7
FIGHTING BACK
September 2013
I talked to the dietitian at the clinic and she put me straight on a few things. Basically all my healthy cooking was doing me no good at all! My particular form of colon cancer cannot cope with too much strong raw food, such as the spinach juicing, or the lemons. Fruit can be also awkward because of pips in the system, and basically I must revert to bland – and heavier – foods such as white bread, pasta and dairy products. How bizarre is that? Also, I was told, because the chemo takes so much out of you, it is important to try and eat 3,000 calories a day to fight the side effects of the treatment – 3,000!
I consider myself to be a little bit of a piggy when it comes to food, and as someone who seems to be on a lifelong diet it had sometimes been a nightmare starving myself of all the things I love. And suddenly here I was being encouraged to eat full fat milk, cream and butter. Mind you, I have always maintained that dairy produce, as in animal fats, is so much better for you than anything processed. I wish there was more education on food and especially where it comes from, so young people get a balanced idea of a healthy lifestyle, and more emphasis on the importance of eating proper meals too rather than snacking and grazing all day on rubbish. If you eat properly at mealtimes and sit and digest your food correctly you won’t feel hungry. The whole sugar thing too is a minefield. When I was young cakes and sweets were a rare treat, not given endlessly as a way of shutting us up and keeping us quiet. We never had fizzy drinks in the house, it was water or nothing. I have always fed my children a balance of good and bad.
Anyway, I must stop digressing and get back to confessing to you that I am now, for the first time in my adult life, tucking into cream, bread and butter and all sorts of things I had previously tried to avoid. One of my happiest moments these days is to arrive at the bread counter in Waitrose at 8 a.m. and buy their fresh crusty loaf. I take it home and cut off two slices which I then spread with butter and top with honey. Accompanied by a cup of tea while reading a paper, and I have half an hour of sheer heaven. Of course even though my own dietary requirements have now changed to suit my own cancer, I remain an advocate of others staying healthy – not least in terms of finding the correct diet to stave off cancer in the first place. I think there is, of course, a great deal to be said for raw foods and less dairy. I would certainly say no to processed food, buy organic produce where possible and always source the provenance of your meat. I did hear an awful story recently from a guy who has been working with my husband on his current building development. He used to work in an abattoir, but in his last few years in that job he had been horrified at how many of the poor beasts that were slaughtered had tumours in their bodies; masses of them. Imagine if any of those rogue cells made it through to the meat we eat. Can they possibly weed out all the unfit carcasses or could some make it through into the food chain? At least if you eat meat from an animal that you know has been fed on grass that has not been sprayed rather than foodstuffs from their own kind, you are giving yourself a fair chance that you will be eating something that will do you good.
When I first discussed my cancer diet with another food fanatic who told me I must only eat raw food and never touch bread unless it was gluten free, I was almost in tears. Of all the things I had to put up with, the thought of life without toast and butter just about finished me off. Nowadays I practically live off toast. The other things I can eat are bananas and cereal with cold milk, topped with single cream and for supper, cauliflower cheese. Meat just tastes like cardboard, except I make a mean shepherd’s pie which goes down well. Linguini with pesto sauce and parmesan cheese is another favourite. I do miss salads, especially when the weather is good, but raw tomatoes don’t do me any favours and most vegetables irritate the bowel.
I had not been drinking alcohol very much but I checked again with the nurses. They are so lovely and I trust them with my life. ‘Well, Lynda, you can have a glass of wine or two but not a bottle!’ said Clare. Fair enough, but during August I did have several occasions when we had people come to visit and I probably overindulged. But, you know, I would suddenly catch myself thinking, why the hell don’t I eat what I enjoy? It is really not going to make any difference now and if ever there was a time for comfort eating it is now. However, my body immediately complained and I spend the next day in bed with cramps and sickness.
The one thing I have been enjoying is cooking for the boys and Michael. No matter how sick I feel, or sometimes I do not want to get up in the afternoon after a sleep, I make myself do it because I think these are the times you must not give in. Of course I rest if I have to, but giving myself goals and deadlines means that I can concentrate on them rather than on how I feel, and that way I don’t give those blooming tumours a look-in.
The chemo was really starting to kick in, and the side effects had upped their ante. The pins and needles were ongoing and very annoying, and bizarrely the bottom of my feet – especially my heels – really hurt when I tried to stand up after sitting for a while. For the first couple of minutes as I started to move I was like a woman of 110! I managed to disguise this when I went out by standing and holding on to the back of my seat and feeling my feet touch the floor slowly. I waited a couple of minutes and then I would be able to walk away from the table fairly normally.
I now had thrush to contend with and the mouthwash the clinic had given me for it had stained my teeth. As I couldn’t use whitening products anymore, I decided to put up with the thrush until I could find another way of dealing with it so that I could keep what white I had left on my teeth. The actress in me has remained vain enough to hold on to what I can!
My lovely friends and hairdressers, Tony and Andrea Schaverein, have continued to keep an eye on my hair. Not much Andrea can do with the colour now, but she gives it a glamorous boost with a kind of shampoo which stops the hair going that nicotine yellow colour in the sun. I didn’t realise that even natural white hair like mine will do this after too long in the sun. Tony trims what is there. I have not lost my hair as such, but I now realise how blessed I was with very thick hair before, which has become very soft and cotton wool-like. But again I am lucky to have another wonderful friend, and very talented film hairdresser, Carol Hemming, who does my hair for photoshoots and the like, and she has taught me how to make it look thicker with products, and a marvellous little bottle of white powder called Nanogen, which she assures me is used by all the best film stars. I would tell you who but my lips are sealed!
I am telling you all this because, even in the face of something as all-consuming as cancer, I think it is important to hang on to your sense of self, men and women. During these early days before things got really bad I realised I was starting to change quite a lot physically and not all of it was to do with having cancer but actually with ageing. I have always said I wanted to age gracefully without Botox, fillers or face lifts, but the reality is harsh. My skin was starting to wrinkle across my arms and we all have our particular least favourite bits, don’t you think? Well I had always hated the tops of my arms even when I was young but they were nothing now to the inside of my thighs! Lines on the skin pulling down the flesh. I would lie in the bath with my legs up, feet on the bottom of the bath and try and find a way to sit so that if and when we went on holiday I could get my legs out into the sunshine. I was beginning to hate this new old me!
If I had been feeling better in myself mentally I think it would have been easier, because I have always relied on humour and laughter rather than my looks to make me worth talking to. I have often said I would like to be the old bird in the corner telling amazing tales of life before an adoring audience of young men and women. But I was just feeling worn out and sick most of the time and that was not going to win me any listeners.
OK, I thought, more girding of the loins, Lynda, and let’s approach the problem from another angle. I would give myself some pampering and spend a little money on some interesting attire and get away from the colour black, which I a
lways go back to when I am feeling insecure. Because my hair colour had changed so enormously it meant I did need a few new colours to lift the tired skin. And would you believe it, along came a new and lovely friend to help me.
I live in a converted mental hospital (yes we have had all the jokes thank you, and yes, I am back where I belong!), and there is a spa in the basement of the gym here. Well I don’t do gyms, that’s for sure, but I do love a spa treatment and so now I popped along thinking it would be so great if this particular spa was good because it was on my doorstep, and lo and behold I discovered the most beautiful Brazilian woman called Christina. She is beautiful of soul as much as looks, I might say. She runs her spa with another lovely lady, also called Christina, which is a tad confusing but never mind. Well, between the two of them I am nearly a new woman. Still old, but thanks to them I will probably be the best-looking corpse in the cemetery. I feel a little guilty about spending the money but hey if it helps me through the day it has to be better than a bottle of vodka. The manicures and pedicures really help the pins and needles, and my fingers and toes look pretty even if they are giving me grief. Christina massages my legs and now I can actually sleep through the night, and the facials she gives me have made my skin tingle and bloom rather than sag and pull me down. I do so recommend a bit of pampering, and your body will tell you how far to go with it. It is the same with the diet. Listen to your body and it will tell you what it likes or dislikes.
My tiredness levels were rising which was a real pain because I was fighting to get my novel written on time. My indigestion had come back too and, added to a lot of dizziness and sickness, I was starting to feel as though I was losing the battle. I called into the clinic and found lovely nurse Ani Ransley. She told me not to panic and increased the dosage on my indigestion pills. She said that when I came in for my next chemo we would discuss it with Justin Stebbing. I promptly felt much better and went out and bought two pairs of boots for the winter. Think positive, Bellingham!
Soon after that, I went to visit my brother-in-law in Hastings where we walked up a really steep hill and I did it without wheezing or being out of breath, which made me feel good. I continued to eat more carbs as the dietitian had recommended and I have to say the cramps came less often. I was learning to cope with the side effects of my treatment. But the pins and needles continued to be really annoying and on one particular day I couldn’t hold my front door keys to get them in the lock which made me very frustrated. It served as a sign that I was ill, something I hated to be reminded of. If I was going to try and beat this, I couldn’t think like I was ill, and I tried desperately hard not to dwell on it.
I was going to visit Crewe one weekend and I had to cancel because I felt so shaky. I was very upset as I had been so looking forward to going back to where I virtually began my career after a stint at Frinton Summer Theatre, which was a weekly repertory theatre. I had been nine months at Crewe and I have used the theatre there as the backdrop for the novel.
The trouble is not so much that I cannot deal with all these distractions, but if I go out anywhere and meet the public, or even my own friends, I feel the pressure to be ‘up’. I don’t want people to see me struggling because then they feel sorry for me, and the mood becomes downbeat when I am trying my hardest to keep things bright. Keeping bright requires energy, and energy is good for fighting back against all the negativity that those nasty cancer cells are trying to create in our bodies. Energy tells them to bugger off! I also did not want to feel paranoid about what I looked like. So far I had not seen any trace of that look that comes into people’s eyes when they haven’t seen you for a while and they are shocked at your slow decline.
As long as I had my hair I felt normal. Actually that is a lie because sometimes I felt absolutely terrible and hated the haunted look in my eyes. The pink patch of skin at the back of the scalp looked like a rat’s arse. Tears would just spring up from nowhere and I would hate myself for giving in. These feelings came mostly at night, thank goodness, but I dreaded them descending upon me one day while out. I couldn’t bear trying to catch my breath with a gasp of sheer unhappiness or feeling that awful lump you get in your throat when you are holding back the tears.
But the facts that were about to emerge were far worse than anything I had imagined in the middle of the night.
On 25 September, the cramps I had been experiencing won me over. I was doing a Christmas photo shoot for Yours magazine – they are that far ahead with scheduling these journals! We had rigged up a Christmas tree in my front room and I was going to be wearing something lovely and sparkly. I was getting into the festive spirit albeit some three months early. However, from first thing in the morning I had the beginnings of the cramps. I duly took my Buscopan which usually did the trick, and anyway I reckoned Doctor Theatre would kick in and help me through the day – after all, an old pro never cancels a job unless she is dead. Well, by four o’clock that afternoon I began to think I was going to die!
Once the team had left I fell into bed and decided to take a slurp of oral morphine that the clinic had given me for emergencies. I think I slurped too much which was a lesson learned: always do as it says on the label. By three o’clock that morning I was being violently sick. Thank God I was due at the clinic at 8.30 for my chemo, so Michael strapped me into the car and off we went.
It was one of those awful journeys where I just held on by the skin of my teeth trying not to be sick. Every bump in the road was agony. I made it to the steps of the clinic and ran to the loo and threw up. Thank God Ani and Clare were on hand to hear my tale of woe. My blood pressure was too high for them to start my chemo so they called the doctor on duty who took me through the events of the last few days. I just wanted to know what this awful pain was all about. Was I causing it by eating the wrong foods, or was it the chemo, or the cancer itself?
At this point Justin appeared and took one look at me and cancelled my chemo and admitted me immediately to hospital. Within half an hour I was hooked up to a drip feeding me potassium and zinc, then antibiotics to ward off any infection, but nothing for my stomach cramps, which were horrendous. I realise now that a good deal of the time the staff are given a remit by the specialist, or whomever, and they stick to that, anything else is disregarded. The problem for the patient who is feeling so ill is that one just does not have the strength to fight these battles half the time – it was taking all I had to cope with the cramps that continued to plague me.
Well, by Sunday I was so miserable with the pain I could not eat anything. I kept asking the nurses to please give me some Buscopan for the cramps as I knew it would help. Finally, thank the Lord, a super male nurse called Michael, always a lucky name for me, listened to what I had to say and went and got me Buscopan, which he administered intravenously. Within fifteen minutes I had relief. I do believe I have a very high pain level but even so I could not believe that patients were expected to put up with very obvious agonising pain. I hated my hubbie seeing me like this because I knew that it would make him panic. I tried to be as cheerful as I could and get through Sunday night and eventually Monday dawned and I was released back to the LOC and my lovely girls were waiting for me to continue with my chemo. We had to wait for my blood pressure to go down again and I filled them in on my pain adventure.
The doctor on duty came to visit and between the three of them they explained that the pain was being caused by the cancer trying to fight back against the chemo, so the therapy must have been doing something right at that time. They reminded me that in fact, despite my pains, the cancer had been reduced and the tumour in the colon was shrinking. I went home to continue my self-taught regime of pain management with a real feeling that I would crack this.
8
HIGH DAYS AND HOLIDAYS
I was determined to crack this and not let it rule my life. If someone had told me a year ago that I would not work as an actress for a year I think I would have keeled over and fallen off the twig. But here I am not acting but still getting out
there and giving it some wellie. Over the years I have always tried to do as many different things as possible, be it for work or pleasure. Travelling has always been a favourite and I just wish I had done more of it. Obviously, my writing has saved my life and kept me positive. I have loved writing my second novel The Boy I Love which is due out in January 2015. I apologise for the plug but ignorance is not bliss, you need to know about my efforts! And I was delighted to be asked to do this book too which has seen me up at 5 a.m. in the morning tip tapping away.
At least I can say I am not working as an actress because I have been fighting off cancer, rather than having had to reach a point in my career where nobody wants me because of my age. Age is a problem. There are too many of us now who are reaching, or have reached, their golden sixties, and there are just not enough roles to go round. I used to think that if I could just keep going until I was in my sixties all the competition would have fallen by the wayside and it would just be me and Miss Marple. Looking back over this year I have been able to distance myself from that old world and managed, I hope, to get a less impassioned view of my world.
It has always been complicated in that in the old days the theatre was regarded as so much more important than TV or films, and there is a residue of that attitude, I think. When I did the Oxo commercials in the eighties and nineties there were several directors and casting directors who would never even bother to see me because I was regarded as a TV personality. Well, how that has all changed in the last ten years. There is hardly anything on television that does not feature a ‘personality’ or the new buzz word ‘celebrity’, how I hate it. It is an insult to all the hardworking actors out there who used to be the mainstay of television. It is all about the face of the moment, even if it only lasts five minutes. When I watch Alibi or Gold there are so many wonderful actors to watch, and not just as the star of a show. The supporting roles were always filled with wonderful characters we all knew and trusted too.
There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You Page 7
