Give It Some Welly

I’ve been very quiet of late. I’ve either been fastened to my desk in a writing/ editing/ teaching frenzy or struck down by a parade of menieres attacks which stop me so firmly in my tracks, I’m left having to unstick my feet, heave myself back into my chair and type like a second world war typing school graduate (I’m reading the fabulous,  Dear Mrs Bird, at the moment, which is where that image came from) to try to crawl back to where I’d been before the debilitating vertigo struck. Before I’d been practically carried out of the café at Waitrose by the person with whom I’d been having the meeting before it struck, that is, with the help of three members of staff, as well as the store manager and health and safety officer greeting me at the exit because these things have to be documented. Still, the bijoux crew of touchingly compassionate helpers waved me off me with a rather beautiful and very expensive bouquet of flowers which went a long way to erasing the humiliation of a shop full of customers thinking I’d had ten-too-many by 3pm. I’m afraid this has been the general picture of my life since the beginning of the year and my blog and social media have taken a hit.

However, I had the most perfect of motivating, energising blogging tonics last week when I was asked if I’d attend the Yorkshire Cancer Research’s Give It Some Welly event in Leeds town centre. This was to mark the 10-day countdown to Yorkshire Day on 1 August, a highly appropriate occasion to launch Give It Some Welly, Yorkshire Cancer Research’s (YCR) first ever region wide fundraising campaign.

I was more than happy to help in my small way, and very excited to throw miniature wellies at a target with Adil Rashid, the Yorkshire and England World Cup cricketing hero because yes, it’s not widely known, but I am a massive cricket fan. Of course I am. My Dad used to take me to Trent Bridge in the Derek Randall days when he would come out early on to the pitch and show off his fielding brilliance and his equally legendary sense of humour. What’s not to love!

I also got to meet another legend from my childhood: Harry Gration, a thoroughly down to earth, non-super-starry superstar who was as excited as I was to meet Adil Rashid and as interested as I was in Yorkshire Cancer Research’s campaign.

But then it got a bit more serious. I was shocked, really shocked to hear that Yorkshire has one of the highest incidence and mortality rates in the country. It slapped me around the face a bit, I’ll be honest. It made me even more grateful to be one of the lucky ones who survived an, ‘it’s very fast growing’ cancer. It was the type of breast cancer that had it been thirty years ago, I’d have been relying far too heavily on a welly-load of luck to have survived. Pre the wonder drug of Herceptin (Trastuzumab) which has been available on the NHS only since 2006, all the cards would have been in cancer’s hands.

Herceptin and the myriad of new drugs and pioneering treatments which have raised the odds of cancer survival significantly over the past few decades, are the result of research. Without research, they wouldn’t exist. And without funding, there is no research. If we want survival rates to keep on improving, research will need funding. And that is one of the aims of the Give It Some Welly campaign.

Awareness of the importance of taking up screening opportunities is another tool in the armoury to bring down cancer deaths. Take-up is disappointingly low in many parts of the region and yet it could alert us to a cancer forming way before a lump might have forced us to the doctor’s. Whilst early detection won’t stop us getting cancer, it might stop us dying from it. Generally, the earlier cancer is caught, the higher the chance of survival. As somebody who’s gone through cancer treatment and the mental turmoil of dicing with death, trust me, if I receive a letter to attend or make an appointment for screening, it’s done before it’s even made it to my to-do list.

This isn’t a competition, but the thing is, if higher survival rates are achievable elsewhere in the country, then of course they’re achievable here. YCR needs to raise 10 million pounds every year for the next ten to reach its £100 million target. Fundraising starts on Thursday 1 August and Yorkshire peeps, it needs us!

The wonderful thing about this campaign is that it’s so easy and cheap, if not, free, to take part. Anything goes, however loosely themed around a welly you want to make your fundraising event: decorate your wellies, arrange flowers in them, wear them to work or don’t wear them to work (if you’re a farmer) wang them, convert them, build a tower out of them, it really doesn’t matter.

I have to say, my heart is in wanging them but I think I’m going to struggle to sort my wellies out before 1 August. However, if you see me and hopefully a small but perfectly formed crowd in a field in our North Yorkshire village some time in August, hopelessly (in my case – discus and shot never were my forte) tossing wellies in a vague direction and cheering and laughing hysterically, it might just be part of the campaign. Come and join us! And/or why not set up your own fundraiser?? You can find all the information you need, here. 

Happy welly wanging!

And don’t forget, please donate when you can, and attend those screening appointments. You know it makes sense 😊

Dealing with Pain

Back in those terrifyingly warm days in February, I asked for your advice regarding pain remedies and what you found to work in your own pain management.

I was cheating preparing for a talk on pain management from the ‘customer’ angle and suspected that there was a lot I didn’t know. The talk was to take place in March as part of the 2019 Yorkshire Cancer Research conference: Let’s Talk About Cancer.

I say, ‘was’. Alas, due – thankfully – to nothing to do with cancer, but the return of Ménières disease which I thought I’d booted into touch in those heady days of my thirties, I had to cancel my talk. The disease isn’t very pleasant but isn’t life threatening and I find the unpredictably of the attacks of vertigo and sickness it brings, as painful as the attacks themselves because I am forced to become unreliable. I can’t commit to public events knowing that I might be crawling along the floor, or sitting bolt upright staring at the wall with a bowl under my chin, when an audience is waiting for me to speak - or worse, as I'm speaking. Can you imagine!

The good news is that the very lovely, understanding people at Yorkshire Cancer Research (YCR) quickly managed to fill my slot and I have heard from many sources that the conference was a massive success.

Meanwhile, I thought the least I could do would be to cobble together the responses you kind people had bothered to send via the blog, FaceBook and Twitter and post them here. Some I’d forgotten about, and others were new to me, so I hope that this might serve as useful resource if you sadly find yourself in need of something bigger and more enduring than a paracetamol – not that I’m dissing the lonely paracetamol, you understand, paracetamol has saved the day for me on many occasions. I have to say this because I have this slightly disturbing imagination which throws my mind headlong into the family medical box and sees a box of paracetamol sombre, rejected and wondering why on earth it bothers.

I know, it’s a worry.

Before we really start, I’d like to add a note of positivity for anybody with the misfortune to have been recently diagnosed with Menieres disease. It isn’t curable (although does tend to peter out, hopefully never to return) but is often treatable. I am now on a fairly innocuous medication that hasn’t stopped the attacks but has made them much less severe and less frequent. I’m hoping that with continued tweaking I will have enough control over the disease going forward to return to normal life including full attendance at public and social gatherings 😊

And this means that I secretly hope that I will manage to attend the next YCR conference and be able to babble on about pain management without incident, not least because I’d already prepared the talk before I’d cancelled – typical!

Obviously the below isn’t an exhaustive list (and please do let me know your additions) but it is the word - summarised or as a direct quote - from the ground, from the coal face, of making pain slightly easier to bear. Even though there is a bias towards cancer in the responses, much will be relevant whatever the cause of discomfort.

Acupuncture: for mental well-being, aches and pains and hot sweats, and other complementary and alternative therapies.

Distractions: anything with friends and family; colouring, crafting, reading and writing (for mild pain – I knew it was bad when I couldn’t blot out the pain well enough to read or write) and oh, so many other hobbies.

Endorphins: warm, soapy baths (lots of people mentioned hot baths!); Epsom salt baths (with the added bonus of nice, soft skin afterwards) singing and playing instruments; walking, running, swimming and other (gentle) exercising; just being outside - preferably in the sun; dancing on the spot to alleviate restless legs (but it also made me laugh); being active.

Heat pads and hot compresses to soothe sore and tired limbs and muscles, can also help with restless legs.

Infrared sauna: ‘it’s like a sauna that you sit in, but there is no heat. You are baked in infrared light. It heats the blood rather than the skin and improves circulation.'

Mindfulness, meditation and other cognitive therapies.

Reflexology: for general aches and pains and mental well-being.

Reiki: ‘as a Reiki therapist, I’ve helped treat many people undergoing cancer treatments. On a superficial level, it helps to calm their minds from what is such an emotional part of their lives, but does also provide (on many occasions) pain relief as well.’

Soft Toothbrush (!): this had to go in as my pitifully sore mouth is a strong memory of my chemo days. For the ulcers there are stronger topical medicines available on prescription so do visit your doctor, and if the idea of navigating the sores as you clean your teeth is terrifying, try a really soft toothbrush soaked first in hot water. 

Stretching: particularly after Aqua Fit, a hot bath and general exercise.

Steroid cream: for pain in the veins. Also, please note: ‘…I went back to good old fashioned nature - pure aromatherapy lavender oil and hot compresses- working a treat- I'd say take the drugs for sure but don't forget about the healing powers of nature and a good old fashioned positive mental attitude.’

One last thought on pain management.

As a daughter of a nurse, I knew that I’d have to collapse in a heap on the floor and be unable to answer what day of the week it was before I’d be granted a day off school sick. I think this is why I spent my early adulthood with the box of paracetamol – there I go again – being out of date before I opened it, and drinking my body weight in water before I’d even approach the medical box.

But since cancer and a few operations over the years, I've had to retrain my psyche on this. I've had it explained that pain stresses the body with the result that it doesn't function and thus recover as quickly as it might if it were in less pain. I’ve decided that alongside natural boosts of our endorphins, medicines can be our friend and some of the medications to combat the side effects of cancer treatments can be the best buddy ever. Whatever your strategy: medicine, holistic, alternative or a combination, be kind to yourself and use it! Life is too short to stoically suffer in silence...

I wish you a happy and pain-free or pain-eased week 😙

Ah, that's better!

Or it will be, if you help me J

So, I am honoured to have been asked to speak at the Let's Talk About Cancer conference, taking place on 14^th March at the Magna Centre in Rotherham. My 15 minute slot is about coping with pain, the patient's perspective.

Now, whilst I know that bowlfuls of sweet white sauce and dancing on the spot worked wonderfully for me when my mouth was full of ulcers and my limbs felt like I'd been picked up and deposited in Luther, where the baddies didn't believe me and used their special vice-like contraption to squeeze and squeeze until I admitted defeat, I realise that my experience may be different from others. I also recognise that we all have our own ways of dealing with these things and that there are probably hundreds of different methods out there for getting through the bad days of cancer pain and the side effects of treatment.

I'd therefore like to ask if you would tell me about them. And I will steal them and pass them off as my own during my talk. Seriously now, dealing with pain is a big deal and in my fifteen minutes, I'd like to mention as many ways and means of dealing with it as possible. Here's hoping this will be useful to at least some of the audience.

If you, or someone you know, found anything from a medication to a holistic treatment or simply a regime that worked as effective pain relief for you, please would you let me know so I can add it to the list? I promise I will credit my blog readers on the day!

Meanwhile if you, or anyone you know, have been touched by cancer and happen to live in the Yorkshire region, places are still available at the Let's Talk About Cancer event. Tickets are free but limited so you will need to register. For more information and to secure your place, click here.

  

And if you do attend, please come and say hello! Most of the day I'll be in the exhibition area with a pile of books, otherwise you'll find me facilitating a group session, or fretting about my imminent arrival on stage…  

Tour de Friends!

Deeply embedded in the world of Cancerville can be a whole heap of beautiful experiences, sprinkled with oodles of silver linings and unexpected relationships. Surprising, I know. But maybe that is good to know if you, or a loved one, have recently been diagnosed with what is also a horrible, spiteful, nasty little b**ger.

Why so? You may ask. What can possibly be good about having your mortality thrust so very cruelly and dramatically in front of your eyes? Love, that's what. I hear time and time again of people who've navigated the thorny path with the love of those close to them and have met great friends through the shared experience of having cancer, or caring for someone who has cancer. And I am a firm believer that positive relationships and our health are the only two things we really need in life to be happy. Yes, we need money as well to survive, but survival is a slightly different thing to what I'm talking about today, so please forgive me for parking that one just for now.

...with apologies to Steve, I'm not great at selfies

Louise Brownley is one of those people I never would have met if it wasn't for our cancer diagnosis. I am so sad to say that she has recently discovered she has secondary cancer and, well, it's not easy. Not that it's stopped Louise in her tracks, you understand, despite struggling with new treatments and the constant barrage of hospital appointments, not to mention holding down her full-time job, she is throwing herself into an enormous fundraising campaign. She, her equally adorable hubbie, and their team of firefighters and police officers will be cycling the 146 mile, rather hilly coast to coast from Whitehaven to Sunderland next year and they'd like to raise £5000 for Cancer Research.

You can read more about the Tour de Friends, their training and their trials and tribulations, here.

I have a post on the site too, with some questions I've never been asked before on everything from defining moments, to trainers and kettles (and a grass ring) to my new strategy of 'denial'.

I have only previously asked for sponsorship once via a blog post: Put on the Spot. It was fantastically successful and I was enormously grateful for, and touched by, all the donations. That said, I recognise there are so many demands on our funds and it's not fair to be constantly asking for people's support. But I hope you'll forgive me for asking you this time, and on behalf of this very special lady, whether you could spare a few pennies here.  

If you do feel able to sponsor Louise and the Tour de Friends riders, please let me know in the comments (or privately here if you prefer) I'll put your name in the hat and one winner will receive a signed copy of their choice of Tea & Chemo or Glass Houses. And if you're sick to death of those, I'll give you a big hug instead😉

The Day Job

I haven’t written about cancer for a while. There are many reasons for this, none more so than the fact that I don’t have a lot to say, because I am *Stable Mable. I am a, ‘Strange Phenomenon’. I am an ‘Unusual Body,’ which, in this instance, is a good thing. I am, in short, insanely lucky.

And yet no one needs me to tell them that cancer is a heinous, unpredictable disease and there are many people who aren’t so lucky. Never have I been more acutely aware of this than this week, with the news that Radio Five Live journalist, Rachael Bland, has died of her cancer. Co-creator of the chart topping, hilarious, thoughtful, poignant, fantastically direct and gutsy podcast, You, Me and the Big C, Rachael, and her equally fabulous colleagues, Lauren Mahon and Deborah James, encouraged everybody to be upbeat and positive about her death.

But although I recognise that she has left behind the most powerful of legacies, I admit, the news has rocked me.

It's a reminder that we are so fallible, that cancer, in fact many diseases, are random and indiscriminate and that a treatment that's worked for one person, can be totally ineffectual for another. Cancer is not a 'battle' that can be won simply if we have the right ammunition. However, I do believe that there is nothing wrong with keeping that ammunition in a clean and nurtured environment, shined and polished so that if cancer comes calling or a rogue cell gets cocky, it's ready for it, ready to give its best shot at kicking it into touch.

We might miss, but I'd like to feel we tried. The ammunition I am most likely to pack in a corner, not pay it its due attention, is my immune system. Or rather, I'm forever tempted to deprive my immune system of sleep.

I’d been beavering away, life returning so very definitely back to a cracking paced normality after the knee buckling curve ball of April 2017, which I wrote about here. 

So cracking has been the pace that I admit to having taken my eye off the sleep monitor just a little.

Don’t misunderstand me, I am still a whole stratosphere away from my pre-December 2013 delinquency. Back then I prided myself - oh yes - on my ability to stay awake when all around were slumbering. It meant I could crack on in my study: just me the pc screen and a flood of ticks on the to-do list.  I’d finish with an indulgent hour of writing stories, followed by a languorous soak in the bath and the current book in favour, before dragging myself into a fulfilled and light-headed, 3am bedtime.

I felt lucky then, as well. My life was the next best thing to having magical 27 hour days and it meant I could have a lot of every bit of what I fancied because I had that extra tail end of the day that was denied to so many.

Post my primary cancer diagnosis on that fateful day at the end of 2013, my 27 hours had been concertinaed back into 24 and the extra hours of inertia the body's essential rehabilitation, came at a price.

I struggle to fit my own writing around the little cracks of time in the day that are left. Indeed, I struggle to fit the day job (oh, the irony)  into the cracks, and I do wonder if the added stress of never quite managing to achieve as much as I need to do to keep on top of everything, negates the benefit of the extra sleep.

Ridiculous, scoffs the hubbie. But he is a lark, a well-meaning, nothing is more important than keeping me alive, lark. Of course he doesn’t understand. Physically, he couldn’t do it. He is genetically programmed to stop work at 8pm at the latest and to fall into a deep and impenetrable sleep not long afterwards. To-do list or otherwise, larks sleep at night. That’s just how it is. If you want the lark in your family to catch a wild boar, you'll have to ask them to do it in the morning.

Ridiculous of course, but it’s not that easy is it? And it really isn't easy if you know you physically could stay up and answer the emails glowering from the inbox. None of us operate in a vacuum. One man’s, Sod It I’m Tired I’m Going To Bed, is someone else drumming their fingers, waiting for their reply, cursing the lack of response whilst muttering, 'Did they get it?' and 'Don’t they care?'. Or at least, that’s what I suppose.  

But Rachael Bland has given me a wake-up call, a kick up the bum, a reminder of my resolve. And so I have vowed that I will cover my ears and ignore the chimes to 'catch up'. I will shake away the image of steam puffing from people's ears as they spit and curse at my lack of response, and I will switch off, snuggle up, and get my sleep. After all, I owe it to those who aren't so lucky, to at least try my best.

Rest in peace, Rachael Bland, another brilliant person taken too soon.

*I stole that term from another fabulous Rachel, Rachel Ferry, currently NED, and she won't mind me saying, against all odds. 

Great Coffee, A Few Tears...

Thanks so much to everybody who came to Stray's book shop and fantabulous  - it truly is - café in Newark last Saturday. It was magical to see old friends, parents of friends who couldn’t make it, two of my former teachers, new readers and of course, my mum, my brilliant pseudo-agent for The Midlands :) 

Big thanks to Stu, for his photography and event management (i.e. the pub, ahem, the pubs, afterwards). Great night! We sold lots of copies of both Glass Houses and Tea & Chemo and I'm ever grateful to everyone who takes time out of their busy Saturdays to ensure us poor little writers aren't sitting alone with a pile of books as high as my To Be Read pile and a bowl of chocolates we're trying not to eat.

Thanks also to 'Louise's hubbie' who reduced everybody within earshot to tears when we heard that he had, unbeknownst to Louise, come in to buy her a signed copy of Tea & Chemo. Recently diagnosed with cancer, Louise and I have become Twitter buddies and she had wanted to come in herself. Unfortunately, her plans were thwarted by a complication following her mastectomy operation.

Louise thought hubbie was just in Newark to buy Ibuprofen but no, he procured said signed copy, earned himself humongous caring husband points from the doting crowd and probably reduced Louise to tears when he got home, too. I'd like to wish Louise and her husband, and everyone in the same loathsome boat, all the very best as they continue their journey of beating cancer to a pulp. I am with you in spirit, willing you to that finish post.

I hate cancer. I hate that it still exists but, for the moment, it does. So please, check yourselves. It won't stop you getting cancer, but early diagnosis might save your life.

Meanwhile, the lovely Katherine of Bibliomaniac has been busy again and this time she's talking about Tea & Chemo over on her blog. Katherine is masterful at thinking up original questions so I've had fun conjuring up my responses to things I haven't been asked before. You can read the post here.

Two Years Hence

It slipped itself in between Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, waved, smiled, winked and left. I gave a nod of appreciation, lifted an imaginary glass of champagne (imaginary because you know The Body That Got Cancer likes to keep a firm eye on its units and the bubbles had been flowing since Christmas Eve) and took just a moment, a quiet moment - I'm still not ready to dance on the tables - to say thank you.

With the 27^th December came my second Cancerversary. I'm superstitious. I know enough to know that we can never dismiss the potential for secondaries or, indeed, that any of us can be complacent about the potential for a primary cancer to form, but I'm grateful for the relative peace and calm that my Two Year Cancerversary brings.

Last year I wrote about my first Cancerversary here. It was a cautious celebration in a sort of raw, new girl at school kind of way: knowing it should be fun but not quite ready to let down all my defences. This year I feel more settled in, comfortable, that I understand the post cancer diagnosis and treatment world into which I was plunged and most days I can cope with it quite effortlessly, thank you.

The Fear which I wrote about here, does still haunt me from time to time. I've had a few scares, just admirable vigilance on behalf of the medical profession, and although my style is to busy myself so that I have no room left to fret, the fear does nonetheless manage to settle itself in over the top of my brain sometimes and leak into my thoughts. It's not an undue pressure, nothing like the early days of The Wait and The Not Knowing, nothing like the fear of recurrence when chemo finished and for a few months after, but it's 'just there', in an annoying little tic kind of way.

So, from the position of being two years post cancer diagnosis, I would like to say to anybody who is further back on this rocky road than I am, it does get better and it gets a whole lot easier.

So much had happened since my first anniversary a year ago. Last 27^th December, I hadn't even heard of the pioneering publishers, Urbane Publications, let alone submitted to them and here I am with Tea And Chemo published and Glass Houses on its way out of the door next June.

Most of my work was on hold during my year of treatments so I only really started back to teaching and editing at the beginning of 2015 and you know, I'd really missed the buzz of writers excited about their stories. My return to work this year has been a baptism of fire with the writing and promotion of Tea And Chemo to throw into the mix, plus the small matter of my final edits on Glass Houses, which we'll gloss over because I'm a little behind on those. But it's been wonderful to be back to full busy-ness again. Although sometimes I curse the stairs up to my office after dinner or at the weekend, cancer taught me, if I didn't already know, that sitting still doesn't really work for me.

This year other people I know have been diagnosed with cancer, some very young people in my online group have developed secondaries. Some have died from them. My heart breaks a little every time. Not for me, so far I continue to be one of the lucky ones, but because cancer is still such an enormous thorn in the side of human health. Great strides have been made in all areas of cancer diagnoses, cure and care but until we can take a pill to rid ourselves of cancer before it even suggests any danger, until we have 100% accurate diagnostic tests to take action before it dares to become a possibility, we must keep fundraising, caring and raising awareness.

This Cancerversary, in addition to the wonders of the medical profession that blasted the cancer cells and my family and friends who kept me sane and continue to do so, I'd also like to thank Matthew Smith, owner of Urbane Publications. Right from the start, when Tea And Chemo was a collection of blog posts and an idea, Matthew determined that Urbane Publications would also give every penny of profit to the three charities I was keen to support:The Haven in Leeds, The Sir Robert Ogden Macmillan Centre in Harrogate and the national charity, Breast Cancer Now.

If you are interested in buying a copy of Tea And Chemo, your purchase will help the three charities. If you are not interested in buying a copy of Tea And Chemo, that's ok, I need never know… but you could still give your pennies to one of these three charities and then you wouldn't feel half as bad :)

Meanwhile, I'm off to celebrate because it's New Year's Eve and the new year coming, the adventures we don't yet know, now that's something I really love to celebrate. Have a wonderful new year lovely readers, may 2016 be filled with life-affirming moments.

Did You Watch It?

I’ve just watched The C Word, the dramatisation of Lisa Lynch’s blog, Alrighttit  and subsequent book which she wrote about her fight with cancer. Sheridan Smith expertly and touchingly plays the recently married magazine editor who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the desperately young age of 28 and died of its secondary disease five years later. For two years following her original treatment Lisa hoped she was clear of cancer and her life was well and truly back on track.

Then came the line, ‘And then the music stopped,’ which has stayed with me all week.

Did you watch it?

I was glad I was sitting in the garden, huddled around the fire pit, when it was first aired as I hadn’t decided if I should watch it. I wasn’t sure how much the drama could teach me about the experience of breast cancer but knew its potential for sending me into a big dark hole. I’m very protective about what I watch and read. You may know of my aversion to stats, particularly any that touch on that P word: prognosis. It’s a word I’ve come to hate, tend to leave it out in sentences and pull a face in its place. Fear of stumbling across a rogue stat is a great incentive to keep me away from Planet Google Cancer and when I’m sent links on breakthroughs and innovative therapies, appreciated as they are, I insist my husband trawls through them for danger zones before I read.

Remember Brookside, TFI Friday, Arctic Role, those frozen mousses in plastic pots, (one of) The Eclipse(s), Millennium Eve, Wham! Blind Date, When Harry Met Sally, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (who is EXACTLY the same age as me, even down to the ¾), Bridget Jones Diary and Le Tour coming to Harrogate? There are certain things in our life time which we just have to see, feel, watch or listen to if we want to be fully paid up persons to our generation.

I wondered if The C Word should be added to this list.

I’ll share a secret with you. I was curious that nobody had asked me if I’d watched it. It made me suspicious. I wondered if people thought that perhaps I shouldn’t. Or perhaps I might have watched it and been so traumatised that it shouldn’t be discussed lest I be propelled down into that dark hole I mentioned. Or perhaps they’d been traumatised themselves. Alas, I am not the only one whose life has been touched by cancer. Whatever the reason, the radio silence was quite a pull towards Catch Up TV.

My husband is away and I knew he wouldn’t choose to watch it. In real life he is calm. He isn’t, ‘can be calm,’ or, ‘is quite calm,’ he just IS calm, from his toe nails to the hair on his head. When it comes to TV, he is a wimp. Holby City? Too much blood. Call The Midwife? Why would you want to watch someone scream? The C Word? Why would you want to make yourself cry?

It was Saturday night and the eldest child was doing eleventh hour replacement final pieces for her GCSE Art practical after her original sculpture had snapped only days before its deadline. While I let out a gasp which rocked the house opposite on sight of the photos of the sculpture in too many pieces to count, said daughter, who is her father just a foot smaller and less hairy, simply shrugged and asked how fast we could get hold of a hardboard mask as she’d had an idea. The other daughter was applying false tan and distracting her GCSE taking sister into making Dubsmash clips. Do you know about Dubsmash? It’s an App. No App – ever – will make me laugh more than seeing my children performing Dubsmash videos. If you’ve watched a programme which has sent you down a dark hole, I promise you Dubsmash is your best chance of clambering back out.  

So, the family absent from the living room, I thought I could sneak a peek without anyone else needing to know.

The problem is that I can’t work the television. I never need to switch it on, you see. Like wine and chocolate, TV is a social thing for me, not something I ever do on my own.  So I had to ask the Dubsmasher to load The C Word for me. And thus my cover was rather unglamorously blown but she wrinkled her nose when she saw the title and slunk back to the Dubsmashing and  false tanning on the bath room floor, which fortuitously for her requirements (and my carpet), is one of the few places in our house where you can snatch a whiff of Wi-Fi.

Now I was committed.

The C Word didn’t have the effect I thought it would. Yes I cried, only perhaps for 90% of it, though, and they weren’t particularly tears for me. The operations and treatments were all too familiar, as were the feelings and reactions so frankly and eloquently portrayed, but I wouldn’t say that The C Word brought them all back because they’re all still very front of mind. This isn’t in a wholly negative way, but in a, phew - that was the year that was and hey, this life without treatments lark is much more fun - kind of way. Although I would admit that the trials of the side effects of Tamoxifen also contrive to keep the experience fairly current.

But I did weep for Lisa when she lost her hair. I had forgotten the raw emotion of seeing your identity flushed down the toilet. I’m sure it seems a strange thing to be upset about. Surely it’s the least of your worries, right? Wrong! I have a theory. The implications for you and your loved ones of a cancer diagnosis are too big to taste whole so you have to tackle that enormous universe of uncertainty one atom at a time. Yet your hair is part of a world you do know and understand and however much you try to be grown up about it, it’s way too big a part of your pre-cancer life for you to lose without a great aching lament. It’s a deeply sub-conscious thing but I felt that I couldn’t let my self cry about cancer itself. I rarely have which is quite staggering as I’m a bit of a cry baby really. But I feared taking the crust away from the cancer universe might mean I couldn’t fit it back on again. Unleash the lava from a volcano and it may never stop flowing. Underneath the despair at holding my hair loose in my hands, I think I knew that my grief for my hair would eventually stop. I think Lisa’s writing about this - candid and brutal but also wickedly funny - and Sheridan’s portrayal of her vulnerability during this and other stages of treatment captured this brilliantly.

The rest of the tears were for the touching moments with family and friends and in particular, with Pete, Lisa’s husband. His caring manner and gentle air reminded me of my husband. Yes, I had cancer and yes, I had to undergo more than my fair share of operations and treatments but I was being looked after and showered with cards and gifts and love and help. My husband, like all those closest to someone with a serious illness or disability, was having to look after me, our children, hold down his job and keep his own sanity, as well as handle his own emotions, pretty much single handed. My husband, together with my family and friends, are the principal reason why I managed to keep smiling through cancer. People say you are ‘strong’ and ‘brave’ but if you’re lucky, it’s the people around you who really give you strength and courage. And that is what made me cry the most when watching the drama.

The dark hole? I thought The C Word might unsettle me for a few hours and then I’d get back on with living. But actually, it had the opposite effect. I found it empowering. The similarities between my and Lisa’s lives weren’t lost on me: young (-ish in my case), the writing, the blog, the book, even the dressing smart for chemo – chemo power dressing I used to call it. She was even a Virgo! (That one’s for my Mum).

Much as I ache for Lisa and her family, I’d like the similarities to stop there.

There was nothing Lisa could do when secondaries were silently forming. There’s nothing I could do either but I can give it my best shot to prevent cancer in the ‘other one’ or indeed, any other cancer forming. The C Word was a reminder of my resolve to follow a lifestyle which does its absolute best to repel any further invasion of cancer. As Lisa says, we can’t control it, but I can do my best to make my body a fortress of steel against it.

Yes, I sleep much more than I used to but it’s easy to let it slide. I mustn’t.

My work/ life balance slips into the red zone frequently. I have to address this.

I’m very conscious of how much I drink but I’m aware that summer’s coming and I can’t pretend that the image of prosecco corks popping in the dusk of a balmy British summer’s evening, a little more often than my seven units a week maximum would allow, isn’t appealing. But it isn’t worth it to me. I’d love scientists to decide that alcohol would have no ill effect on my health but they won’t so I need to get over myself.

And then there’s the phone. It’s a stress. And I’d been switching it off at 9pm. Recently, it has crept back into my evenings. I’ve resolved to turn it off again.

And it was a reminder to be bold, proud and alive! Last week I went to the hairdresser and allowed myself to be talked out of having my short hair bleached blonde because it would be too high maintenance. My hairdresser is right of course. But I’d resolved to be bold while my hair grew back into a style which was ‘more me’ and so tomorrow I’m going back to the hairdresser’s.  Hang the cost, forget the time and most of all, sod the commitment. Life, as they say, is too short.

Lisa’s story is tragic. People dying of cancer is tragic. People dying before their parents is particularly tragic. But the sad truth is that sometimes illness will win. In the meantime, we should live our lives positively, pack them with experiences we’d choose while we can, seize the bright side rather than wallowing in regrets and treat our body with respect so that we give ourselves the best chance of longevity and quality of life. You know, I’ve always striven to do this and can’t really attribute it to Lisa’s story. But The C Word was a timely top-up reminder.

RIP Lisa Lynch and all those who have died too young.

Tea and Chemo

I have no problem with the concept of ‘luck’ but I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with the word. I feel a little squeamish when people say that someone is ‘so lucky’. It smacks a little of their fortune coming through ill-gotten means, chance perhaps, cutting corners, cheating, even.

There are people in my life who really do seem to have more than their ‘fair share’ of bad luck. They’re the ones we all know, where you raise your eyes to god, the powers-that-be, fate or whatever holds the reins in your life, to just ‘give these people a break’. And difficult times do seem to have a habit of clumping together. But here’s the thing, the people who I consider to ‘deserve a break’, don’t seem to be the ones to describe themselves as unlucky. And vice versa.

And so I wonder if luck is all a matter of perception. I think that happiness lies in rejoicing when the toast falls the right side up rather than lamenting for too long when it falls sticky side down.

Granted, it’s annoying when you have to stop your day to mop up the gooeyness. And that pales into insignificance when compared to dropping a full bottle of milk onto quarry tiles in the kitchen and watching it seep faster than you can mop underneath the fridge, cooker, freezer... You’re not meant to cry over spilt milk, but when I think about it, I’ve come close.

I am always dropping milk bottles and they’re always full and they always smash. But then, I’m also always taking chunks out of plates with a slightly too speedy approach to stacking, bashing my hip on the side of the unit as I rush past the large piece of furniture which has been in the same position in our kitchen for the entire eleven years we’ve occupied the house, and have scars on my forearms to boast my devotion, if a little unfocused, to domesticity. If the toast falls sticky side down in my house, it’s probably more down to the inhabitation of fairies in my brain, and the law of averages, than luck.

When it comes to good luck in my life, I’ve had great deluges of it, for which I almost have to catch my breath. My daughter’s amazing recovery from a stroke could have been very different. I could have lost my arm in that spin drier instead of emerging with a scar and a story to bore my grandchildren and a great many others along the way. And I consider myself incredibly fortunate to be currently free of cancer. I am one of the lucky ones and very mindful of that. Even though the side effects of the drugs can contrive to make you forget it, it’s toast sticky side down to lament for too long.

And then there are the moments of fortune on a smaller scale which are nonetheless as sweet.

Such as when I saw That Tweet.

Call it luck, chance, providence, fate or fortune, I thank my lucky stars I happened to be on Twitter that day, when I happened upon a tweet from an author praising the brilliance and general loveliness of their publisher, Urbane Publications. How happy am I that I was playing around on Twitter when I should have been ironing; that I ever signed up to Twitter in the first place?

For whatever reason, I did notice the tweet, it did pique my interest and it did propel me to the Urbane Publications website. Once there, I started reading about collaboration and team working and proper editing and then I was hooked. A quick look at its list of authors and pending publications and a glance at page 17 of Google to check this too-good-to-be-true, small but perfectly formed and, in my humble opinion, going places press was kosher, and I’d dropped everything to draft my submission letter.

Roll forward a couple of months and the cover for my book is being finalised. I’m beavering away on the content for my copy deadline at the end of June ready for Urbane Publications to publish ‘Tea and Chemo’ in November.

When I was diagnosed with cancer I was swamped with factual information about the little blighter as well as the reasons for the treatments I was to have, together with their side effects. It was illuminating and helped me feel more secure. However there’s a difference between knowing what’s going to happen and knowing how it’s going to feel.

As well as the facts, I wanted an honest account of the experience of cancer. What does it mean to lose your hair? I mean, really mean, emotionally? I wanted to hear it from someone who’d been there, done that and got the hat and wig and scarf to show for it. I wanted a book which would educate me in a softly, softly way. I wanted the author to be an ordinary person who was still enjoying life, who’d got through to the other side, and, crucially, done it without any Super Powers.

My aim is for Tea and Chemo to be that book. With my blog posts as a framework and many more anecdotes added, I hope that it will inform cancer sufferers and their loved ones whilst also making readers smile. It’s useful information served with an empathetic hug, the story around the camp fire or a cup of tea with friends on a lazy afternoon.

Since taking my first steps into the cavernous universe of cancer, I have learnt a little in my non-scientific, better-if-you-give-me-an-analogy kind of way about hormones (your body doesn’t take kindly to you changing their levels), medicine induced water retention (who’d have thought to get rid of water retention, or ‘Herceptin Bum’, you should drink err, water?), Vitamin D, Parabens, free make-up, eyebrow tattoos, Prosecco over white wine, Chemo Brain (it’s for real and it sucks but it gets better), chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormone therapy, tea therapy (ok, I made that one up) and time (that one’s for real because time really does help you get used to anything – and then you can deal with it).

Tea and Chemo is about sharing what I’ve learnt. It’s an outstretched hand if chemo gives you a mouth full of ulcers, your bones feel like they’ve been squeezed in a vice and you just want to go to bed and wake up when the whole darned cancer thing has been sorted.  I hope it will give you a hug when all your food tastes as though it’s been sprinkled with bicarbonate of soda and stirred with mud. And I hope it will help your loved ones, too.

And I know some chemo secrets. I know that white sauce (sweet, not savoury) and Rich Tea biscuits are the only things which taste as they should in the first two weeks after a dose of chemo, and quite frankly, this is a time in your life when you can eat five bowl-fulls on the trot (I did) and even mash a packet of biscuits guilt-free into the bowl. You see, treatment has its perks.

So, was I lucky to have found Urbane Publications? You bet I was. My experience so far is everything that Urbane Publications promises. I’m working as part of a team with people who know what they’re doing, and who are just as excited as I am about Tea and Chemo’s publication.

Regarding my good fortune in reading That Tweet, I am not allowed to complain about sticky toast on the floor, or even a crate of smashed milk bottles, for a good few years to come.

The Fear

Ouch.

I am not immune to The Fear, unfortunately. I had hoped I might be. Forget piano certificates, gymnastics badges and swimming awards - actually, scrap the swimming awards, I failed the level below my Bronze Survival and had to do the launch of shame from the pool after only the first discipline. I should add that I had told my teacher I couldn’t tread water but she hadn't believed me - never do I feel more proud than when hospital staff praise my apparent bravery, my 'high pain threshold'.

Ouch.

I like to test it from time to time – with the odd break of a foot or a knee or the smashing of too many bones in my forearm and wrist to count or a chance burst artery following a fairly routine operation. How's the pain? the nurse asked, as the blood spewed so fast into my chest cavity that, mercifully, the vessels carrying blood from the miscreant area couldn't cope and thus blocked, saving my life (thank you blood vessels) but oh, at a painful price.

OUCH!

Out of how many? I asked, or rather, wheezed. 10, she said. It's 10, I answered. It couldn't have got any worse than it was and I had to wait three desperately long hours until I could have any form of pain relief. The 'ten' conversation was useful however, as it meant that as the big hand struck 7.05am, the nurse was there, at my side, pouring in the first dose of morphine which she'd set up a few minutes before.

Is this a good point to mention my love for nurses everywhere?

So, with this so-called high pain threshold I'd hoped I'd have Nerves Of Steel and The Fear wouldn't consume me.

And it doesn't consume me. But it does visit often.

Provided The Fear proves unfounded, the further away from initial cancer diagnosis you can step, the more it retreats, I'm told. But for the moment, The Fear of recurrence of cancer is loud; concert pitch on occasion. And although I stuff my fists into my ears, shake my head to disperse the debilitating thoughts, fill my life with family, friends, chocolate and busyness, The Fear is sometimes just too powerful.

My hearing has always been my bug bear. I wear hearing aids. They are wonderful. My tiny friends discretely do their job and I can go about my daily life barely affected, save for the odd mishear, just to keep my interlocutors amused. My hearing is going through a bad phase. I'm constantly reaching for the remote control to turn up the volume of my aids only to realise it's already on maximum. BC – before cancer – I'd have said that my ears must be blocked (I have tiny ear canals, they're easily blocked). BC, my hearing would have sorted itself. Post cancer, when I can't hear well, I fear I have a brain tumour. The most likely cause is actually a side effect of Tamoxifen, the hateful drug we truly love because it may be keeping us alive.

Last week I felt sick and wondered if the cancer had gone to my stomach. In reality, it was simply that-type-of-cold. I could go on.

It's The Fear of those evil little cancer cells dodging the medication, laughing in the face of the operations and lodging themselves into a new area of the body, one not being routinely checked. We tell ourselves that the medication is advanced, clever and designed exactly to deal with the evil little blighters but The Fear reminds us that they are clever, too.

It can be paralysing when The Fear muscles its way into our lives, lodging itself into our psyche and, as we try to ignore it, tell it to be quiet, to leave us alone, on the battle axe goes, beating us pitilessly with its rolling pin.

But I will not be beaten.

I will not let The Fear win. I ring my doctor. I apologise for my post cancer paranoid hypochondria and she understands. They all understand. That's the lovely truth of the Cancer World. They expect it. They expect those of us who are lucky enough to have survived and feel guilty that we let The Fear strike when we should be shouting hallelujah for our fortune, to be sitting in their surgeries. And they don't mind; they really don't mind and that does make us feel better.

And each time The Fear comes knocking and the door is answered with a reassurance that all is well, each time that The Fear proves unfounded, then another chip is shaved from the lump lodged in my consciousness, another stone ricochets off the side of Goliath's head, The Fear gets pushed a little closer to the back of my mind and normality is dragged a little closer to the front.

I do not feel the same as I did BC. I do feel a little on my own fighting what sometimes feels like inevitable recurrence now that the heavies of operations, chemo and radiotherapy have done their bit and the only remaining super power, Herceptin, is drawing to a close. I have two more due before I finish my year of three weekly dosages. I shan't miss the time out of my Tuesday or the water retention (otherwise known in my house as Herceptin Bum) and general grogginess which follows for a few days, but I shall miss the reassurance and friendliness of the nurses and the partial piece of mind this powerful drug gives, when it's just me and Tamoxifen fighting the good fight.

The Fear will keep attacking me but I will win eventually because I will not let it affect my here and now. It's madness, isn't it, to waste the glorious present worrying about the unknown future.

Madness, yes, human, also, but helpful, no.