Eating the Underworld

by Doris Brett

  And I begin to realise that regardless of how much I have changed, it is still easier for me to give than to ask; that in fact I have been giving myself away like water. To some good people, to be sure—my family, my true friends—but also to people who have been too needy or too self-centred to enter into a truly reciprocal relationship. I have been giving myself without discrimination, and somewhere inside me, there is still the shy young girl who is too frightened to ask.

  I have to think about this. About what I am doing. About where generosity becomes neurosis. About what one is denying when one is too ‘trusting’. I have to recognise the shadow-side of ‘niceness’. The excessive need to be ‘obliging’, ‘responsible’, ‘reasonable’. The avoidance of realities, both in the world and in oneself. And the cost one can be forced to pay.

  Where did I learn to shrink from asking of others? Where did I learn to put so little value on myself that the words ‘Temerity!’ ‘Imposition!’ jump up like jailors at the thought? I was brought up in a family where children were pampered, spoiled. Surely I should have felt entitled in the outside world? Surely I should have learned to ask for things?

  And then I remember my mother, who never put herself first. She too felt ‘disentitled’ when it came to our needs versus hers. I think of my father as a boy, giving lollies to his schoolmates to ensure their friendship. My relationship with my sister. And I see where I have come from. But I also see that where I am is now. This is my responsibility. My work that needs to be attended to. My shadow demanding to be claimed.

  And I think about how hard it is to really claim our shadows; how much easier to avoid, deny or blame. I remember the moment in Peter Pan that always made me gasp. It wasn’t the ticking crocodile or Captain Hook. It was the moment when, having lost his shadow, Peter comes back to the Darling household to reclaim it.

  He has retrieved his shadow from the drawer in which it was stowed and is trying to stick it back on. At first Peter thinks that when he and his shadow are simply brought close to each other again they will join, like drops of water. But that doesn’t happen. Next he tries to glue his shadow to him with wet soap. But that fails too. Distraught, Peter sits crying on the floor. His shadow won’t stick and even Peter knows that he needs his shadow to be complete.

  Peter’s crying wakes up Wendy. And practical Wendy knows just what to do. There is only one way to make sure it stays on. ‘It must be sewn on,’ she says. And this is where I shudder. Because unlike Peter, Wendy and I know that sewing will hurt.

  It’s a fantasy of many of us that one day it won’t hurt. It won’t hurt because after years of life, learning, therapy, love, wisdom (tick the favoured box), we will be complete, whole, perfect. There will be no more sewing to do.

  And I am taken back suddenly to an occasion more than twenty years ago. I am overseas at a conference; the first international conference I have attended by myself. I was expecting it to be a smallish conference. Instead, as I enter the foyer and convention rooms, I realise that instead of a few hundred people, there are a few thousand people. And they all seem to know one another.

  I wander around the rooms looking in vain for a familiar face. Everyone else is busy greeting friends and colleagues; at ease, relaxed, confident. The workshop I have chosen begins. I am seated in a room of six hundred strangers. And suddenly all I can think about is that I’ll have to sit by myself at lunch-time. I am twenty-nine—self-assured and successful—and I can feel myself shrinking at the rate of knots. All the way back down to that shy teenager who would rather not have lunch than face the cafeteria all by herself.

  I am horrified. I thought I was over all this. Haven’t felt like this for over a decade. But ‘horrified’ doesn’t make it go away. It’s ridiculous, I tell myself. Telling myself makes no difference either. All the old feelings, the old words are starting to swallow me up—ugly, useless, clumsy … I know they will engulf me if I let them. ‘I’m twenty-nine,’ I tell myself. ‘I can do something different.’ But most of me doesn’t believe it.

  So I make a pact with myself. A challenge. If I succeed in it, I’ll win. I can be twenty-nine again. If I don’t … Well, I’ll think about that later.

  The challenge is the most difficult one I can think of. I am to look around that room of six hundred strangers, pick out the best-looking man, and get him to invite me to have lunch with him.

  The challenge appals me. I could never do that. At least let me pick a nerdy-looking guy, one who might welcome an extra lunch companion. But no, I am resolute. A challenge has to be tough or it isn’t a challenge. I have to earn being twenty-nine.

  I look around the room carefully. I am going to be scrupulously honest about this. The best-looking man in the room is a clear stand-out, sitting several rows ahead of me. He is, of course, surrounded by several exceptionally beautiful women. They lean over regularly to whisper in his ear.

  Because he is sitting in the section ahead of me, I can’t even make eye contact during the two hours of workshop. All I will have is a thirty-second window of opportunity as he passes me in the aisle on the way out to lunch. It’s all going to depend on that. Impossible. For me, at any rate.

  How I succeeded in that, I still don’t know. I’ve never done anything like it before or since. He, I and the glamorous women companions all went out and had lunch together. And then nothing bothered me again throughout the whole conference. I was invincible. Occasionally I would notice the good-looking man, at a seminar or other conference event. He would always run up to talk to me, looking faintly puzzled. He asked me to lunch on several other occasions. I politely refused. All I had needed was the one.

  Why did I do that? It wasn’t about needing a man or being a flirt. It was essentially about making a choice; about regressing or finding my own power. It wasn’t the only challenge I could have picked, but it was the one that felt most frightening. It was the one about inviting myself into the limelight: ‘Notice me. I’m worth noticing.’

  We all meet our frailties, our fears, the deepest, most detested aspects of ourselves over and over again. We think we have them licked. They sneak up from the sidelines. And always, of course, they do it when we are at our weakest, our most vulnerable, our most desperate. Will we never be rid of them, we think? Surely we’ve ditched them by now? But the answer comes: no, we haven’t. Because they are part of us, as much a part of ourselves as the aspects we admire. They are our shadow and like Peter Pan, we need them in order to be whole. What we can hope for, perhaps, is that we get a little better at sewing.

  The tiredness continues. As does the string of roadblocks, debacles and mishaps. One of my friends, as I woefully recite the string of things that have gone wrong lately, says to me, ‘Well, at least you’ve got your health.’ I snap back, ‘You’ve got your health. I don’t know what I’ve got.’

  It is just beginning to dawn on me what I have actually been wrestling with these past few months. While I’ve been focused on getting through the treatment, there hasn’t been the room to let myself think about the ‘what ifs’. What if the treatment fails? What if my tumour recurred because it’s unusually persistent and it’s not going to take this lying down? What if my recurrence-which-wasn’t-supposed-to-happen means that I am indeed in that group of women who will die from ovarian cancer? The questions flood me and I have no answers. No-one has the answers.

  I get up this morning and realise that I’m beginning to feel better. I’m starting to move out of that awful trough of despair. I’m still very weak energy-wise and still emotionally drained, but I’m beginning to recover particles of my former spirit.

  I am reading a piece about the side-effects of some medication. ‘Can lead to bloating,’ it says. In my chemo-brained state, I misread it as ‘floating’. My imagination goes into overdrive. I immediately see battalions of bald women gently ballooning into the sky.

  Another day, and I’m definitely feeling better. Looking back, it seems as if I was in another universe over those last few days of depression; l
ike walking along and suddenly stepping into a puddle that turns out to be head-high.

  I wrote a poem today, plus half of another one. They just came out. And they’re good. It’s such a strange and lovely feeling; like reclaiming myself. In the last weeks of chemo, I wasn’t even able to read poetry; I didn’t have the concentration to do it justice and I didn’t want to read poetry when I couldn’t ‘hear’ it properly.

  I went for a walk on the beach today with Eve. It was luxurious, like coming back to the world again. Although, after half an hour’s walking, the soles of my feet felt as if I were walking on coals—the neuropathy kicking in. All the thrills of a fire-walk, without the danger.

  I have my CT scan and chest x-ray today. I turn up at the hospital and am offered the first of the four revolting cups of aniseed-disguised-with-orange-cordial-flavoured liquid that I have to imbibe. I’m then led to a cubicle to engage in the entertaining sport of attempting to tie up the hundred ribbons of my hospital gown (points lost for not matching each ribbon with its opposite partner) with my hands behind my back. Somewhere I imagine there is an audience of giant squids, laughing uproariously at videos of squirming hospital patients, and congratulating their director on his success at infiltrating this hilarious design into human hospitals around the world.

  The CT scan itself is a fairly innocuous experience. You lie on a narrow couch and are slowly rolled through an archway containing the scanning machinery. Lights flash and revolve around the archway in what could be quite attractive patterns if you weren’t so uncomfortable from having to hold your arms stiffly above your head. Rather disconcertingly, the walls speak to you—the technicians having scarpered to safety once the scan starts rolling. The walls have extremely well-modulated voices and tell you to do things like breathe, hold your breath, breathe, hold your breath. Their imagination is clearly limited. At a party, they would be the bore in the corner, inspiring more and more florid techniques of avoidance.

  Today, I ring up Jim’s office to find out the results of the scan. I’m fully expecting the receptionist to say cheerfully, ‘Yes, it’s fine.’ Instead, she says it’s too complex to understand and I’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning when Jim’s in and can ring me. This immediately sets off alarm bells.

  In Greg’s office, when my blood tests are normal, the receptionist happily tells me so. In the last year, I’ve discovered that when they’re not normal, she’ll say, ‘Doctor hasn’t seen them yet, so you’ll have to wait till he’s looked at them.’ This is code for ‘Something is wrong and I’m not allowed to tell you what.’ It leaves you hanging in suspense for however many hours it takes the doctor to get back to you, all the while not knowing what is wrong and suspecting the worst. Does this same spy-talk apply to Jim’s practice?

  I’m immediately catapulted back into the country of Waiting for Bad News. I’ve forgotten how ghastly it feels. I rent three videos to distract myself and resort to a sleeping tablet to get to sleep.

  I wake this morning with fear pulling at my stomach, as if there are strings in there and someone’s pulled too tight. There’s only an hour or two to wait until I can talk to Jim. It’s like all the waiting I did in the lead-up to the recurrence.

  The phone rings. It’s Jim’s secretary. Jim has looked at the report and pronounced it okay. I feel weak with relief. Quite literally. My bones and muscles take on the consistency of jellyfish. An hour later, I still feel as if I’ve run a twenty-mile marathon.

  I look in the mirror today, and to my amazed delight I can see tiny hairs beginning to sprout on my scalp, like the first buds of spring. It’s coming back! My hair is really coming back! I want to hug those tiny sprouts. I want to throw them a party and feed them chocolate cake and champagne. I want to hang banners all around the house. I’m going to be normal again!

  I see Greg today for the first time since he operated on me for the recurrence. It’s a formal marking of my graduation from being a chemotherapy patient. It will be strange to be back there on the old examination couch; as if I have stepped out of time and come back again.

  Greg tells me that from now on, he and Jim will alternately take my three-monthly check-up sessions. If the tumour returns, Greg says, then unless I am very lucky, surgery wouldn’t be appropriate and I’d need more chemotherapy with Jim. He pauses. Then adds, but I might be lucky and have it come back in a form amenable to surgery. Another pause. And then he says, or maybe I might be really lucky and not have it come back at all.

  ‘That’s the plan,’ I say.

  I see Jim today, also as part of my ‘graduation’ ceremony. I’m more nervous than I anticipated as I flip through magazines in his pale, streamlined waiting room. He smiles broadly when he sees me. My counts are all back to normal. I’m surprised at how strong the wave of relief is, like realising you’ve been holding your breath only when you release it.

  With some cancers, after five years of remission, you can say you are cured. Ovarian cancer is not like that. It can come back after six years, ten years, sixteen … Jim is optimistic today. He’s really pleased with my progress through chemotherapy. ‘You’re in remission,’ he says, ‘and with luck, there’s a good chance that you’ll stay that way.’ My heart feels like a balloon that has been let off its anchor.

  I look up just at that instant, to see a brightly coloured parrot perched on a branch directly outside the window. As I watch, it spreads its wings, like an upside-down rainbow, and flies high into the sky

  The Examination Couch

  This too is a gift of the body,

  to lie still, believing in orchards,

  in the fineness of hands,

  in the delicacy of china,

  to see the words on the skin,

  the song spoken by muscle,

  to lie without taking

  anything upon us,

  not the surgeon’s smile,

  not the white hospital lights,

  to lie like the assumption of grace,

  the ultimate sacrifice,

  the evening blessing.

  MY HAIR IS MAKING VISIBLE PROGRESS. There are also tiny sprouts of hair on my eyebrows and eyelashes. Only a few days ago, I had to squint closely to see them and still wasn’t sure whether I was imagining things. Now they’re clearly here. The first I knew about my returning eyebrows was when I spent ten minutes trying to wipe a black speck off my skin. It took that long to work out that it was actually a returning hair. It’s incredibly exciting.

  A couple of weeks later and my eyebrows are now visible as a definite, fine line of tiny hairs. The same for my eyelashes. Each morning, I get a thrill out of looking at them and seeing their progress. It’s moving to see the extraordinary regeneration, the optimism of the body. It’s like the new green growth in the blackened aftermath of a bushfire.

  I think I am only now digesting the experience of the last few months. It’s like being at the theatre. While the show’s on, you’re fully absorbed in it. It’s only after it’s over and you’re walking home that you have the space to analyse and understand it.

  When I had my initial diagnosis, I felt sure I was cured. I didn’t doubt that I’d be around years from now. This time, certainty isn’t so easy. Right now I feel a genuine ‘I don’t know’ about that. Maybe I will be around, maybe I won’t. It’s not something I brood on or am preoccupied by, but it’s there in a very real way.

  I was trying to talk about this feeling, and how strange it is, to a friend. She came out with the old chestnut of, ‘But no-one knows whether they’re going to be alive in two years’ time. Any of us could get run over by a bus tomorrow.’ That line irritates the hell out of me. Of course it’s true, but it’s also meaningless. For people who haven’t faced death, this theorising is just an abstraction. It doesn’t touch them in any real way. Sure, at an intellectual level, they can recognise that it’s possible that they could get hit by a bus tomorrow, but it doesn’t have any emotional reality for them. Whereas, for those of us who have actually come face to face with death
, the uncertainty is far from abstract. We feel it at a gut level—a profoundly shattering knowledge that we must find a way to live with or move through. It is only when you live with this uncertainty that you realise how automatically the other crowd, to whom you belonged less than a year ago, takes life for granted as they effortlessly make plans for next year, next anniversary, next holidays, next whatever.

  It’s a while since I’ve written in my journal. The deluge of problems continues. I seem to have spent my time trouble-shooting. Every time I think the sun has finally made it out, another downpour arrives. I feel distraught at times. This is not how I imagined it would be.

  Today Amantha comes into the house looking worried. She’s just returned from a routine visit to her doctor, to check up on a few minor symptoms. The doctor has suggested an ultrasound.

  ‘Do they hurt?’ Amantha asks me.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘They’re painless.’

  I look at the ultrasound request. My heart contracts. It’s a request for an ultrasound of the ovaries.

  ‘What does your doctor want this for?’ I ask.

  Amantha shrugs. ‘She thinks I might have cysts.’

  I make myself relax again. Ovarian cysts are common and usually harmless. Nothing to worry about, I tell myself.

  A week goes by. Amantha is feeling slightly nervous about the ultrasound. I come with her to keep her company. I am sitting in the waiting room when Amantha comes out, looking even more worried.

  The ultrasound has shown up a cyst. She has to go back to her doctor to find out more.

  ‘What does it mean?’ Amantha asks me.

  I reassure her; tell her that everyone has cysts at one time or another. They’re usually pretty harmless. Most women don’t know they have them. They come and they go without causing problems.

  It’s a week or two till Amantha gets an appointment with her doctor. I go with her this time.