On arrival at Casualty, the so-called casualty ran up and down the corridors shouting, ‘Clown!’ at the top of his voice to the clowns on the walls. By the time we got to see a doctor it was clear that, after almost an hour, he was not going to keel over, and the doctor’s toxicity database, which he showed me (clearly recognising my medical stature) said that in small doses hawthorn berries would not cause much harm apart from an upset stomach. I should give the patient milk, which I had already done, – having had experience of this when he sucked some Domestos.
‘We’re a twenty-four-hour service, so if you are worried, bring him back,’ he said. Ah, the good old NHS, I do love them.
Arriving back home, it was straight to bed for both of them – no bath, no cleaning of teeth, just a story for Elis from Rhodri while I tucked Osian up. Osh snuggled under his new duvet and still looked like a small baby despite being nearly two and a half and I looked down at him and my heart flipped over because I loved him so much it hurt a little bit.
I was about to kiss Elis good night when I discovered another medical emergency: one of his fish was floating on top of the water on its side, barely alive. I fished him out and put him in a bowl with a bit of salt in it – a trick I learnt off my dad. It worked with him before when he was ill (on the fish, that is, not my dad). Then, I took the other one out and put him in a separate bowl so he was out of the contaminated water – it was too late at night by this time to clean the tank. I put some thoroughly washed sea shells and a fossil in the tank the other day so they could have something to swim around and I wonder if there was something on them that poisoned the tank. Perversely, I could be a poisoner. Fingers crossed he’ll pull through; let’s hope it’s not his day today.
My test results come through tomorrow. A week ago it seemed like a lifetime, this morning I thought Thursday was days away, then I realised it’s tomorrow. I had planned a quiet evening of rest and contemplation and a bit of Welsh homework. Now I have an hour and a half to fit in Welsh homework, Tuesday’s episode of Lost and a bit of Heat magazine all before bedtime. Ho hum. Better have one more look at the little darlings and the family pets (pet?). What is it they say? ‘Life is what happens when you are making other plans.’ That was certainly true tonight.
September 14, Thursday
Oooh ooh ooh good news! Good news! More good news! Wonderful, life-saving, fantastic Mr Monypenny has got clearance around my tumour and is ‘very happy’ with it. What a bloody relief. No more surgery, hurrah! Straight on to chemotherapy; do not pass Go, do not collect £200. I’m ‘on the good side of bad’ he says, about 75 per cent (not quite sure of what, maths never being one of my strengths) but 75 per cent sounds good. I’ll take that, thank you very much, Mr Monypenny. I think it probably refers to the cancer returning to the same spot. I’ll ask the double-barrelled oncologist when I see him – whom I will also fall in love with, according to Beth. With chemo and radiotherapy and Tamoxifen, the odds go higher and higher, but I’ll probably be glowing in the dark after all that toxicity. Who cares? Bring it on.
After skilfully avoiding the film crew for two months, there they were in the waiting room again, following the lady sitting behind me. Both Rhodri and I took a sudden interest in the posters on the wall as Rhodri had recently worked with the cameraman and we weren’t in the mood for chit chat about breast cancer over a skinny latte at that point in time.
We moved to the ‘before you have breast cancer and are being screened’ part of the waiting room where the women look like frightened bunnies, as opposed to the ‘we’ve got breast cancer’ part of the room, where they look slightly less anxious – having had the bad news – and slightly more eager to get in there and find out what the prognosis is. Anyway, Mr Monypenny came over to the ‘before side’ to talk to us so we didn’t bump into ‘my lot’ as he refers to them.
I thanked him VERY much when I left and shook his hand, as did Rhodri. I probably won’t see him again, and parting is such sweet sorrow. Not seeing him again is, of course, a good thing, a great thing, as I wouldn’t want the breast tumour to return BUT if it did, I would definitely want to see him again.
Suddenly, with the shake of a hand, the man who has saved my life is gone, on to the next patient who is lucky enough to have him as his or her surgeon. However, thanks to the good ol’ BBC, I’ll be able to see him on the telly programme, whereupon I can rewind, fast forward and pause him, in all his loveliness, to my heart’s content.
The other good news is that Fishy the goldfish survived the night, although we are not out of the woods yet. He is buoyant and blinking and opening and closing his mouth regularly (very important vital signs in a fish – God, I’m a qualified vet now as well as a qualified breast surgeon and oncologist) as opposed to floating with a fixed stare, and he has eaten food. I poked him and he didn’t dart around the bowl but did move a bit. He also looks as if he has a small tumour on his head – nothing too big – and I had another fish which lived for ten years with a tumour on its head. My God, I’ve got something in common with one of the family pets! I am to Fishy what Mr Monypenny is to me – a lifesaver – although I may possibly be the one who caused his near death-like state in the first place, with the fossil or shells that were in the tank. I have the power of life and death in my hands over two orange and silver bodies – bloody hell, what a responsibility.
Anyway, after my long lunch with Babs, I will thoroughly clean out the tank, removing the offending shells and fossil, and put Rods back in. Fishy will have to remain in his private ward under strict observation until he is deemed fit enough to return to the tank without fear of killing Rods off. I think I might pop into the pet shop and buy some fish-friendly tank adornments as a get-well present.
I don’t know if it is the fact that my cancerous tumour is gone, but I feel very Zen about the world. Am thinking of becoming a Buddhist, and will do a bit of Googling on that when I get a minute. The only thing is I can’t kill anything if I am a Buddhist, and I’m not sure I can uphold that ideal if one of those huntsman spiders is in the same room as me as it was the other night (the size of my hand), when I don’t have Rhodri to come between me, it, an encyclopaedia and sudden death.
God I could come back as one of those – oooh, just had a slight inkling as what it must be like to be a huntsman spider with everyone on the planet (excluding David Attenborough and presumably his film crew who couldn’t do that if they were afraid of creepy crawlies and Buddhists other than myself) can’t stand the sight of you. I want to apologise on record now to any spiders I might have inadvertently squashed with an encyclopaedia in the past and, Lord Buddha, if you are reading this, could I please come back as a sleek, black (so my colour) pampered cat with a diamanté collar – and loads of road sense? But not just yet. Can I get over my cancer first and have at least twenty years while my children grow up? Thanks, Buddha.
September 15, Friday
Rhodri is back in our bed again after nine days. Firstly, it was because I was not compos mentis after the drugs, then he had ‘man’s flu’. In fairness he did have a bad cold but I had little sympathy for him. I am paranoid about germs as I am trying to ensure my immunity is strong before I start the chemo, which will wipe it all out anyway. So there was another five days because of man flu until there was not so much as a sniff out of him. He was banished to the Bob the Builder duvet section of Elis’s bunk beds. God, it’s been bliss having a king-size bed to myself. We are not really meant to sleep together – not just me and Rhodri, I mean, but everybody. There’s always one who fidgets (Rhodri), one who needs stillness (me), one who is always hot (Rhodri) and one who is always cold (me). Who said opposites attract?
I keep meaning to buy one of those two-singles-but-a double beds so you are together apart, but I never seem to have any ‘spare’ money to do that. God, do people REALLY have spare money? How much money do you have to be earning before you have spare money? It must be a shedload because we never have any money, ever, and I wouldn’t say we have a particularly
extravagant lifestyle. I think eBay may have something to do with it though. I don’t want to even think about credit cards at the moment: moneysaver.com is my lifesaver.com.
Lovely Martin Lewis really has saved me a fortune with his savvy advice and boy-next-door good looks, but even he can’t magic away my humungous credit card bills. But anyway I have bigger things to think about now than being bogged down by the trivia of things, like debt. I am in a higher spiritual place at the moment and when I get back to reality I can think long and hard about another ‘consolidation’, as it is so helpfully called.
Just to be sure, I have poked a sleeping Rhodri in the shoulder to ask him to swear on Osian’s life that he doesn’t have any hidden credit cards. He does that – he gets credit cards and hides them, but of course he is too stupid, OK, I hate that word, no, I can’t think of another suitable word, too stupid, to hide the bills from me or in fact the actual credit card. This usually ends in a blazing row with me passing him some scissors and him cutting it up in front of me.
He complained that I had woken him up – hmm, the vast expanse of the king-size bed gets smaller and smaller when you have a grizzly bear in it. Then within two minutes he was asleep again – how can he do that? It takes me ages to get to sleep. It’s not fair. Anyone who can go to sleep that quickly HAS to be a self-centred individual, otherwise they would be thinking about umpteen other things other than being happy and content with their wonderful selves.
Now, thinking about money, I can’t get to sleep. Richard E, with whom Rhodri has been working, brought me three books which are by the side of my bed, and one especially, The Drama of Being a Child, is beckoning to me. I think it’s a little too much to bear this week, as looking after my own children is enough of a drama in itself at the moment. I will endeavour to start it next week. I’ll just read a little bit of Heat tonight. Sadly, even the exploits of ex-Big Brother housemates can’t rest my mind. I think the underlying crux of my restlessness is a dawning realisation that with all that’s happened over the last day, seeing Mr Monypenny and talking about statistics, for once, throughout this whole bloody process, I have allowed myself the indulgence of thinking that I am not going to die – I mean not going to die now – never mind in the bloody future when I’m old and grey (although I will of course never allow myself to go grey).
I WANT TO LIVE NOW OK. I DON’T WANT TO BLOODY WELL DIE, FOR MY CHILDREN, FOR MY HUSBAND, FOR MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS, AND MOST OF ALL, YES MOST OF ALL, FOR ME. I don’t want to die and I don’t want to tell people that because they are all so positive and upbeat because I am too; but when push comes to shove, when all’s said and done, I want to live. I want to live to a ripe old age and go on Saga holidays with Rhodri and have a flat in Tenby and walk my dog, if Rhodri will ever let me have one, on the beach and spoil my grandchildren, and in order to do all those things I’m going to have to live a long time. So God, Buddha, Mohammed or any other deities who may or may not be listening, give me a go, eh? I’m quite a nice person, really. I am a good mother, sometimes a good wife. I have my moments, and I could try harder and I will. That I promise you.
September 16, Saturday
Tonight my mother and father are looking after the children and we are going out with Ian J. Everyone keeps saying to crack open a bottle to celebrate the news that I don’t need more surgery. Everyone is ecstatically happy, which is lovely to hear, but I’m still erring on the side of caution. Why? I still have a niggle and the last time I had that niggle I had cancer. Now I’m thinking about God and warnings from above to change my lifestyle and sort myself out. OK, if You are there and You are reading my diary, I’m trying my best, really I am. I’m trying not to drink so much and doing really well with that, God.
I’ll be a better wife and a better mother, and I will be patient with my children, and I will learn to say no and I will try my very best to do something in the community, and I will love animals and try not to kill spiders and not think unkind thoughts about people I may or may not be jealous of. I’ll do all of those things and more, but please let me live a long life, please please please let me bring up my own children. That’s all I want, for them to be well-rounded, loved and cherished human beings. And their mummy’s heart breaks every time she thinks about them having to grow up without her.
Not that Rhodri wouldn’t do a sterling job. How could I possibly wish for a better father? He is so incredible with them and they wouldn’t have to grow up with a mother who was so totally paranoid about them hurting themselves or getting knocked over or falling from trees that it made her heart miss a beat with worry sometimes. Is it normal to fear all of the time that something is going to happen to them? Now that something has happened to me, I have to learn how to be less paranoid about them.
September 17, Sunday
I was very sensible last night, which Ian J commented on. Tried to stay on the water but also had a few glasses of wine. It’s odd, but when the children are here all I want is a bit of peace, and now they are not here, all I do is think about getting them back again.
I thought about writing a letter when I was diagnosed: a ‘mummy loves you more than life itself’ letter, but the practicality of it all meant that I wouldn’t need to do it in the first week, that I would at least see a few more months out before I was at the letter-writing stage. As time has progressed and each stage has passed, I still think about that letter a lot, but what I would write in it in has changed beyond recognition. Maybe this period of reflection has given me an inner strength and the inner peace that I am, I think, beginning to feel. Please, let it be real. I want to feel calm like this all of the time.
No, the letters would be different to the ones that I started penning in my head in July. To my children they would be letters about the wonderful memories of them as babies and growing up, and the funny things they have said which you forget so easily, but think you will remember for ever, but mainly they will be about my love for them. How you can describe that in a letter is the question – there is a pain in my heart as I write this – but to remind them how wonderful they are, how they came into the world with so much love, and what they can be in life.
The biggest change has come in the letter I would write to Rhodri. It started off as a manual of all the things he should and shouldn’t do; how I thought this should be done with them, and that should be done with them, things not to forget like sun cream and gym bags and reminding him to tell them he loved them and to hold them. But then I thought that I actually have no right to tell him how to bring up our children. If I were not here, that is for him to decide, and as for reminding him to tell them he loves them and to hold them, his love for them is evident in every action he does for them and with them. I would thank him for our life together, ‘sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes bloody awful, sometimes bloody amazing’, much like everyone else, really, and for making me a whole person and for loving me and putting up with me and to never ever ever mix colours and whites in the washing machine. Dear God, if You are listening, I would settle for a minimum of twenty years – that would be top banana, really it would. My children would be all grown up and hopefully with some idea of how to fend for themselves. They will not go into the world being a rod for another woman’s back, the house will be paid for, and even Rhodri could go off and find himself a lovely young wife who isn’t afraid of spiders, who would love to go to South Africa without worrying about being mugged, and who takes an interest in world politics and knows what the hell is going on with the Israelis and the other bunch. A wife who already speaks Welsh and loathes the Labour Party – he would be in his element for sure.
I’m 75 per cent and rising with every toxic cocktail on offer, so I know I should be REALLY happy too. I’m on the good side of bad. I am on the good side of bad, I am on the good side of bad.
September 18, Monday
Hmm, just had a thought about Rhodri’s new ‘in the event of my death’ (ITEOMD) wife. Was cleaning the kitchen floor, which incidentally was minging – t
hank God for slate, it’s a great hider of dirt. I do seem to have eureka moments while doing the housework. If I didn’t have to worry about things like French doors being smear-free or getting quotes for new windows and children’s gym bags, I too could sit down at the internet and read papers and find out about the Palestinians and the other lot.
My Mummy Wears a Wig - Does Yours? A true and heart warming account of a journey through breast cancer Page 6
