I talked to Sandra, in the other bed next to me, who was having a mastectomy. She’d already had a lumpectomy but the cancer had spread to her nodes and they advised her to have it all off. I know that could be me in a couple of weeks if mine doesn’t work out, but I AM thinking positively.
Rhodri came to see me the night before the op and we went for a walk. It was a sunny warm evening, the sun was setting and we looked at Cardiff below us and it was really beautiful – and for a minute I forgot why we were there and then I remembered and felt sad that this was happening to us.
The operation was surprisingly non-eventful. Yes, I felt like shit afterwards but not in pain from the operation itself. I just felt really drowsy but I almost like that state where you can’t do anything, just lie there. How ironic that the only time I can sit down and not move is when I have been knocked out by a general anaesthetic. When I woke up on the Thursday morning I had no pain and I was talking to Sandra who had had the mastectomy and I thought, I’ve just had a lump out but she’s just had her breast cut off, that must bloody well hurt, but she said it didn’t. I said they must have given us really strong painkillers but when I asked, they’d only given us paracetamol! The body is remarkable; to have that done to you and not to feel pain is incredible. Don’t get me wrong, if anyone came and poked me in the tit I might have had something to say about it, but it really is painless and I thought I would be in agony.
Elis has been up at my parents’ farm for most of the week but Osh has come down for nursery. Sarah and Aidan are over from Ireland so they have been looking after him. Gwyneth over the road brought me some home-made Welsh cakes and I’ve had so many bouquets I’ve run out of vases.
Elis came home today but was very quiet. He seems to think that he can catch my illness because I have to stay off work, and you only stay off work or school if you have an illness and you don’t want other people to catch it and get ill, so he didn’t want to give me a kiss. I am not quite sure how you explain to a six year old that cancer isn’t contagious. Of course, you must never use the ‘C’ word in case someone helpfully tells him what that is and at six you really don’t need to know.
August 14, Monday
I haven’t been doing much for the last few days, except resting really. I had some of my family down to see me – my mother and sisters over the weekend – but mainly I’ve been staying in and trying to rest. I still feel pain-free. Helen called and asked me how I was doing and said I might get spasms in my breast but they would pass very quickly, so there was no point taking any medication for them. However, I haven’t had any. Perhaps the tumour was not very deep and there wasn’t much tissue to cut through – and that is why it isn’t painful.
The wedding is on now for the nineteenth, we are staying Friday and Saturday night so that should be good. I’m a bit apprehensive about it because even though Rhodri says he will look after the children I worry about them wandering off. So I am going on the proviso that I don’t have to do anything other than turn up and eat. Owain has ordered non-alcoholic wine for me which he insists tastes just like the real thing. Elis has gone to stay with Sioned and Ali, Rhodri’s aunt and uncle, for a week beforehand in Saundersfoot. They are having a break there before the wedding, so it’s very quiet here and not much to do except eat chocolates and read magazines, at which I am becoming very adept.
August 18, Friday
We have arrived at the St Bride’s Bay Hotel and it is really lovely; we have two rooms both with plasma tellies, a balcony (obviously an absolute no-go with the children); there are magnificent views over the bay. We had dinner with Sioned and Ali and picked Elis up. Elis has a three-piece suit for the wedding. He was insistent on having one and tried it on; his face was beaming and he said, ‘I’m going to be the smartest man in the wedding.’ The children loved the room although Elis tried to sneak in bed with us but we took him back.
August 19, Saturday
An eventful night and day. At five o’clock this morning the fire alarm went off. I used to be one of those people who didn’t pay much attention to alarms and would dawdle out with my belongings until I was in an office in a factory once when a real explosion occurred and people were burned. Since then I’ve been bloody shit-hot at getting out when a fire alarm goes off.
Grabbing Osh, I gave him to Rhodri and snatched a blanket for Elis, as he never sleeps with any clothes on, and marched them all down the fire exit and outside. The people with children were the first out and like us they hadn’t even stopped to pick anything up. Then out came everyone else, some quite hurriedly in their underwear or pyjamas. I was getting a bit concerned about Rhodri’s parents, and then they arrived fully dressed with Rhodri’s mother brushing her hair and carrying her handbag. The fire brigade turned up and although there was no sign of a real fire, we had to wait for an hour while the building was checked. Then they had to do a roll call of all the guests. Thank God it wasn’t raining, otherwise I’d have been in that fire truck with Elis, who by this time had a duvet wrapped around him which the hotel manager had given him.
We eventually found out that the thermostat on the basement boiler wasn’t working; it had overheated and set the alarms off. We were allowed to go back in our rooms but as we hadn’t stopped to get the key, we had to wait outside for twenty minutes (we were the last room the manager opened) all practically asleep on the carpet by this time.
We got back into bed and I thought, This is it, they’ll never sleep but they did, and we all slept in until about nine which was such a relief as I didn’t think I could face the wedding on about five hours’ sleep.
The wedding was lovely but for a horrible minute I thought that Owain wasn’t going to go through with it. He came in and we were all assembled waiting for the bride to arrive and Owain was saying it was hot in there, which it was, but not that hot; the best man opened the windows, but Owain said he was still hot so the registrar got them to open some patio doors and fetched him a glass of water. I thought that was that, then the bride arrived looking beautiful and radiant and, God, I’d marry her myself she was so stunning. So the registrar started her spiel (in two languages making it all very long) and Owain said he was hot again when it was coming up to vows time and had to stop and have a drink, then they went on a bit, then he had to stop again and take his jacket off and we were all looking at each other, both families doing polite smiles thinking, Oh, shit and I thought, Please God, don’t have some dark secret now, Owain and all I could think about was would we still have the reception if they didn’t go through with it, because I was starving. Then he just got hotter and hotter and then the registrar got him a seat and Eva was so attentive and caring and holding his hand, saying, ‘Are you OK?’ when, if it had been Rhodri, I’d be hitting him over the head and telling him to pull himself together.
So they eventually had to finish the ceremony with both of them sitting down, as it looked odd with just Owain sitting down. Eva eventually managed to get him to say all his vows, especially the ‘I do’ bit and he was hers. There was absolutely no way she was letting him get away – hot weather, shakes, sweats or dark secrets. It turned out that he hadn’t gone to bed until two as he had been out with his mates, then he had to get up at five when the fire alarm went off. Then he couldn’t go back to sleep so he had only had about three hours’ sleep, which is not good, but there wasn’t a dark secret in sight.
I forgot about the non-alcoholic wine and hit the real stuff and the children went to bed quite early. The telephones were a baby monitor so you could ring up from reception and hear them in the room – or not in our case. So we had a good drink and we went to bed about twelve.
August 20 Sunday
Woke up with a humungous headache. I have had to wear sunglasses all morning indoors, even at breakfast. Owain said his friends thought I was very glamorous; they obviously thought I was trying to be enigmatic, not realising I was just horribly hungover. I said to Rhodri at the breakfast table, ‘Thank God there wasn’t a fire alarm last night. I wo
uld never have made it out of bed,’ and he said, ‘There was – you slept through it but it was the same problem, which they resolved, so everyone was allowed to go back to bed.’ So much for the protective motherly instinct which seems to disappear once I’ve had a drink (or two)!
August 21, Monday
Back home. Operation hurting a little. I tried not to pick Osh up but it’s easier said than done when you see a two year old about to do something he shouldn’t. The kids were both so well-behaved at the wedding and Elis looked a picture in his suit although he only wore his shoes for the ceremony and was allowed to change into his trainers after I realised I’d bought his shoes a size too big. Elis was in Kids’ Club this week which he loves and which means I can have a rest in the afternoons because he does really need entertaining – well, taken out to places.
I feel as if I’m neglecting them, which I know is silly, but two years ago I hadn’t long had Osh so Elis was in nursery for most of the summer. I found it difficult to look after the two in the beginning, and last year we were having the house done and so the summer was a bit of a write-off. Then this year I was planning to take four weeks off work and have two for a holiday and another two at home going on day trips and doing mummy and son things, but that hasn’t worked out. Now I’m home by myself and he’s in Kids’ club. I know he really likes it because he asks to go there, but I still feel guilty.
But I guess that’s nothing to do with having an operation and being home alone: guilt is just a mother’s lot in life.
August 22, Tuesday
Sarah’s sister-in-law in Ireland, Fidelma, sent me some salt blessed by a priest to sprinkle on my food, and a prayer to recite over and over. Sarah is also getting the nuns to pray for me in the church and is having a mass said for me. On top of all that I have had a letter from a vicar who was on a programme that I was working on just before I left, who is also praying for me and my family. Another colleague from work – who is also a lay preacher – is saying prayers for me and the family. So, all in all, I am very well catered for in the praying department.
Rhodri – a strict non-believer – read the letter that Fidelma sent with her salt and I saw tears in his eyes. Hurrah! It’s taken ten years, cancer and some holy salt, but at long last I’ve got him crying and expressing his emotions. Next time I’ll just poke him in the eye. I get my results on Thursday and am counting down the days. I think it will be OK, but part of me doesn’t want to think that, just in case it isn’t and I have jinxed myself.
I guess if it isn’t, I will have to have a mastectomy. It’s ironic that my first reaction was to have a mastectomy, then after they mentioned that it is a bit of a drastic option, and not always necessary, you get used to the idea of saving your breasts. It’s not the pain because, after having the lumpectomy, and after talking to Sandra about her mastectomy, and Babs, I know that it’s not an unbearable pain, quite the opposite.
I did say that if I was going to have one off I would have them both off, which is part of the reason Babs had hers off, because I’m not exactly small in that department and you’d have to have one hell of a chicken fillet to match mine up. We shall see.
August 23, Wednesday
Rhodri got the children up and out before I was up this morning. I must have drifted back off to sleep again, for when I woke up the sun was shining and I lay there for a few minutes coming to from sleep naturally – which hasn’t really happened in the last seven years. I was lying there all cosy and relaxed and I thought to myself that something was wrong. I couldn’t remember what and thought, Did I have a row with Rhodri last night and forget about it? and then I thought, No, that’s not it, and I still lay there trying to think what could be wrong and then it hit me – Shit, I’ve got cancer.
For a few minutes there I had forgotten about the last few weeks and my diagnosis and my operation and all that stretches out in front of me, and I was the person I was before all this happened. I was a person without cancer living her life just like everyone else, and when I remembered that it wasn’t so, a darkness came into my heart. I didn’t cry and haven’t cried really, not since this has happened, except one night when I was drunk with Rhodri in bed and on the holiday. I have been strong and held it together, as much for everyone else as myself, but there is a deep, deep sadness within me. It feels as if someone has left me without saying goodbye and I will never see them again. It is a physical pain in my heart, as if my heart is broken, and it is so deep, and so sad, that I’m not sure if it will ever go away.
August 24, Thursday
‘Tomorrow’s today’ as Elis says when something exciting is happening that he has had to wait for – except I’m not sure this constitutes excitement. I just want to go there, get my results, and get it over with. I am dressed in a black pencil skirt and a black three-quarter sleeve jumper and have fuck-off red lipstick on. I rarely wear bright red lipstick but when I do, it’s a kind of ‘here I am and you are not going to forget me’ type of thing. I am also wearing my fuck-off red shoes (along the same lines as the lipstick).
Rhodri came with me for my results and I was glad, because when I went to get my results from the biopsy I couldn’t take everything in; you need another pair of ears to remember things that are said.
Also, I tend to focus on all the negative things but Rhodri could put things in a bit more of a balanced way.
BBC Wales, my esteemed employer, are doing a programme about the Heath Hospital and coincidentally they are featuring the lovely Mr Monypenny, so every time I go to his clinic they are there with their bloody cameras, and the last thing I want is to be caught on camera by my colleagues. Also, Rhodri works for the BBC so it is slightly awkward when we are confronted by people whom we normally only see in a work setting at an intimate and, frankly, distressing, time in our lives. If I made this up, people wouldn’t believe me. So we arrived and the cameras were rolling on the woman they were following and she happened to be sitting next to me, so I moved over behind a pillar because I didn’t fancy exchanging pleasantries with the director and cameraman.
Then Mr Monypenny came out. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s your lot again and you probably don’t want to bump into them.’ HE IS SO CONSIDERATE. So it’s me and Rhodri and Mr Monypenny, and a breast nurse who I haven’t seen before, in this little room and he says, ‘The good news is that the nodes were clear.’ This, he says, is ‘the really good news’ and he’s smiling and I am smiling and I’m not sure about Rhodri because I’m looking at Mr Monypenny hanging on his every ‘I am going to make you well again’ words. Then he says, ‘Unfortunately, we’ve got a bit of a problem.’
Other than a surgeon telling you you have cancer, the other thing you really don’t want to hear coming out of his lips, when it is anything to do with you, is that there is a problem.
‘Houston, we have a problem.’ Didn’t the shuttle explode after those words?
I don’t want problems, I want it all to be OK and done and dusted so I can go home, but that isn’t the case. You have to have clearance around your tumour of x amount, I can’t remember what it is, but there has to be a clear margin so when they cut the tumour out they cut around it and take more than they need out, because there are microscopic cancer cells which they try to remove too.
Then they look at the extra tissue they’ve taken out and if they find that some of these cells are close to the margin they’re not happy because they don’t know how far they have spread out and they could form another tumour. I think that’s how it all works, according to Susan Love and my interpretation of her book.
So the news is: I have microscopic cells that are close to the margins of the mass he removed and he wants to go in and have another go. My tumour is close to the breast wall, so he says there would be little point in giving me a mastectomy because he couldn’t get any more clearance with a mastectomy than with a lumpectomy.
He said he could do it on 5 September and I could go home the same day, as long as someone could look after me. I was glad about tha
t as I don’t really want to go back in and stay, as I worry about MRSA and germs and flesh-eating bugs in that ward, with all those people who could be coughing over me, so in and out is fine with me.
I came out of his office and despite his lovely smiley reassuring face, I was in shock, as in all honesty, I hadn’t really expected him to say that I would need another op. I kept focusing on the negative aspects and Rhodri would say, ‘Yes, but he said it was good news that it hadn’t spread,’ and I would say, ‘But they can’t get clearance, and what if it spreads to my chest wall?’ not really knowing what I was talking about, so it was like a conversation between someone with their glass half-full and someone with their glass half-empty.
I’m relieved of course that it hasn’t spread, because I would then have to have had all my nodes out and probably a mastectomy as well, but I worry they won’t get the clearance again and I’ll end up having three operations in the space of a month and, as well as the physical aspect of it, it is so emotionally draining. We went for a coffee although I could have downed a gin and tonic. Rhodri kissed me and told me that when I walked into the hospital, I looked like a model, I was so beautiful, and I was glad I had my red lipstick on and my red shoes when I had bad news, because somehow they made it easier to face the world.
My Mummy Wears a Wig - Does Yours? A true and heart warming account of a journey through breast cancer Page 4
