The C-Word (24 page)

That said, it’s a tricky balance to negotiate. I don’t want to be defined by having had breast cancer, but at the same time it
is
a pretty fucking big deal, so I
do
want people to know that I got through it. And while we’re at it, I’d like a reward for getting through it, too. When people climb Everest or sprint quickly or
jump
high or give a brilliant movie performance, they get something in return. Well, this is my Everest, dammit, and if I have to make my own medal from tin foil and leftover Christmas ribbon, so be it. I just can’t get my head around the fact that you can go through all of this and be expected to carry on again as normal, with nothing to show for your experience. (And yes, that
was
a Louboutins hint.)

*

GIVEN THAT THIS
was the first Christmas since Grandad died, the celebrations were always going to be somewhat muted, and so I guess if ever there was a festive period to waste on cancer, this was it. Charged with the responsibility of doing Christmas dinner for the first time in our lives, P and I entered into the spirit by flapping like pre-slaughter turkeys and buying more trimmings than it was possible to squeeze into our flat – because, of course, no Christmas would be complete without plum-pudding mini muffins, cinnamon-scented candles and three types of cranberry sauce.

Though Christmas day itself proved a quiet feast for four (P, me, Mum and Dad), I did manage to squeeze in a couple of parties over the season. With work dos and late-night pub visits out of the question thanks to my increasing tiredness, I was forced into more home-based shindigs (i.e., the ones where I’d have a sofa or bed to collapse onto when necessary). So it was lucky, then, that Tills and Si agreed to host one of their legendary house parties with the help of my legendary (if I do say so myself) party playlist. And, wow. What a release. Wearing heels for the first time in too long and with no radiotherapy appointment the following day, I danced as long as I was able, to a soundtrack I’d
purposely
amended to allow myself a breather between each of my favourite, must-dance-to tracks.

While throwing some shapes with my mate (and Everybody’s Favourite Dance Partner) Martin to ‘Common People’, I looked across to the sofa to find P grinning up at me with what my family now refer to as ‘those eyes’: the same gaze they witnessed as we exchanged vows at our wedding. I shuffled over in his direction, giving him a curious ‘what are you thinking?’ look. ‘Later,’ he mouthed, shaking his head and gesturing for me to head back to the routine I shared with Martin.

‘What was that all about?’ I asked P on the way home.

‘That was brilliant,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘Brilliant. You were dancing around like a lunatic.’

‘Ha, cheers!’ I laughed.

‘I don’t mean it like
that
, nobhead,’ P continued. ‘It was brilliant because I just felt total joy when I looked at you.’

‘Oh, babe,’ I said, linking my arm with his. ‘That’s lovely. Me too.’

‘It’s just so long since I’ve seen that,’ he said, misty eyed. ‘It was like looking at a glimpse of the past that was taken away from us.’

I nodded.

‘But most importantly,’ he continued, rather profoundly, ‘I was getting a first glimpse of our wonderful future, too.’

P was right. With the new year came a glimmer of hope that 2009 couldn’t possibly be as much of a git as its predecessor and, as I’d said on my blog, I was determined for the next few months to be about getting
over
cancer – not scrapping my way through it. But with every new year comes a hangover, and mine wasn’t just the treatment I was yet to have, but also coming to terms with what had happened. Getting over cancer wasn’t something I was
going
to be able to do on my own – just as the cancerous burden in my breast needed help in being removed, so did the equally cancerous burden in my mind. And my fear of what sort of life I’d have once I’d finished treatment weighed heavily on me.

My initial reason for going to therapy was that I wanted help moving on to a life in which cancer would be a mere detail, but what I also wanted was to figure out what kind of life that might be. After such a monumental bump in the road, what could possibly come next? At least that’s what I thought I was worried about. And I’d have gone on thinking that was the problem, had I not met Mr Marbles.

Marbles is the Columbo of therapy. He’d lead me off in one direction, and just when I thought I’d spewed forth everything I had to offer, he’d play the ‘just one more thing’ card and yank out the real issue quicker than you can say trenchcoat (or corduroy slacks). So there I was in session three, having a guilt-free whinge about not knowing what to do next when he suddenly turned school careers advisor on me and asked where I’d like to be in six months, a year, two years and five years. I talked about the fun I was going to have with P and Tills and Si at Glastonbury, the pubs I was looking forward to meeting my mates in, the funky haircut I wanted, the work I was anxious to get back into, the holidays I was going to plan, the house I wanted to buy, the book I intended to write and the butterfly-like change from being the girl who has cancer into the girl who
beat
cancer. Or, better yet, just
the girl
. (Is it still okay to call yourself a girl when you’re thirty?)

And there it was. Case closed. My concern wasn’t my ability to make a life plan (that exercise was proof enough that my arrangement-making skills are as good as ever), but that cancer forces might cut short the plans I did make. By
the
end of my quick-fire life-planning with Marbles, I’d burst into tears.

‘Forget all that,’ I told him. ‘In five years, I just want to still be here.’

And therein lies the problem with trying so hard to move on. You can’t just neatly decide to do it when you dance in heels for the first time, or when a new year comes along to box things off so seemingly tidily. It just doesn’t work like that. Because there’s so much more to deal with than just the diagnosis and treatment and getting yourself well again.

As soon as you’re diagnosed, everyone talks about your chance of survival. And, as though the diagnosis weren’t frightening enough, the five-and ten-year survival rates make for pretty grim reading. (Despite the size and spread of my cancer, my number was ‘about 70 per cent’, thanks to my age and the most kick-ass cancer treatment the NHS can offer.) But then the whirlwind of drugs and hospital visits begins, and everyone suddenly stops talking about your chance of survival, opting instead for the can-do attitude of
when
rather than
if
. And you get swept along with it. But once the chemo horrors had come to an end, and I found myself squinting in the face of the disco lights at the end of the tunnel, I was suddenly back to worrying about that 30 per cent-ish chance of not being around to stick a middle finger up to the statistics.

I don’t often get angry. I like to think I’m pretty
que sera sera
(if you brush aside refereeing decisions, misplaced apostrophes and the BBC’s insistence on wheeling out Heather Small to sing ‘Search For The Hero’ at sporting ceremonies). But the fact that I was having to confront how long I had left at the age of twenty-nine was a pretty fucking difficult pill to swallow. It was unfair and it was painful – and not just for me. So, for those very reasons, I did my
darndest
to avoid talking about it. But, as Marbles reminded me, I had always spoken of breast cancer as an equal battle of body and mind. I’d blogged about my bowel movements and my missing nipple, so why not my mortality?

‘So why is it that you won’t blog about your fears of death?’ he asked, crosslegged and tapping on his notebook with a Biro.

‘Well, because I’m British,’ I retorted. ‘And we just don’t talk about death, do we?’

Death is the ultimate unmentionable. Regardless of the situation, it tends to be the elephant in the room. It’s what you immediately think of upon being told you have cancer (well, with me it was hair first, death second). And yet, as soon as the diagnosis is done with, nobody mentions it again. I hadn’t spoken or blogged about death previously because I didn’t want to upset my family.

But now, mid-therapy and suddenly more capable of telling people what I felt, I began to hope that some kind of relief would come from the fact that I was finally prepared to talk – nay, blog – about it. ‘To bring it down to crude basics,’ I wrote, ‘if I die, I die – I’d not have to deal with it any more than that. Which is why it’s much more difficult for my family and friends to have to think about. And why, for me at least, it’s harder to consider the death of someone I love than it is to consider dying myself. But if that’s the case, so be it. There’s not a damn thing I can do about it, other than to keep doing what I’m doing. What will be, will be.’

I had often thought that having cancer felt a bit like experiencing all the best bits of dying, without me actually having to pop my clogs. (‘The best bits of dying’ … sheesh, I don’t half have a dark sense of humour.) And, always keen to find a bright side to these things, I reckoned that made me lucky. I’d smelled the flowers at my own funeral. When
someone
dies, they don’t always get to know how loved they were. But I had been left in no doubt. I’d been told ‘I love you’ more often than I ever expected to hear it. It still didn’t make me pleased that I got cancer, mind, but without it I wouldn’t have appreciated the staggering volume of terrific people around me. It’s not often you get to look back on your life (so far) in this way. And while on one hand the realisation of how good I’d got it meant that I had more to lose, on the other hand it gave me so much more to fight for. So when I put it in terms of the happy, fulfilled life I’d led even before I’d hit thirty, the issue of ‘the end’ somehow seemed a little less scary.

Not that I plan on letting the five-year (hell, even fifty-year) survival stats get in my way. There was – and still remains – a lot left on my to-do list. I’ve got to see Derby County win the Premiership, for one. And, in the meantime, I had a festival to get drunk at, a book to write, a flat to decorate, a husband to grow old with and a blonde wig ready and waiting for my octogenarian years. Old-fashioned it may be, but I dare say it’ll look a heck of a lot more hip than a blue rinse.

CHAPTER 27

Rehab

January 2009

Well, I don’t know about you, Winehouse, but I say yes, yes, yes. Step aside, Lohan. Out of the way, Moss. Your time is up, Williams. Search my bag and save me a room at The Priory; I’m on a one-way ticket to self-improvement.

Like I said last year, 2009 is the year of Sorting Shit Out. Seriously, check the Chinese zodiac. (Do you like how I said ‘last year’ back then? See, it’s all just a bad memory.) This is the year when I’ll be able to once again pick up a hairdryer, go bra shopping, have more sex, pay attention to my bikini line, get off my steroid-swelled arse and generally execute a Houdini-like escape from the evil grip of The Bullshit. Ta-dah!

Right now, I don’t look great. Actually that’s somewhat generous. I look like the long-lost sister of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. And it’s time to do something about it. I appreciate that it’ll take a fair bit of doing, which is why I intend to kick off early, before the final whistle of my surgery and the end of my active treatment. I’m realistic about the timeframe, too – hell, I’ve not just got hair to grow, but weight to shift, a left tit to
transform
, eyelashes to sprout and eyebrows to fill. So the plan is this: screw my twenties, I’m writing them off. Instead, I’m going to make damn sure I look super-hot in preparation for my thirties, just in time to flaunt the New Me at my Super Sweet 30th. (From its conception with Busby on my sofa, I’ve taken the idea a step further and have decided to turn it into a charity fundraiser for Breast Cancer Care. Well, you know how I like a project.)

But back to Operation Elfin. The issue here is that cancer is forcing me into an image change. Just as bouncing back to the life I had pre-Bullshit is unrealistic, so is the thought that I’ll have my long blonde locks back the moment I’m brave enough to whip off my headscarf. Right now, the trouble is less length, more coverage. And since Wikipedia tells me that human hair grows at a rate of 0.4mm per day, I reckon the most I’m looking at is a Posh-Spice-style pixie crop by the time I hit Glastonbury. But of course, if I’m going to carry off hair like Rihanna/Gwyneth/Posh, I’m going to need the frame to suit it. So as well as the hair-spurt mission, I’m also on a shrink-down health-kick to shift the 16lbs (shock! horror!) that cancer so kindly gifted me. (My fitness DVD will be in the shops next Christmas.)

I’m thinking of the unwanted bulk as a bit like baby weight, but without actually having had to squeeze one out. And, if you think about it, it’s not all that far off, really: several months of suffering, the removal of a funny-shaped lump from my body, the sleepless nights, even the mothering – albeit kitten rather than baby. Still, baby weight/cancer weight, potato/potahtoe – whatever you want to call it, it’s on the way out.

Health-wise I’m still a long way off jogging round the park (hell, even jogging to the loo). Radiotherapy continues to take its toll, and the exhaustion is reminding me of the time at uni when I had one too many late nights, snogged one too many smelly boys and ended up with glandular fever. But as much as
it
’s kicking me up the arse when I’m not there, I don’t half love having somewhere to go every day, and a brilliant bunch of people to see it through with. It’s like going into the office – I chirp a cheery hello to the (still fit) boy on reception, say ‘good morning’ to the other eleven-o’clock regulars in the waiting room, then enjoy a bit of banter with the radio staff.

For the last couple of weeks, it’s been my favourite lass and lad in the radio room (from Pepsi & Shirlie to Bucks Fizz, and now Dollar). I love Dollar (seriously, this is getting daft). They always let me in on the department in-jokes and the three of us have a right good giggle every morning (plus I think I’ve gained a few favouritism points after slipping them some golden gossip nuggets from my LA-reporter pal Ant). I’ve only got nine treatments left, and I’m going to miss the arses off those two when I finish. Do you think it’s acceptable to befriend them on Facebook? Or is the cupcake-baking option a better display of gratitude?