. She is this really great forthright Irishwoman. She was about an hour late and they said, ‘Oh, you’ve missed your slot. Sorry, you could be waiting a long time,’ but she arrives and turfs someone out of their room and says, ‘Do you mind for five minutes, please?’ and they leave like little sheep.
I asked her some questions about my tumour and she said, ‘Now remind me how you came to us,’ and I explained and she went, ‘Oh yes, I remember you now. You were the person who came in and we thought nothing was wrong with you and then we found a tumour. Look,’ she went on, ‘you need to view this as a blip in your life, a year when you won’t be feeling very well. Chemo isn’t very nice, but you will go through it and you will come out the other end. I say to women, “I’ll see you in twenty years for a check-up” and they think I am joking but I really mean it.’ And she asked me if I had children and she said, ‘You are going to live a long life and look after your children.’
I said that no one had been so positive before and she replied, ‘No, they won’t tell you anything because they have to think in worst-case scenarios, but I’m telling you to see this as an inconvenience you have to go through.’
She also said, ‘I see elderly patients who come in here when their partners have died – people they have spent fifty years of their lives with – and they come here and decide they’ve had enough and they want to die and they do because the mind is that powerful. So you need to be positive that you will get through it and have a long life.’ She gave me a lifeline at that moment that I am clinging on to because I know they have to think of worst-case scenarios, but I don’t want to be one; I want to look after my little boys until they can look after themselves.
Lovely Mr Monypenny came to see me just to reiterate what we had already discussed. He saw Dr Love’s Breast Book and had a little smile to himself when I quoted something out of it, and said, ‘The trouble with some books is that they give you too much information.’ He is right about that; the book would also be very useful if the leg broke on your bed, as it is so thick and can be rather daunting. I deliberately put it in full view on my table so that the staff would realise I was practically as competent as them when it came to knowing about breast cancer. He said to me, ‘Your lot (that’s the BBC) are doing a programme on me and they are in here today.’
‘God,’ I said. ‘Don’t let them in here,’ thinking that, worse than having a big lump cut out of your breast and arm, my colleagues seeing me without make-up would be terrible. I then had to answer hundreds of questions from other doctors (there is Mr Monypenny and there are other doctors, that’s how it is) and have blood tests – twice, because they lost the first lot. They ask you about your first period, breastfeeding, the age of having your first baby, the pill, alcohol consumption (I was slightly economical with the truth on that one, so have probably horribly skewed their statistics), who is looking after your children, who is looking after you, etc. I said to the doctor, who was very handsome but I felt I was old enough to be his mother, ‘I’m ticking a lot of boxes,’ and I asked him what they did with the info. He said that someone, somewhere does collate it to see if patterns emerge. They didn’t ask, funnily enough, ‘Are you riddled with self-doubt and anxiety?’ They probably can’t quantify that terribly well.
I also had to have an injection into my nipple. I wouldn’t recommend thi
s as a pastime, but I was very brave and did not cry. The nurse did warn me it would hurt and asked me to keep very still. I said I didn’t think anything could be worse than childbirth and that most pain paled into insignificance in comparison. I now have a bright blue tit; at last I am a true ‘Bluebird’ which Rhodri, being the Cardiff City supporter he is, will no doubt appreciate. The dye in the needle finds the nodes under my arms and will show Mr Monypenny where they are when he cuts me open. Apparently the bright blue colour can take months to go.
Food was not good at the hospital even though I will really eat anything. The vegetarian option for dinner was quiche and chips; by this time I was so hungry, as my healthy snacks had gone, that I would have eaten a scabby-headed cat. I also had the nutritionalists’ bible for breast cancer by my bed and wondered what Suzannah Olivier would have to say about quiche and chips and a mousse-type thing that defies description, to build you up the day before your operation. Oh well, at least the orange juice was healthy.
The ward was a bit of a shock. I dislike Llandough Hospital with a vengeance because the treatment I received when I had the children there was bloody horrendous. The maternity wards are very small but this ward had about twenty women on it and was a bit like a cattle market. The worst thing was that we were six breast cancer patients at the bottom of the ward and the rest of the ward were patients (mainly elderly) with things like bowel problems, or in the case of the nice lady next to me, a chest infection. She coughed all night and kept talking to me constantly and coughing over me. I know I have yet to qualify for my medical degree but it is surely a recipe for disaster that you keep surgery patients among other patients like that. No wonder Babs was out of hospital after two days with her drips hanging from her boobs because they had an infection on the ward – it must be a breeding ground for germs. The staff were lovely but horribly overworked, especially with so many elderly patients who had to buzz for everything.
My Mummy Wears a Wig - Does Yours? A true and heart warming account of a journey through breast cancer Page 3
