I did feel unreasonably pissed off for being kept waiting when actually they are saving my life, which I should perhaps concentrate on, rather than thinking this is an inconvenient thing I have to do every day. I am forgetting that this increases my chances of that cancer NOT coming back by 20 per cent, so I should remember that when I am in the waiting room. I will take my Ipod and try to rescue the little Welsh I have left in my deteriorating brain for my exam, and will not notice the time then.
So I will be going forward this week as the new, less shouty mummy and the less complaining patient. I’m hoping this sits well with the menopausal-hot-flushing, moody, irritable me. It is just a state of mind, it is just a state of mind. I have already killed a spider this morning and I’m now thinking this is bad karma. I must do something to make amends somewhere to re-order the universe, if indeed this is possible now.
March 20, Tuesday
The self-help books by the side of my bed are about two foot high and covered in dust. I put them there so I can dip into them before I go to sleep. I have yet to pick up a novel and read one, which was part of my great master plan, as I feel that it would involve too much engagement and cerebral effort on my part. So they remain on the beautiful bookshelves we have had put up, reflecting to the world our intelligence and good taste, but they too are gathering dust.
My true bedside friends at this moment are Hello magazine (especially two issues on Liz Hurley’s wedding) and the Argos catalogue – for essential caravan purchases – and these alone have overtaken my need for self-help reading.
I actually look upon Hello and the Argos catalogue as a form of self-help in their own right – escapism and retail therapy. They should be on prescription. There was a time in between treatments post-chemo when I had my meltdown of sorts, when my self-help books were a much-needed crutch, but now they have come to represent a stage in my illness that I am not sure I want to go back to. Not yet, at least.
Here they are: Cancer Positive, Say Fuck Off to Cancer (actually We Can Say No To Cancer), The Bristol Approach to Living with Cancer, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, The Ten-Minute Life Coach, the lovely Susan Love book and the Suzannah Olivier book on nutrition, as well as about five others, some of which I have not even looked at. The self-help industry has done very well out of me and my cancer, thank you very much.
They are all good books, BUT there is a part of me that is moving on from cancer and all that it has meant in my life. I know I have not even finished my treatment yet, and that I have a mammogram next week which once was so daunting I did not think I would be able to stay sane for six weeks waiting for it, and then suddenly (partly because of ‘project vantastic’) I forgot about it as I was getting on with my life.
I became too busy to worry about my cancer because my static caravan needed kitting out. I suppose the doctor was right, the one who said, ‘You will get on with living your life and only think about it around the time of your check-ups.’ When she told me that, I thought she was slightly blasé and a little bit bonkers if she thought this wasn’t going to be occupying my every waking thought for the rest of my life.
It is a little bit like a lover who cheated on you. You hate them and everything they have done to you, but the time you spent with them has shaped you and is part of you and it can’t be undone. So as much as you feel let down and betrayed by them, that happening makes you stronger and, when you have finished the grieving that goes with that relationship ending, you come out the other end a stronger person determined to go on to bigger and better things.
That might be the worst analogy on the planet, but it’s as if I’ve done my grieving. I have searched so deep into my soul that I despaired of what I found there at times, but at other times I came upon a strength and courage that I didn’t know I possessed, and both of those things together are very powerful.
So although I have used my self-help books, and no doubt there may be times when I may need to return to them, to remind myself of where I was and where I am going, I shall take them away from my bedside, dust them down and put them away in a drawer for another day.
March 21, Wednesday
I am SO excited! I rang the caravan people and told them the cheque would be available to cash next Monday and could we bring some stuff down and they said yes, so I asked if we could stay the night. I said, ‘I’m good for the money,’ to Bob who replied, ‘OK, as long as you don’t come down and get drunk.’ Bloody hell, hope he doesn’t have a webcam in there. So I rang Julia and asked if she could come with her big estate car so we could get all the stuff down in one go, as there is no way it will all fit into our car. So she is coming with Lloyd and helping with the stuff. I can’t believe it, I know it’s only a caravan but it feels like out of all this I have done something that I have always wanted to do.
I have always wanted to have a place in Tenby. God, it’s my dream to retire there, and now I dare to believe that I might actually do that with Rhodri, growing old, and waiting for him to go grey with me.
Here I am now, in debt and probably will be broke for a few years, but I have a place to go in Tenby with my children who sometimes do and sometimes don’t drive me mad.
I have asked Martyn for five extra unpaid weeks off a year. He has agreed and I realise I would never have asked if I hadn’t had cancer. I would have feared that my colleagues would think I was not committed to my work. I am committed to my work, and I work very hard, but I need to spend this time with my children. I will never get it back: once they have grown up it will be too late to sit on beaches and in seaside cafés. Too late to spend hours on end outside looking in rock pools and walking in fields, so I am going to do it now, not when I’ve got the money because it will be too late then.
I am going to capture this moment in time with my two growing children who make me smile and laugh and who never fail to amaze me with their wonder of the world and the thoughts they share with me as they make sense of it.
Also with my husband who has stood by me and loved me for the person I am in dark times, when I have been difficult to live with, and irrational, and ill. He has become a man, a very fine man, the man I always thought he could be. And I will be able to take the time we all spend together in our caravan and bottle it all up and put it in my head and it will be mine for ever to keep there.
Pip came round last night with her new man, Jason, who was very likeable. I said to Rhodri before they came, ‘God, Rhods, all these women having new men, I feel like I’m missing out on something,’ and I could tell he didn’t like it, so I kissed him really passionately on the lips to show him I didn’t mean it, and it was a really lovely kiss, just like we used to have in the old days when we first met, and I thought, We’ve still got a bit of that magic.
Took Elis to the optician’s for the second time; he is complaining about colours in front of his eyes. I told her his first language wasn’t Welsh so some of the letters he might pronounce differently. I was half-convinced he was doing it in order to get glasses. She put some drops in his eyes, which confirmed what he was saying about his vision in one eye, apparently. I tried to get him to read his schoolbooks when we got in, and he made out he couldn’t see, which is very funny as he has managed to read them for the last two years.
Anyway it turns out he does need glasses, which I never expected: the optician says he needs them for reading and close-up work. She explained all this to me and I asked her to explain it to Elis. I don’t like it when people talk about your children as if they are not in the room, or couldn’t possibly understand, so she told him he had to wear glasses and I thought, God, he’s going to cry, because when I was in school it was a bit of a stigma to wear glasses and children were basically ridiculed – although not by me, of course, as I was perfect. She said to him, ‘Do you have any questions to ask me?’ He looked thoughtfully for all of twenty seconds, going, ‘Umm . . .’ and then he said, ‘Do you think I will need to wear them playing tag?’ She thought he could manage without them for tag. Then the man w
ho measured his eyes said, ‘Are you OK with wearing glasses?’ Elis said that he was and the man asked Elis to choose some frames so he went for a rather bright blue pair with Pepsi written on the side (Elton John eat your heart out, I thought). I tried to persuade him to have something a little more low-key, but he wanted the bright blue (blue for Bluebirds – aka Cardiff City) Pepsi ones as you would if you were seven and completely bombarded with Pepsi marketing.
So I agreed. After all, he has to wear them. We were in the car and I said, ‘You don’t mind wearing glasses, Elis, do you?’ and he said, in a very grown-up voice, ‘Why would I mind wearing glasses? At last, I can see.’ I felt a bit guilty for doubting his eye test. The glasses will be ready next week and I have warned Rhodri, on pain of death, that if he ever, ever mentions anything derogatory about Pepsi and commercialism and puts Elis off wearing glasses, he will have me to answer to.
March 22, Thursday
Oh, thank the Lord for the credit card. How would we function without it? Our whole economy is predicated on credit so I will NOT feel guilty about using it. I have done a major Argos shop for caravan essentials – mini-Hoover, microwave, smoke alarms, clothes airers, bedding, kettle, toaster, sandwich-maker, hairdryer – although Rhodri asked me why I needed one. I explained rather huffily that I would need one again one day. So, together with my IKEA purchases I have everything one could possibly need to equip one’s caravan. I don’t think I have left anything out. God knows, I’ve spent enough time making lists and doing price comparisons. I am getting slightly nervous as we only saw the caravan for about ten minutes and now I am thinking it is a bit tatty and wasn’t quite what I wanted. It’s madness, I’ve spent weeks finding the cheapest bedding and electrical items and only ten minutes buying the bloody caravan. Buying our house was even worse; we had only been in one room and I told Rhodri to put an offer on it. We did so on the strength of the garden; we hadn’t even been upstairs and the house needed so much work doing to it. I had said I would only move into a house where everything was done as Osh was only two weeks old and all I wanted to do was move my stuff in and decorate, but within less than ten minutes we’d made the biggest purchase of our lives on the strength of a lovely garden on a sunny day. It’s still a lovely garden on a sunny day. It’s perfect, and the house fits us. It’s true about getting a feeling about a place the minute you walk in. Let’s hope the same applies to caravans.
March 23, Friday
Rhodri is on a works night out tonight; Michael is leaving to go and do Songs of Praise, so instead of doing what I said to myself I would be doing, which is to sort my caravan stuff out and have an early night, I go to the shops to buy the children chips and myself a bottle of wine. I then have chips with them, put them to bed, open the wine and spend the night drinking most of it and ringing practically everyone I know on the planet, for a chat.
March 24, Saturday
‘Project vantastic’ has arrived and, like every other major event that happens in my life, I have a little bit of a hangover. Why I couldn’t wait until all this stuff was loaded, unloaded and in its place is beyond me, but here I am with two cars full of stuff to sort out and all I want is to go to sleep. Ate cheese on toast and a Big Mac and Coke, so felt a little bit better when I got there.
March 25, Sunday
The caravan is perfect! Yes, just like houses, my gut feeling is right; it is not in the least bit tatty, it is all lovely and squeaky clean and tidy and enormous with loads of space for everything. It took us most of the day to unpack all the stuff and find homes for it. Rhodri took the children to the park so Julia and I set to work on a few things, then Julia took Lloyd and Elis swimming while Rhodri, Osh and I unpacked more stuff; by the evening it was more or less done.
Julia, who is a caravan veteran, took Lloyd and Elis to the club in the evening and they did games and had a bit of a disco there so they were both very happy. Osh wouldn’t go to bed until about ten. I have to say though, I don’t think I have been so cold in a long time. Julia tells me in the morning that they always leave the heating on at night in their van.
The last time I was in a caravan it was Mediterranean weather so I was a little unprepared, trying to find the switch for the heating at two in the morning without waking three children up, so I put two jumpers on. Osh woke at 6.30, argh, think he must have been cold. I know I was bloody freezing so I got up with him and went into the living room and put the gas fire on. I wasn’t going to use the gas fire as I thought it was too dangerous around the children, but have had second thoughts now. I realise I will need it so will buy a guard for next time and be in heated luxury.
Elis went off to the little park by himself: it was a HUGE moment for me. I said to Rhodri, ‘I really want to give him some freedom and this is a good place to do it, plus I get a bit of head space, but while I am trying to savour the headspace I keep thinking about one hundred things that he might be doing or that might happen to him.’ Rhodri said, ‘That’s the dilemma of a modern parent’, as if he’d been reading some book or something.
So I secretly went to check on Elis a few times, then took Osh for a walk and I kept thinking every time we did something like go to the beach, We wouldn’t be doing this in Cardiff, or when I went for a long walk I was thinking to myself, I wouldn’t be going for a walk in Cardiff, as if Cardiff is the Bronx or something, but for two days I had been outside more with the children than I had been in months.
Elis has a bit of freedom and has already made a new best friend, Patrick. Osh ran around until he fell asleep and I even managed to read a paper and have a bit of ‘me’ time. It was a fantastically sunny weekend and Rhodri kept saying, ‘I can’t believe we’ve got this caravan,’ and I was glad because I think I bulldoze him into doing things, but this time we were both so happy with our lovely new caravan and all was right with the world.
March 26, Monday
Osh is at my feet while I write this. I was wondering why I have never written my diary with Osh around, and now I remember – it’s because he won’t let me. I said, ‘You are so cute,’ and he said, ‘No, I’m not, I’m Oshy.’
I have been a busy bee today. I am supposed to be revising for my Welsh exam but have yet to do a thing. Instead, I got the garden furniture out of the shed, sanded it down and painted it with teak oil, washed the patio and mowed the lawn. The garden looks lovely and the sun is shining and I’d rather be pulling out my own teeth with a pair of pliers than studying. I will do it tomorrow.
Rachel, the student who is following me, came to see me today for the last time while I had my radiotherapy session. She is revising for proper exams to be a doctor – not very easy. I could probably pass the Welsh exam that I am doing on very little work. She is going to be on the wards soon, diagnosing people’s illnesses. She is very young; even she thinks she is young to be doing this, but I have every faith in the medical profession after my recent encounters with it and I have every faith in her abilities.
She told me that in medical school, they say in the future that cancer will not be seen as a life-threatening disease, but a chronic disease because they would have mastered how to cure it, or at least keep it at bay. I found that quite reassuring because I hope that with all the advances in breast cancer treatment, there will be women whose lives will be saved and who, like me, can dare to think about a future after breast cancer, a future that is long and happy.
March 27, Tuesday
I went to the clinic today to see the same doctor I saw a few weeks ago, the one who freaked me out talking about secondary cancers. It is amazing what a few weeks and a bit of sunshine can do for you, because I felt completely different when I spoke to her. I was discussing the options of having my ovaries out and mentioned that someone said I could have genetic testing. She said she would not recommend me for genetic testing because there is nothing to suggest I have it with my history. We talked about my periods and ovaries, and she advised me not to have my ovaries out, but to take Tamoxifen and see what happens with regards to
the menopause. She said that Tamoxifen can stop my periods, as I am worried about those heavy periods I had while I was on chemo. I could not go out to work like that, so I would have had something done about them, but I guess I will wait and see what happens.
The most interesting thing she said was that Tamoxifen will not only stop oestrogen going to the site of my tumour, but it will also stop it going to any rogue cells that have left the tumour, and that could be in my body: it just stops them growing.
At this point I thought, Yes, thank you, I will have some of that. It sounds good to me. So next Thursday, the day after my radiotherapy, I start taking Tamoxifen. I asked her what happens now with regards to my treatment and she gave me a slip of paper to make an appointment in a year’s time.
As of next Wednesday, I am out of the system for a year, unless I get any problems, of course. I’m not sure what I expected – a leaving party with balloons – but I have been in the system for so long and it is so intensive that suddenly next Wednesday that’s it, no more appointments, no more treatments, just take my tablet every day for the next five years and go back once a year for a mammogram to make sure nothing sinister is lurking there. It seems strange, I’ve waited for this moment for so long and next Wednesday I will be cast adrift on my own in the world and I will have my life back again and I hadn’t really thought about it.
I went to see Rosie; my flushes and sweats have completely stopped and I am convinced it is the acupuncture, because as soon as I started having it again they stopped.
My Mummy Wears a Wig - Does Yours? A true and heart warming account of a journey through breast cancer Page 26
