The Lucky One

by Krystal Barter

  ‘It was a sign, Krystal!’ he said. ‘These coins were a sign that me and your mum were meant to be together. No cancer was going to separate us that day!’

  As he finished saying this he fished into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a scrap of tissue paper and inside were wrapped two $2 coins. He still had them! It was so uncharacteristic of Dad to be getting all voodoo on me over a couple of coins he found on the pavement, yet they clearly meant so much to him that I couldn’t help but share in his enthusiasm.

  Those coins have since become folklore within our family. They’re still wrapped in the same piece of tissue paper but they’re tucked away in Dad’s bedside drawer where they’re keeping Mum and Dad safely together forever. It may only be four bucks, but to us it’s worth two lives, still entwined, against all the odds.

  CHAPTER 11

  As for Chris and I, the day for entwining our lives (at least legally) soon arrived. Mum’s surgery was in November and our wedding was in early March and the time in between seemed to vanish. Chris still knew nothing about my secret plans to whitewash our wedding pink so Mum and I had our work cut out plotting and planning and making my rose-tinted dreams come true. Thankfully, following her surgery Mum’s health had improved rapidly, so she was able to throw herself back into her role of wedding planner extraordinaire with gusto. (The change in her—post-surgery—showed just how sick the endometriosis had been making her beforehand, although we hadn’t realised it at the time.)

  The big day finally arrived. On our wedding day, I carried a lace handkerchief that once belonged to my great-grandmother, Annie, as my ‘something old’. My ‘something new’ was my precious pink Mariana Hardwick dress (that fitted me perfectly, unlike the disastrous gold dress from my 21st birthday). Chris and I signed the wedding register with the same pen my parents used to sign their wedding certificate 25 years earlier as our ‘something borrowed’. And for ‘something blue’ I had a small blue bow woven through the (pink) garter I wore. But it was my ‘something old’ lace handkerchief from Granny Annie that meant the most. To me, it was more than just a token to satisfy some sweet old rhyme. By carrying this precious scrap of lace with me I felt like I was somehow honouring all the brave women who’d gone before me in our family and who’d fought so valiantly against our family’s curse. If the shadow of breast and ovarian cancer was going to hang over our wedding then I wanted it to be in a positive way for once, and this set the tone for so much of our wedding.

  During the service, for instance, our minister said a special prayer for all the women in our family who couldn’t be with us that day because of cancer. And our bonbonniere (handmade by Mum) consisted of gift boxes, wrapped in pink silk and vintage lace, which housed pink lollies and a National Breast Cancer Foundation ribbon signifying that a donation was made to the foundation on behalf of every guest. Then there was the fact that our reception was a sea of pale-pink perfection, with pink organza draped from floor to ceiling, pink David Austen roses adorning every table, rose petals and pink lollies scattered across every surface, a four-tiered pastel pink cake covered in frosted pink flowers as our centrepiece and all of this illuminated by hundreds of twinkling soft pink fairy lights. Plus, of course, I was a blushing bride in my pink satin wedding dress (which would later be sold to raise funds for KConFab, the Kathleen Cuningham Foundation Consortium for research into familial breast cancer). Our entire day was reflected through a prism of breast cancer pink and for once I couldn’t be happier. (By the way, Chris loved the fact our wedding was pink. It didn’t take him long to get over the initial shock of seeing me in a pink bridal gown—he knows to expect the unexpected with me. Plus, he’s a man who’s comfortably in touch with his feminine side, so an all-pink affair was no problem for him (in so far as it was me, and not him, who was dressed in head-to-toe pink!)

  As I walked down the aisle on Dad’s arm that day we were surrounded by all of our loving family and friends. My mum and my nan were standing proudly in the front pew, blubbing away. Riley, our beautiful son, was happily ensconced with his Matchbox cars at the feet of the bridal party having been carried down the aisle by my brother. And here, at the head of the aisle, was my gorgeous, calm, faithful Chris (albeit, looking a little surprised at seeing me in pink!). A million thoughts raced through my mind as I made my journey up the aisle: Who would have thought, sixteen weeks ago, that Mum would be here to see this today? And Nan! I can’t believe Nan is happy and healthy and standing here, too! Oh, I’m so thank ful for Riley, my little guardian angel. And, most of all, aren’t I lucky to have Chris to stand by me through it all?

  Mum, though, said she only had one thought in her head: Finally my letter can be tossed away! All Mum could think about was the letter she’d written to me—way back when she was first diagnosed with cancer, when I was only 14—begging me not to mourn her death on my wedding day. It seemed inconceivable to her back then that she would ever survive to see me walk down the aisle and now, even as I went sashaying past in a blur of smiling pink satin, Mum couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

  My standout memory of our wedding day, however, was Riley. As a part of our wedding service Mum had organised an opera singer to sing Ave Maria while we signed the registry. She had the most amazing voice and had stunned everyone in the church into silent awe from the moment she first opened her mouth. Everyone except Riley.

  During our wedding rehearsal, Riley had made me and Chris nervous by spending the entire evening running around the church shouting and demanding attention and banging the polished wooden pews with his metal toy cars. Oh well, we reasoned, he’s a two-year-old. Surely, our guests will understand that it’s hard for him to sit still for a full 40-minute church service …

  But on the day of our wedding, Riley was an absolute angel. He sat quietly at Chris’s feet and played happily with his Matchbox cars, completely oblivious to what was going on around him, until the moment the opera singer took to the pulpit. Suddenly, Riley came to life and for the whole time she sang Bach’s masterpiece, Riley was rapt. He sang along in a series of ‘ahhh’s’ and ‘laaaa’s’, his tiny voice well and truly drowned out by her powerful soprano, until she arrived at the last line and he continued on without her, performing a high-pitched solo for the enchanted congregation. As his last happy ‘laaaaaa’ echoed around the church, Chris and I grinned at each other proudly—having Riley share our wedding day with us was so very special. Little did we know, exactly nine months later to the day, we would be welcoming Riley’s younger brother into the family. I fell pregnant on my wedding night.

  My Great Nan, Annie (left) on her wedding day, with Great Great Grandma (middle).

  Mum and Dad on their wedding day in 1981, with Great Nan (right) in pink floral dress and gloves.

  Mum (aged 22), with me at 10 months.

  Me and Nanny Beryl – from my hairdressing days.

  A pink bridesmaid (1991) and believe-it-or-not I still have the dress!

  And a pink dinosaur ride too (aged 6). There is definitely a colour theme emerging.

  At home with mum and dad and my brother Andrew (2001).

  Dad and me (aged 16). Yep . . . I was a handful.

  I was only 19. And lucky to have friends like Bec (left) and Katy (right).

  And then there was Chris . . . the love of my life.

  21st birthday with family and friends at Oceanworld, me and Chris at the front—and that gold dress.

  Our engagement party, held 1½ months after finding out that I was pregnant.

  Asleep with Riley, just 6 weeks old.

  Me, Chris and Riley (3 weeks old).

  Me and my bridesmaids.

  After much searching, I found my perfect pink wedding dress.

  CHAPTER 12

  Jye Andrew was born 10 December 2007 in a flurry of panic and drama. He spent the first five days of his life in intensive care, among a mass of tubes and beeping machines, his tiny hands and feet a disturbing shade of blue due to fluid on his lungs that he’d swallowed duri
ng his birth. By some miracle he pulled through it unscathed and, after a further week spent in hospital, our blond-haired, blue-eyed boy was allowed to come home with us. But even before this—before his traumatic birth and before his time in intensive care—Jye’s ride had been a rough one.

  One day when I was less than six months pregnant with Jye, I was hanging the clothes on the line in the backyard when I began to bleed. Really bleed. I felt no warning and had no pain but suddenly my jeans were wet with blood. I was terrified. Convinced I was having a miscarriage, I raced inside and phoned Chris but there was no response as, by now, he was working as an electrician and had a job on in Wollongong that day and mobile reception there was patchy at best. Frantically, I tried Mum. Again, I got no response and the patch of blood on my jeans was growing by the minute. By the time I managed to reach Dad on the phone I was near-hysterical and my jeans were soaked.

  ‘Dad, Dad! I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding!’ was all I could manage.

  ‘I’m coming straight over,’ he said and he was there within minutes, striding down the front hallway, shouting: ‘Where are you? Where’s the cut? I’ve bought band-aids.’

  When Dad saw me standing in the middle of the lounge room that day, with Riley in my arms and a dark stain of blood between my legs, he froze. ‘Oh god. Get in the car,’ he instructed. ‘We’re going straight to the hospital.’

  By the time we reached Royal North Shore Hospital’s emergency department, the bleeding had blessedly stopped. On my arrival, doctors ran a number of tests but no one could determine where the bleeding was coming from, nor what was causing it. All they knew was that a miscarriage had been averted.

  ‘I’m afraid we don’t yet understand what just happened to you, Krystal,’ one doctor explained to me, ‘but I can tell you that there doesn’t appear to be any harm done to your baby. He looks just fine according to all our tests. Still, we’d like to keep you here for a few days to monitor you further and we’ll be checking your iron levels …’ He continued speaking but my mind was already elsewhere.

  My baby was fine! He was going to be okay! I leaned back into my pillow as relief overwhelmed me. My little baby was fine and our little family was safe. I felt like I’d just found out all over again that we were going to have a baby, my joy was that immense. We’re having a baby and our baby was fine!

  I grinned at Dad and at Riley, who was struggling in Dad’s arms, trying to escape down onto the hospital floor. Our little baby was fine!

  ‘You’ve got a tough one there, Krystal,’ Dad said after the doctor had left, indicating towards my stomach. ‘A real Barter-fighter.’

  I ran a fatigued hand over my rounded belly. ‘We sure do,’ I said and smiled. A Barter-fighter, a Codlin-warrior; and of course there was Chris’s strong genes, too. Our little boy was going to be okay, I thought.

  Moments later, after Dad had left to take Riley home for a sleep, a nurse appeared by my bedside armed with a clipboard and asking me to sign a declaration form. ‘What’s this?’ I asked warily. I was in no frame of mind to be making executive decisions just then.

  ‘It’s a consent form,’ she explained diligently. ‘Because you’re not yet 23 weeks pregnant, if you go into pre-term labour now, our doctors won’t attempt to revive your baby. I need you to sign here to say you understand this.’

  Pre-term—what? What do you mean you won’t revive my baby? What the hell was she on about? I began to panic. I thought the doctor just told me that my baby was fine!

  ‘But—my baby’s okay. The doctor told me he’s fine. Why would you need to revive him if he’s fine?’ I was confused and looked around for the doctor who’d just been in to see me. ‘Can you call the doctor back in here?’ I asked, my voice rising several octaves in distress. ‘He told me my baby’s fine. He told me!’

  ‘It’s alright,’ soothed the nurse. ‘This is just a standard permission form. I’m sure you won’t need it; I’m sure your baby will be fine.’ She proffered the clipboard for me to take.

  He’s already fine! I thought. I was getting agitated now. If you would just call the doctor back in here, he’ll tell you—my baby is fine!

  Eventually, the medical staff determined it was a mistake that I’d been asked to sign a non-revival consent form. For whatever reason, this paperwork was given to me when it shouldn’t have been. It was a simple mix-up. ‘So sorry, wrong bed!’ My baby was fine and there was no reason to think that he might need reviving; not now, not ever. The form was removed, as was, apparently, the nurse who gave it to me, because I didn’t see her again at any point during my time on the ward. The hospital was very apologetic and over the next four days, while I remained there on bed rest, the staff did everything they could to reassure me that Jye would be alright. But it was too late by then. Anxiety had set in.

  Anxiety that was made worse by the fact that the medical staff at the hospital still had no idea why I had bled in the first place. This terrified me. I was convinced I would start bleeding again without warning and this time I would miscarry. Or that Jye would be born with some terrible disability or illness. Or that something would happen to Mum or Nan or just about anybody I could think of that I cared about. Or that my own cancer scare was just around the corner and that I’d be giving birth one day and having my breasts removed the next. I was a walking doomsayer and there seemed to be nothing I could do to control it. My mind ran riot, conjuring up worst-case scenario after worst-case scenario, each more horrifying than the last and all of them frighteningly real in my head.

  I’d like to be able to tell you that things turned around after Jye was born that Christmas, but it wouldn’t be true. After it had been touch and go for our precious boy after his birth, and enduring those agonising few days when he was in intensive care, watching him struggle to breathe and being unable to reach out and hold him or even touch him through the plastic wall of the humidicrib, life seemed to get darker, not lighter. At a time when I had so much to be thankful for—an (eventually) healthy baby; a delightful toddler; an amazing new husband; my own health (at least for the time being)—I was struggling to haul myself up and out of bed each day.

  Rationally, sensibly, I knew there were many other people out there who were far worse off than I was and so I was doggedly determined not to curl up into a ball of ‘poor me’s’. Instead I lived at a manic pace, worrying, fretting and generally obsessing over everyday things. Which jumpsuit should I put Jye in today? Is this one warm enough? Too warm? Will he need a singlet underneath or might he get too hot? Oh god, what if he’s already overheated? What if he’s dehydrated? Should I wake him for a feed? I should wake him for a feed … On and on it went.

  Then, when I wasn’t busy agonising over my children’s wardrobe dilemmas, I invented a positive Gray’s Anatomy of ailments that struck me down at all hours of the day and night. Chris and I would be in the middle of watching some Hollywood blockbuster on the couch in the evening when I’d suddenly turn to him, stricken and clutching my chest. ‘Chris! Chris, take me to the hospital! I’m having a heart attack!’ And I honestly believed I was. Real and excruciating pain would crush my chest and I’d be gasping for air as my left arm began tingling and my jaw started to ache. Time and time again, Chris dutifully put down his popcorn and bundled me into the car and drove me to our local medical centre, where an angiogram would reveal no actual threat to my heart. Or an MRI would suggest there was nothing wrong with my spine. Or a CAT scan would show my brain wasn’t haemorrhaging.

  My mum always jokes that she’s a patchwork quilt—front and back—given she’s had 28 surgical procedures during her life, pulling her apart and stitching her back together again, patchwork square by patchwork square, until she only vaguely resembles her original form. (She keeps a list of her operations in her wallet because she’s given up trying to remember them all and there’s a special section on this list dedicated to what she affectionately calls her ‘disctomies’: her double mastectomy (removal of both breasts), hysterectomy (uterus), lumbar discecto
my (spinal disc) and oopherectomy (ovaries).)

  Now, though, I was doing my darndest to catch up with her. I inflicted any and every heinous disease I could think of (malaria, anyone?) onto my poor, confused body and then put it through the medical-test-wringer as doctors went about proving me wrong. It wasn’t as if I wanted to be sick; far from it. I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that I wasn’t. And so I lurched from medical crisis to medical crisis, dragging my poor husband with me, and consequently our first few years of marriage were far more dramatic than anything Chris and I might have been watching on the small screen.

  Funnily enough, it never occurred to me at the time that my hysterical fears about my health might have anything to do with being BRCA1 mutation positive. I mean, even a pop psychologist could have a pretty good stab at linking: a) my absolute conviction that I was dying of something, with b) the fact that my genes dictated I was at a high risk of developing breast and/or ovarian cancer. (Who knows, maybe my subconscious was just trying to help me out? Like: Hey, don’t you worry your pretty head about breast cancer. This stroke is going to kill you first …)

  It should have been a dead giveaway, though, that my panic attacks got infinitely worse every time I researched my BRCA1 mutation status. Whenever Dr Google and I had a little late night rendezvous looking into ‘genetic mutation’ or ‘breast cancer/statistics’ or, heaven forbid, ‘risk-reducing mastectomy/ images’, my anxiety and my nightmares and my phantom coronaries would go through the roof again. I can see now that my very real, very physical pain was a symptom of the total lack of control I felt over my health and my future.