August 25, Friday
Rhodri is working away this weekend. Luckily he is around for the few days after my op so I don’t need to get anyone down from my family to look after me. It is a Bank Holiday weekend this weekend, and Julia and Martin have taken Elis to Tenby with them and Lloyd, so it is just me and Osh.
August 26, Saturday
We are top of the league, we are top of the league. Rhodri is jubilant and rang me up to tell me this. Apparently Cardiff City is top of the league. I actually cannot stand football so am not entirely sure if including me in the ‘we are top of the league chant’ may not jinx the team completely. Football is the pain of my life for a number of reasons. 1) It is played entirely by men. 2) I know it is a cliché but the offside rule is unfathomable. 3) Rhodri is obsessed with it and is never in the house on a Saturday – well, every other Saturday – but the Saturdays he is here he has to listen to it or watch it. Our whole life is geared around this whole Cardiff City thing; we have had so many rows about it and thanks to his ‘absolutely must attend at all costs’ attitude, he has missed Elis’s parties, me giving birth (well, post-giving birth), and our holidays have to be booked around it.
So I guess it’s not Cardiff City I dislike per se, it’s what they mean in my life. The day Osh was born, Rhodri, having already missed the birth and me being completely traumatised because I gave birth on my own without any midwives, went to see Cardiff City play. To say I was resentful and ever so slightly angry is a little bit of an understatement. I am getting a seething ball of anger in my stomach just writing this. It’s such a man thing, I really don’t get it at all. Although, saying that, Kerry is really into football and even understands the offside rule and she is not a man. Elis recently shouted during a match, ‘Offside!’ and Rhodri said, ‘No, I don’t think so.’
Paul in my office had gone to great pains to explain the offside rule to me in secret so I could miraculously comment on it, and I thought that I did actually understand it and I said to Elis, ‘It’s taken me nearly forty years to understand the offside rule and you are only six and get it,’ and he said, ‘No, I don’t get it, I just shout it now and again.’ And I thought. Bloody great! That’s what I will do at around the point where offside usually occurs and see if any men in the room take me seriously – not that I particularly care about being taken seriously where football is concerned. It’s just when Ian J comes over to watch the football with Rhodri, I really do not register with them in any way, shape or form as I am a woman and know nothing about football.
Football is the universal language of most men. Any man who is into football has instant ‘man’ currency. Women have it with other women who have children, but that of course is seen as fluffy and inconsequential because it is not football.
August 28, Monday
Went to stay with my mother and father for, as much as I crave some ‘me’ time, I don’t want to be on my own. My mother and I took Osh for a walk along the canal and walked for miles. It was really lovely. I rarely get to spend time with my mother any more. I’m either dropping children off or picking them up and she does ring me EVERY DAY, so part of the problem is that I’ve nothing new to tell her. Plus she is always saying everything is going to be all right, and sometimes I just think, What if it isn’t going to be all right? I am a mother myself so I can understand what she is going through, and if I was in the same position as her, I guess that I too would be telling myself and my child it was going to be all right as I would be too frightened to think of the consequences otherwise.
August 30, Wednesday
Elis is going up to Talybont to Rhodri’s parents for a few days; he is coming back on Sunday. Rhodri is back today but gone again tomorrow and back Sunday. This time of the year is mad. Rhodri is never here for long, so juggling my life around cancer operations and looking after children isn’t easy. I know it is Rhodri’s job, but I doubt he has stopped to think about how I might be coping physically after my op and emotionally with having to have another one, and looking after the children and organising life as well.
He thinks all these things take care of themselves. I am sure he wants to be with his family, but there is a part of me that thinks buggering off, while your wife is diagnosed with cancer and having to look after two children and juggle arrangements for hospital appointments and operations while you stay in a nice hotel and go out for meals every night drinking wine and having adult conversations with people that don’t involve cancer 24/7, cannot be that terrible. Fiddling while Rome burns springs to mind – him, that is, not me. I don’t have time to fiddle.
September 1, Friday
Calm calm calm. Deep breaths. Elis is still at Rhodri’s parents’ and Osh is in the crèche so I have a bit of head space. I guess I shouldn’t complain; some women don’t have the luxury of a day or two to themselves. I still don’t seem to have time to sit down much: I’m always doing something, like sorting Osh’s clothes out or tidying cupboards in Elis’s bedroom, anything rather than sit down and contemplate what is really going on in my life and my mind.
I know that after my second op, my chemotherapy will start a few weeks later, and I haven’t got my head around that and what it means. I have of course consulted Susan Love on this and I know it affects different women in different ways; I just wish I knew what my way was and if it is as bad as people say it is.
My mother keeps telling me about all the people she knows who have had chemotherapy OR whose daughters/aunties/sisters/cousins have had it. There is always someone, it seems, every day whom my mother has met who has a story to tell which she has to relay back to me in intricate detail. I know my mother is trying to be positive, BUT I really don’t want to know about other people at the moment; it’s enough of a head-fuck coming to terms with it all myself.
Babs introduced me to a woman called Beth who has breast cancer; she is younger than me by about two years and also has two young children. She has had a mastectomy and is going through chemotherapy.
Helen the breast nurse had told me that she had one patient who couldn’t get out of bed with her chemo but that was quite unusual; most women feel unwell and sick but can go about doing their daily tasks.
Beth, it transpires after chatting with her for a while, is Helen’s patient who cannot get out of bed. After she has had her chemotherapy she is in bed for four days and cannot move. She said, ‘I literally cannot open my eyes and get out of bed.’ This is not really what I wanted to hear but I guess I have to put plans in place (because no one else will unless I do) in case this happens.
I’ve relayed this information to my mother and sisters and they of course have agreed to have the children or come down and stay when I have the chemo or whenever I need them. I don’t know what I would do without them; I know that they will be there for me and it makes this whole bloody mess so much easier to bear.
September 4, Monday
Rhodri is away doing the Proms, my second op is tomorrow, so consequently I haven’t had time to brood about it too much. Osh is up at my mother’s for a few days and Elis is starting back to school on Wednesday, so he has to be in Cardiff on Tuesday night. It has sort of arrived really. I have packed a bag just in case I need to stay in, but am hoping it will be fairly routine and I will be in and out. In a way I just want to get it over with so that I can get on with the chemotherapy; perverse as that may sound, the sooner that is over with, the better, I think.
I have been on the internet and ordered some turbans, hats and scarves in case I feel the need to wear them at any time. The site sells hats for chemotherapy. However, Kylie managed to look pretty gorgeous in her scarves so you never know, I might pull it off. I am also getting oversized glasses à la Kylie so if my eyelashes and eyebrows fall out, then they will be covered by even cooler sunglasses. The look I am aiming for is a frail vision of loveliness, although it will probably be more akin to a dodgy shoplifter.
Oooh, they do a hat called the ‘muff’ hat; I will get Rhodri one of those for Christmas. They also ha
ve a cancer ‘gifts’ section – trust the bloody Americans to come up with that one. They are kitsch teddies with verses on them about love and friendship. I shouldn’t scoff, I know. They also have a section for children’s wigs which makes you stop laughing at all this and makes your heart break.
September 7, Thursday
I had my operation on Tuesday. Rhodri and I had a terrible row beforehand. He took me to the hospital and I was a little stressed, understandably I might add, and as we got in the car, I said, ‘I haven’t got any money or anything now as I don’t want to leave any valuables in my locker,’ and he said, ‘Fine, don’t worry about it.’
So we drove there, and when we got to the car park, he said ‘Have you got any money? I haven’t brought any,’ and I said no, I didn’t, and that I had told him so.
So he said he didn’t have any change to put in the meter to park the car, but, ‘Well, never mind – I’ll just drop you off at the entrance.’
I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘What do you mean? I’m going into hospital for a fucking operation for cancer and you want to drop me off at the front door?’ and he said, ‘No, I don’t want to. I just said that because I felt stupid because I didn’t bring any money,’ and I was furious. I could have happily stabbed him at this point.
So I went on about how this was about more than the money: it was about his complete inability to have any understanding as to what the hell I might be going through, and as I got my stuff out of the boot, I noticed some money in there and I couldn’t have cared less if he came in with me or not because I didn’t even want to look at him.
So he put the money in the meter and followed me in, carrying my bag. I was furious and I started to cry in the stairwell on the way up and he was saying how terribly sorry he was and he did understand what I was going through so I forgave him, but only because I didn’t want any bad karma going into my operation, which was what he should be bloody well thinking as I am the one about to go under the surgeon’s knife once again.
The ward I was originally on was full so I got my own private room – hurrah! It was bliss, although I did think that someone could come in and murder me and no one would know, it was so quiet in there. I read my book, watched a bit of TV and generally relaxed, so by the time my op came I was a picture of serenity; a far cry from when I had arrived.
A porter took me down, there was a bit of a delay in the pre-op room and I was chatting to him and one of the nurses about life, the universe, where we lived, how many children we had, when Mr Monypenny came in, he smiled beatifically, said, ‘Hello,’ then started looking at my notes.
I said, a little anxiously, ‘Have you forgotten what you are doing?’ and he smiled again and said, ‘No, I’m just reminding myself how much breast tissue I have left to cut away.’ I said, ‘Oh, OK,’ thinking he sees bloody hundreds of women, of course he looks at their notes before operating on them.
Then he said, ‘Your lot are here again. They filmed me doing an operation this morning. I checked to see if you were on the ward because they were filming there, but you were in a side ward, otherwise you could have moved’.
As he was talking, I saw, over his shoulder, the film crew with their bloody cameras. I half-expected my work colleagues to pop up and say, ‘Candid camera!’
So he left and the porter said to me, ‘That man is one of the best in the country, you know, not just Cardiff,’ and I thought, Yes I do know and thank God for that.
They wheeled me down to pre-op and Mr Monypenny was there again and I said to the anaesthetist, ‘Tell me when you are going to put that needle in because I want to be thinking happy thoughts.’ I wanted to think about my children walking through long grass, for some reason. I asked Mr Monypenny how the filming was going and he chatted to me about it as if we were having a cup of tea, not like someone who was about to take another chunk out of my breast. It was all very civilised, if a little bizarre.
I came around after the op and my breast was very painful, much more so than the first time around. I guess that is where the saying ‘opening old wounds’ comes from. So I had loads of morphine and spent the rest of the day, until Rhodri came, in a bit of a morphine haze, although I did manage to polish off a three-course lunch without any problems. The next day I was supposed to have an appointment with Rosie, an acupuncturist, who was recommended to me by Richard E, who has been such a great help with books and advice. He says cancer is about the immune system and acupuncture helps the immune system. I will give it a go soon, but I got Rhodri to cancel it, as the thought of anyone sticking another needle in me is a bit to much too bear at the moment. I get my results on Thursday so I don’t have long to wait.
September 10, Sunday
I have spent the weekend pottering, which is something I do exceptionally well. With two children, pottering is turned into an art form; just as one thing is picked up, another goes down and so the cycle goes on and on, so instead of calling it cleaning, women where I come from tend to call it pottering, to mask the mundane banality of it all. I am still taking it easy because that second op knocked me for six. I just hope that they have it all this time, because if they don’t I will have to go and have a mastectomy. To have gone through two operations only to be told I have to have a third would, I think, make me feel a bit let down.
September 11, Monday
My period has started today. Thank God it didn’t come when I was having my ops. In Susan Love’s book there is supposed to be an optimum time in your menstrual cycle for operating for breast cancer. Susan Love works in an American system and mentions asking to reschedule your operation to fit in with your menstrual cycle. I don’t really have this luxury, but coincidentally, both operations did fall into this timeframe so I am pleased about that.
I am trying to find out as much as I can, being a fully qualified Google doctor, but some of the sites are downright scary, and statistics on survival are all five and ten years and I think, Shit I was hoping for a bit more than that.
My mother (yet again and I try not to listen) was telling me about a woman who had breast cancer when she was forty and she is in her late sixties now and I said, ‘Great, give me twenty years, I would be very happy.’ She says, ‘She has had more than twenty years, Shelley, so don’t go worrying about it.’
I don’t think people can fully understand just how much you will, of course, worry about it – to the point that it can make you feel physically sick. It is all I think about, my life expectancy: will I be able to get rid of this, will they be able to remove it all? So I feel like screaming at anyone who tells me not to worry, it will be OK, because the truth is, no one – not me, not my mother, not the woman who has lived more than twenty years, and not even my surgeon – knows if I will be OK. Only time will be able to reveal that little secret.
September 12, Tuesday
I have again decided to learn Welsh. Rhodri is a first-language Welsh speaker, Elis is fully bilingual and Osh can say a few words and Rhodri always speaks to him in Welsh so there’s this little clique in our house of three men all babbling away in Welsh and then there’s me. I can deall (understand) a lot of Welsh but don’t really speak any, so I need to start from scratch. I feel I need to structure my time in some way over the next few months and this is a good opportunity to do it, when I don’t have the constraints of work. It will take my mind off my illness. Am I ill? I don’t feel ill. I’m not quite sure how to describe what I am. I was fine until they found my tumour-type thing. I am embracing Suzannah Olivier’s book on nutrition and am basically having a vegetarian diet. My sister looked at it and said she thought it was difficult to follow but as I was a vegetarian for eleven years before I met Rhodri I find it easy, and I love salads and pulses so it’s not a big deal.
I’m also the proud owner of the Champion Juicer and am juicing for Britain. I will be the purest woman in Llandaf and Llandaf has some very pure people in it, being a theological city. Basically fat and dairy are a no-no, as is red meat. Chicken is fine in moderation but I
must try to stick to vegetarian with chicken a few nights and the occasional Sunday roast.
As Suzannah Olivier says, ‘you have to let your hair down now and again.’ While you still have it, I thought, when I read it. Fish is also good but I am not really a big fish eater so I find that quite difficult, but am trying smoked, peppered mackerel which I can just about eat if I take the shiny skin off the back.
I am continuing with my supplements and the man-boy in the healthfood shop (who is bloody gorgeous) is very knowledgeable about supplements and breast cancer. The fact that I could say ‘breast cancer’ to him and he didn’t wither away is one thing, and another is that he actually has some knowledge – in fact he almost quoted Suzannah Olivier’s list verbatim, such a God of Supplements is he.
September 13, Wednesday
We have just returned from the hospital en famille. Osian ate one of the hawthorn berries which are littered around the garden. His brother has managed to survive six years without so much as looking at a berry because I drummed it into his head from a foetus that berries were dangerous and you would die if you ate one, while simultaneously trailing my fingers across my throat as if someone were cutting it with a knife. I somehow forgot to do this with his younger brother (you are ALWAYS more relaxed with the second one) so Osh sat on the grass chomping away while I unloaded the dishwasher and his father played football with Elis. After Rhodri had discovered him eating them and got him to clear his mouth he thought he had probably only swallowed one. I immediately rang the NHS helpline who took an age to answer, then set about asking me unanswerable questions: was he complaining that his throat was constricting? Uh hello – he’s two, and have you ever tried to open the mouth of a two year old, when he didn’t want you to, to assess if his throat was constricting? Was he complaining of an upset stomach or any stomach cramps? He can’t speak yet and when he does it’s a mixture of two languages, so it’s difficult to know what he is saying at the best of times. Fine, they would call me back within the next four hours. So I did my usual self-assessment on Dr Google, and the first entry under the search of Berries, hawthorn and poisonous was Hawthorn berries are VERY POISONOUS – so upped the family and went to Casualty. Elis, who has had the drummed-in berry phobia for the last six years, kept asking if Osian was going to die. At which point I replied with my philosophical cancer head, ‘We are all going to die but it’s not Osian’s day today.’
My Mummy Wears a Wig - Does Yours? A true and heart warming account of a journey through breast cancer Page 5
