by Roxie Cooper
Dr Weldrake sits opposite me, teetering right on the edge of her mint-coloured upholstered chair. She can’t possibly be comfortable sitting like that. I wonder if that’s how she sits when she’s delivering bad news or whether she sits like that all the time. Her long blonde hair is tied up in a ponytail and she doesn’t look that much older than me. The whole room is deadly quiet as she faffs around with some papers for a few moments before speaking to me, My eyes are drawn to Melissa, who sits next to her clutching a load of leaflets in one of those A5 plastic folders. Staring at it, all I can think is: they don’t bring leaflets in if it’s good news, do they?
I just know.
‘Stephanie, unfortunately, we’ve found cancer cells in the tumour,’ Dr Weldrake says.
No build-up to it. Straight in.
Cancer.
Cancer. Cancer. Cancer.
The word rattles around my head like a dice being shaken in a cup. I hear Jamie draw in a sharp breath as the word is said. A shiver runs through my body and doesn’t go away. This word has haunted me for so long. It’s the word that took my mum away. And now it’s got me.
I don’t know what to do or say as I stare at a poster on the wall telling people they should give blood or something.
‘Stephanie,’ Dr Weldrake asks, softly, but firmly, ‘did you hear what I said?’
Cancer. Mum. My kids. Chemotherapy. I’m going to die. I can’t die. I’m going to lose my hair. Which famous people had breast cancer and didn’t die? I need to Google this as soon as I get home. Cancer. Why is this happening after everything I’ve been through? This isn’t fucking fair. Haven’t I been through enough? For fuck’s sake.
There’s a heaviness in my breathing. It feels like there’s loads of bricks in my lungs that I’m trying to breathe out. I can hear blood rushing though my head. It’s deafening. No, that’s not even possible, is it? I feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on me, waiting for a response.
‘I’ve got two kids. I can’t die. I can’t leave them without a mum, so what are we going to do about this?’ I say, almost as if this woman hasn’t just bestowed a death sentence on me.
Dr Weldrake immediately sits up and gets a pen and paper out of from her file.
‘Well, this is what we are going to do about it …’ she says.
She then draws a load of diagrams, outlining what the plan is, and says positive people tend to do well out of treatment. Jamie asks all the practical questions I’m incapable of and he holds my hand the entire time.
I don’t cry. It’s almost as if the news is far too big, too overwhelming, to cry over. Like you bypass the crying and proceed straight to shock. I’m sure the tears will come, but not now.
I actually knew this was coming, so it’s not as much of a shock as it could have been. Sometimes you just know something is bad, don’t you? That morning in August, when I was standing in front of the full-length mirror trying on a new bra, was the day I knew. I’d lost some weight, so I was admiring my new body; not bad for a late-thirties mother of two. Then, putting my arms above my head, I noticed that something wasn’t right on my left breast. The skin was inverted and puckered. How had I not noticed before? And especially with it in my family? I suppose with the divorce and everything that’s happened lately, it had slipped my mind, but still … How could I have been so stupid?
A visit to the GP sent me straight through to a mammogram appointment and suddenly I’m feeling lost and isolated, my mind protesting, ‘I shouldn’t be here, this is not my time, I’m too young’. How is that fair? Is this what my mum had to go through?
Coming face-to-face with your cancer is a weird, strange thing. You don’t really know what to expect, what it looks like. Mine looked like a spider; a large, white, evil spider with long spindly legs. A white mass with poisonous tentacles reaching out, hidden from everyday view but very active within me. I stared at the image on the screen, as my boob was pressed between the cold metal plates on the mammogram machine. Of course, that was before the official diagnosis, but I just knew and that image stayed with me. You can see it on the nurses’ faces when something is wrong. They try to hide it, but you can tell.
After that came the biopsy, but I prepared myself for the worst. And the worst has come.
Jamie and I drive to Dad’s house straight after the appointment.
‘I can’t do it, Jamie,’ I say, turning to him, suddenly losing control of my breathing.
‘I’m here,’ he replies, taking hold of my hand and kissing my knuckles. ‘You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known and you’ll get through this.’
There’s no messing about. I tell them straight away. Dad breaks down and cries, putting his head in his hands. His shoulders shake uncontrollably as he sobs. I don’t know what to do. I feel like that long-ago thirteen-year-old again, not knowing how to comfort her dad. How can we be going through this again?
The colour drains from Ebony’s face.
‘No. Just no. I can’t lose my sister,’ she declares, adamantly, gripping on to my hands and shaking her head.
‘We’re going to do everything we can, Ebs. I feel like I need to be positive about this. I’ll fight it and I will win,’ I tell her, not even sure what I’m coming out with. It’s all the stuff you’re supposed to say when people get cancer, isn’t it? I’m in a daze.
‘My God! Why wasn’t it found earlier?’ she rages, at nobody in particular.
‘No point in going down that route, love,’ Dad warns, putting his glasses back on after wiping his eyes. He sits on one side of me, Ebony on the other. Jamie is content to allow them this moment.
‘I’ll be having a mastectomy in three weeks and I’ll start chemotherapy too,’ I go on.
‘Three weeks? Oh, Steph,’ Ebony sobs, throwing her arms around me. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Ebony, it’s going to be fine,’ I insist.
‘Well,’ she declares grandly, ‘when you start losing your hair, I will shave mine off too, to support you.’
Jamie, Dad and I all exchange confused glances when she says it, each knowing this will not happen.
‘Can I get that in writing, please?’ I say, laughing, running my hand through her long black ponytail.
‘Well, I can definitely support you by getting a good shorter cut,’ she says and smiles back.
The room goes quiet. There’s only so much humour you can introduce into these situations before the sense of dread comes back, thick and clinging.
‘Steph, we’re all going to help you through this. You’re not going anywhere,’ she orders. Her tear-stained face gazes at me with her huge green eyes. ‘I am not losing my sister and that is final.’
It’s just horrible having to deliver bad news to people you care about and seeing the effect on them. Horrific. It reminds me of an interview with a doctor I once read, who observed that in his line of work his sympathies are always with the families who have to watch their loved ones die as opposed to the actual patients, because it is possibly the most painful thing to watch someone you love in pain, dying … I can totally relate to this.
By the end of the conversation, the discussion, I am the only one keeping it together and comforting them. I suppose it’s a survival thing.
Picking the girls up from school is when it hits me. Both girls run to me, almost knocking me over with the force of their affection.
‘Mummy! Look! I made a princess castle!’ Adelaide declares, proudly, shoving a tissue box with wet glue, glitter and tissue paper hanging off it at me.
‘Wow!’ I praise her. ‘That’s beautiful! Is there enough room for me in there?’
‘Noooo!’ she says. ‘You’re a queen, not a princess!’
Fighting back tears I grip on to their hands all the way home, promising myself to not think about this until later. I need to enjoy every second with them.
Later that night, after the girls are in bed, I stare at myself in the mirror. I’d felt so feminine in recent months, in good shape. Being happy agreed with me, it h
ad seemed. But inside my body something nasty had been growing – and I wanted to know: Why is this happening? Is it karma for loving another woman’s husband for so many years?
I crawl into bed and Jamie holds me tightly. No words, no talking, nothing.
The tears start to roll down my face and they don’t stop. They just get bigger and fall harder. I wail, I sob, I bawl. I cry for me, for Jamie, for my girls, for my family.
I just can’t believe this is happening.
CHAPTER 36
Friday 21 December 2018
Stephanie
‘Steph,’ Ebony whispers from the doorway of my bedroom. ‘You’ve got a visitor, are you up to seeing her?’
‘Who is it?’ I ask, screwing my face up. Who on earth turns up, unannounced, this close to Christmas?
She walks in, and I start laughing immediately. I glance at the digital radio clock in my room, then at her, raising what would be my eyebrows if I had some.
‘You’ve got an hour. Sit down on that chair over there and make yourself comfortable,’ I say. ‘Great to see you, Jane!’
I’m aware I look so very different to how she’s seen me before; I always used to make such an effort when I went to see her, always wanting to look as if I had it together, swishing through the door in cute dresses in the summer, chic coats in winter. Now, I’m bloated and bald and it’s a shock for anyone who knows me. You can see it on their faces when they see me now. They try to hide it, but they can’t.
Jane rushes over to me and perches on the edge of my bed, giving me a huge hug. It’s strange, but really comforting. As my therapist, we’ve obviously never had this kind of relationship, but I’ve known her for so long, she feels more like a very close friend. She squeezes me tightly.
‘Jane, I think we’re breaking all kinds of rules here …’
‘Rules are made to be broken, Stephanie,’ she says. ‘I thought you’d worked that out by now.’
Classic Jane, always so wise.
The day they told me the cancer had spread to my lungs was the worst day of my life. I didn’t think anything could top the day Mum died, or the day I originally discovered they’d found the cancer. But that day was darker than both of them put together. Even when you’re told that you’ve got cancer, you cling on to the hope that you can fight it, beat it, conquer it, somehow. You hear it every day. ‘So-and-so lost/won a brave battle with cancer.’ It’s everywhere, the analogy is that cancer is a battle, and if you fight hard enough, you can win it. But that’s not the case. Because sometimes you just can’t. You can’t fight against biology, even with all the drugs in the world. Trust me, I’ve tried.
And how do you come to terms with the anger? I could hear myself screaming inside my own head but no sound was coming out of my mouth when Dr Weldrake told me the news that the cancer had spread. I’d been putting myself through the torture of chemotherapy, I’d lost my hair, my left breast and barely even felt like a woman any more. And now this disease was going to get the better of me in spite of everything we’d done to stop it?
They asked if I wanted to continue with chemo but I told them I didn’t. It was too hard on my body, this double-edged sword of using poison to cure you. Well, that’s the plan in theory, except it doesn’t always work. It was worse than I ever imagined it could be. Of course, in the beginning I was convinced I’d be tough enough to handle it, everybody is.
I’m different to everyone else, I thought. They’re just weak. I am strong. I have to get through this. There’s more at stake for me. I can do this.
And then it starts.
For the first few days, I felt fine. Well, that was OK. What do people complain about? Then the throwing up started, and the vertigo, the constant feeling of motion sickness, of having the world’s worst hangover, the distinctive taste in my mouth that only a load of sherbet lemons could get rid of, the plastic-like ‘chemo smell’ that only I was aware of. It became part of my world and I could barely remember what my life was like before it.
Just under two weeks after the first round of chemo came the inevitable hair loss. My beautiful, long blonde hair, which had defined me as a woman for so many years, was being dragged out in clumps. That was what upset me the most. A breast, you can hide or get a new one. Your hair is part of you, visible to everyone. Suddenly I felt like I properly had cancer. Eyebrows literally just wiped off with a stroke of a finger and don’t even get me started on how weird it was to not have eyelashes. You simply don’t realise how much you take these things for granted when you have them. You worry about inconsequential stuff which doesn’t mean anything at all in the grand scheme of things. You worry about whether or not you’re going to look fat at the village summer fete next month, or whether you allow your kids to consume too much sugar because you bake with them too much. The next thing, some doctor is telling you you’re probably going to be dead next month and you don’t have eyelashes any more.
Did I really want to spend the rest of the time I had left throwing up and feeling absolutely shit? Nope.
Everyone tried to talk me into having more treatment, everyone except Jamie. He was the only one who understood. They saw it as me ‘giving up’. I don’t see it like that. I see it as me having some tiny bit of quality of life left before I go.
The hardest part was how to manage it with the kids. They’re too young to understand what’s happening, but at the same time, they say wildly inappropriate things at all the wrong times which I love. I managed to accompany them to a kids’ birthday party in my brand-new brunette wig when I first got it. It was exhausting, but it was important to me that I remained involved in their life. However, halfway through the party, Evie decided to inform absolutely everyone in there that ‘that brown hair isn’t really my mummy’s hair, it’s only pretend. Mummy, would you mind taking it off so everyone can see your bald head’. I couldn’t stop laughing amidst that sea of horrified and pitying faces. I hope she remembers that scene when she’s older and how much I laughed at it.
Jane takes a seat on the chair in the corner in my room.
‘Christ, Stephanie, are you trying to give me brittle bone disease?’ she says, shifting about on the chair, then sitting bolt upright as I laugh hysterically.
‘Consider it payback for years of uncomfortable chairs in your treatment room,’ I reply. ‘How did you know?’
‘At our last session, after meeting Helen, you were in a really great place. You felt like you had closure and felt confident enough to see me in a year’s time, but you never came back, so I checked up on you.’
‘Oh,’ I say, smiling.
‘I’m so, so sorry, Stephanie …’
‘That’s what everyone says,’ I reply, straightening the covers out over my legs.
‘And you’re with Jamie now? Properly?’ she asks.
‘Yes. Finally. I got there in the end. Your therapy finally got through.’
Jane narrows her eyes, tilting her head to the side. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You really helped me to see things in a new light. I finally realised it’s OK to have feelings that you can’t control. Because everyone does at some point or another.’
Jane smiles in that way she does before she drops a bombshell.
‘Oh God. What? I’ve got it wrong, haven’t I?’ I ask, panicked.
Jane smiles. ‘Not at all. What you’ve said is correct. But you’ve missed out one crucial point about all of this …’
‘What’s that?’ I ask, utterly confused, yet again.
‘I wasn’t the one who helped you change, Jamie was.’
‘Eh?’
‘He showed you that it’s OK to need someone,’ she says. ‘That you, too, can be loved – and more importantly, you deserve to be loved. Not just once a year, but all the time. You neglected yourself for so many years after your mum died, Stephanie, deemed yourself unworthy of real love and refused to let anyone in … until Jamie came along.’
I listen to what she says as the wind rattles on the widows. Every single
thing makes sense.
‘You know, you could have told me this, like years ago. Would have saved me a whole load of bother,’ I say and laugh.
‘Nah, you know you had to go through it all yourself. I’ve seen such a transformation in you. You’ve been my patient for, what? Twelve years?’ she asks.
‘Feels like longer,’ I say, deadpan. Jane shoots me one of her scary looks.
‘But, off the record, you’ve become very dear to me and that’s why I’m here today. Not as a therapist, but as a friend,’ she says.
‘Well, that means a lot. And I agree,’ I say, smiling. ‘This isn’t going to cost me the earth, is it?’
‘No, pay for twelve years, get the last session free,’ she laughs.
We talk about our relationship over the years. Jane is probably one of my closest friends now and what do you say when you know it’s the very last time you will see someone? Jane knows absolutely everything about me. Everything. My hopes, dreams, sins, regrets, flaws and issues. She’s seen me laugh, cry, smile and worry, supported me through things I couldn’t tell anyone else, never judged me, called me out on things when I’ve been unreasonable and, my God, she’s frustrated me at times … because she’s always been right.
Every single time.
She’s everything my mum would have been if she was still here.
‘How are the kids?’ she asks, straight to the point. I love that about her.
‘Too young to understand, which is both a curse and a blessing,’ I explain. ‘I’ve let them in as much as I can. Cuddling them 24/7.’
Jane smiles and nods. ‘Best thing you can do. They will remember you, the memories you’ve created for them. Leave them things they can look at. They won’t ever be without you. What’s going to happen to them when you die?’