by Raz Shaw
Visiting hours were from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Only visitors bringing satisfactory chocolate-type gifts would be allowed in. M&S microwavable foodstuff would be accepted.
Flowers or anything that needed constant care (apart from me) must be left at the threshold.
And so my visitors would appear and they would bring food and chat and watch OJ. It was perfect.
It almost made me forget the cancer and the gambling. Almost.
And almost is joyously better than hardly. These mini miracles were life-saving.
Talking of miracles, on 3 October 1995 the BBC reported the following:
Orenthal James Simpson was found NOT GUILTY of the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman… Judge Lance Ito ordered OJ Simpson to be released ‘forthwith’ ending 473 days in custody…Members of the victims’ families were distraught: Fred Goldman, father of Ronald Goldman, said the day of his son’s murder was the worst day of his life, and today was the second.
‘I deeply believe that this country lost today. Justice was not served,’ he said.
In a statement, Jason Simpson expressed his father’s relief that ‘this part of the incredible nightmare that occurred is over’.
I, on the other hand, had only served half of my cancer sentence.
I was shocked but not surprised by the verdict. I was in mourning for the loss of my OJ trial cancer distraction. I tried to resist the lure of the casino but it had a hold on me stronger than me. It seemed to know that it could comfort me in my OJ trial bereavement. It seemed to instantly latch on to me and recognise my need to fill the OJ void. Gambling smiled at me and beckoned me in, and I was defenceless and unable to resist. I gave in daily to its magnetic charms. I felt weak and fulfilled all at once. Those contradictions robbed me of any strength of will that I may have had left. It felt good. It felt bad.
The forces inside of me were at war. And I was powerless to stop them.
CANCER VERSUS GAMBLING,
PART THREE
The fight between cancer and gambling was the heavyweight clash of the titans. I was in the centre of it. It was chain-gang gruelling. They fought for my attention. They demanded that they were the first thing I thought of when I woke up and the last thing I thought of when I fell asleep. They were insanely jealous of my other lover and would constantly raise the bar in order to get more attention. The most painful and confusing thing was that I would constantly use one as respite from the other. They became in turn my best friend and my worst enemy.
There were days when I would arrive in an empty casino at 2 p.m. and it would feel marvellous. Serene, peaceful and calming. It would feel like home. Three hours at a blackjack table would just glide by, and as long as I wasn’t winning too much or losing too much it would be the perfect escape. And the croupiers knew me well enough to know that I didn’t like to talk. I was just there to play. And it always produced a smile in me when one or two asked what had prompted me to shave all my hair off. This was my thing. My time. Me time. And cancer wasn’t allowed in. Casino rules stated: Leave your coats and your cancer at the reception desk. Cancer fucking hated that. Couldn’t believe it was being left at the door. For those few hours gambling was stroking me and cuddling me. Gambling was giving cancer the two-fingered salute. And even though it was all wrong, it was all right. I wasn’t in my life; I was on some other plane, some other universe. But, of course, the moment you start getting a bit spiritual and hippyish, reality will force your feet back on the ground and slap you hard around the face. Despite being sworn enemies, evil is evil is evil, so if cancer and gambling can collude to make one enormous painful mess then so much the better. And they did. Often.
PRINGLE GUY
I was sitting at the blackjack table in a tunnel of escape and calm when out of the blue someone on my table made a ridiculous call and I lost. And I not only lost that call but I lost my cool and my equilibrium and my karma. And I know now that that person who made the dodgy blackjack move may have looked like just a chain-smoking guy wearing grey slacks and a Pringle sweater, but he was actually sent by the cancer cult to discombobulate me. It’s clear that Pringle man was not only working for the cancer cult but for the addiction cult, too. And his ridiculous call led to my veil of rationale being ripped away from me and the red mist instantly descending. In the next five minutes I had zero control over my actions. I loaded each bet with more and more money. And I knew I was going to lose. But I kept loading the bet with more and still more. Self-hatred and self-destruction spewed out of every orifice and I needed to lose. Needed to self-flagellate. Needed to remind myself what a disgusting individual I was. And the addiction cult leader was laughing in my face. And the more he laughed, the more I needed to self-destruct. Until I was empty. Inside and out. And the only thing to do was leave. I picked up my coat and cancer on the way out and made it to fresh air. But the air wasn’t fresh and my cancer was ten times heavier than before. Cancer forced itself on me and refused me the big deep breath I craved in that moment. And cancer, too, was laughing in my face. And I was hot and dizzy and nauseous.
Life is shit and I am shit and it doesn’t matter which of those will take my life first but please oh please oh please, one of them do it now and do it quick.
Gambling addiction addles your brain. It soaks up everything else until you have pure gambling focus. You get no relief from it. Absolutely none. However, in the battle for total mental preoccupation, gambling has a fierce and all-conquering rival. Cancer. And that’s the mind fuck. As an addict, all you’re searching for is a single moment of breath. A single moment of thought-free clarity. And that moment almost never comes.
Cancer is ruthless in its pursuit of absolute power. So in the early cancer days, when side effects were minimal, cancer allowed me to storm ahead with the gambling and jog along with the cancer. But jealousy is an ugly old dish best served freezing fucking cold through a giant syringe. And when cancer kicks into action, nothing and nobody can stand in its way. Lying in a hospital bed, unable to speak, feeling like utter shite was weirdly a sort of free-from-gambling breathing space.
And a breath is a breath is a breath. Gambling became a distant memory. For a while. A golden age memory that you yearn for, that makes you feel gooey at the reminiscence but doesn’t invade your every pore.
So you see the complexity of the battle.
This wasn’t a fleeting skirmish. No. This conflict lasted for pretty much the whole time that I was in cancer mode. And its constancy was totally exhausting.
PESKY-LITTLE-BROTHER-CANCER
There’s a whole world out there of people who name their tumours. Like pets. Naming your tumour is all the rage. It’s the Steve McQueen of cancer coping. Cool and iconic, I mean. Rather than dead!
Some do it to belittle their tumour and take the edge off its power.
It’s an intruder.
It came in without invitation.
If I ignore it, it will make itself at home and decide to stay.
If I name it, I will have control over the bastard.
It is an unwanted guest who needs to be evicted.
It will not control me.
I will name it and then kill it.
From talking to a number of people about this, I learned that naming your tumour is just as tricky as naming your child. Although in this case you don’t want it to grow. You want it to shrink. You want your tumour child to shrink.
GERALDINE AND STEVE
While exploring the naming-your-tumour phenomenon, I came across an amazing American called Geraldine who has a brilliant travel blog called The Everywhereist. In one of her blogs she writes about having been diagnosed with a brain tumour (tumor if you happen to be American) and how and why she named it Steve.
The discovery of Geraldine and Steve inspired me to keep trawling the internet looking for more people who gave their tumour a name. I found hundreds.
These included:
Irving – shortened to Irv when the tumour shrank
Abi
– Abi-normal
Camilla – It hid like a chameleon
Bob – kill Bob and/or Bob was the evil spirit in Twin Peaks
Itsy and Bitsy – a multi-tumour name
The Tumornator – I’ll be back
Tommy Tumor
Tom – Tormentor Of Mine
Rascal
Little Rascal – it shrank!
Bugger
Little Bugger – it shrank!
PITA – Pain In The Arse
OvarianDunWith
These are just the tip of a very large iceberg. It got me wondering how you named a blood cancer rather than a tumour. Was I going to have to spend the rest of my life giving a name to every little evil white cell? Maybe. I spent hours trying to think of witty things to say around this subject. As you might have gathered by now, I often spend hours trying to think of witty things to say. In this instance I drew a blank. But my online search uncovered a man who called his white cell count The Blue Meanies.
According to Wikipedia: ‘The Blue Meanies are a fictional army of fierce, if buffoonish, music-hating creatures in the surreal 1968 Beatles film Yellow Submarine. They allegorically represent all the bad people in the world.’
Enough said.
In the absence of having a name for my cancer, I would treat it like my annoying little brother. I say brother because I always wanted a younger sister. If I had a younger sister, she would be my best friend, she would not take any of my surly grumpy shit and by now I would have slept with most of her friends.
A younger brother type of cancer is much easier to hate. Much easier to try to ignore. He’s the little pest who’s growing up far too fast. He has the infuriating habit of wanting to show off when your friends are around. A younger brother type of cancer makes unwanted appearances at inopportune moments. His appearance would manifest itself in a variety of different ways.
On some days I would wake up and feel great. Not just fine. Not just ‘feeling OK considering’. But fucking great. It would often be the day after chemo. That thrust of oddly coloured liquids pumped into my veins had clearly given me some kind of spurt of adrenaline. Laced with a small shot of euphoria. And it felt surprising. Surprisingly fantastic.
I was a giddy teenager after a first night of passion.
I was Leonardo DiCaprio just before the big boat sank.
I was invincible.
And that’s the trap. That’s the evil of Pesky-Little-Brother-Cancer.
I would bound out of bed, feeling happy with the world. Feeling happy that I had the ability to bound. When given the opportunity to bound, I bound. All is good with the world. Today. At this moment.
I would bound into the shower. I would bound into my ill-fitting clothes.
I’d skip breakfast because breakfast is a bit of a risk. Food tastes shit so I didn’t want that reminder to de-bound me. I did take my six squillion steroids because oddly on good days they didn’t symbolise much. Today they were just pills to be consumed. So I scoffed down the pills. I excitedly bounded downstairs to get to the outside world.
And the sun’s out and it felt good to be out. Bounding. And Tufnell Park was the Med that day. No sea or sand to speak of but a great Turkish kebab shop. Which counts. I walked fifty yards to the newsagent. Exchanged pleasantries. I’m always in a better mood on holiday.
I bought a pint of milk, a Diet Coke and the Guardian. I returned home, opened the front door and started to ascend the many stairs to my sea-view Tufnell Park Mediterranean penthouse. There were quite a few stairs. Thirty maybe. That’s quite a few when you have cancer.
I bounded up six of them. Six stairs a-bounding. Out of nowhere, my bounding was interrupted by a gentle tap on my shoulder. I stopped. Just briefly. Turned. There was nobody there. Weird. I set off on my bound again. Once more my bound was interrupted by a tap-tap-tap.
This time, it wasn’t just a tap on my shoulder, it was in between my eyes, all down my thighs, in the pit of my stomach and deep in my cranium. And I say a tap. It was much more of a punch than a tap.
A long hard, deep full-body punch.
And not just one punch, more of a pummel of punches. A never-ending, stomach-churning, breath-taking pummelling. I slowly turned to face it. Face him. Face it. And this time there WAS someone there.
Staring at me was my bastard Pesky-Little-Brother-Cancer.
He was snarling at me. Bottom lip out. Squealing. He was actually squealing:
‘I’m still here, you know. You can’t ignore me. You’re supposed to be looking after me. I’m not looking after you. You’re looking after me. I’m your pesky-little-brother-cancer. You can’t get rid of me just like that. You can’t truly believe that one day you will wake up and I will just be gone. Just like that. Don’t think that if you just ignore me I will disappear. I won’t. I will not. If you ignore me, I’ll make your life a fucking misery. A misery. I will.
‘Don’t ignore me. Don’t ignore me. Don’t ignore me. Don’t ignore me. Don’t ignore me. Don’t ignore me. Don’t ignore me. Don’t ignore me. Don’t ignore me.
‘Do Not Ignore Me.
‘Do
Not
Ignore
Me.
‘Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here. Still here.
Still here.
Still here.
Still here.’
And, despite this terrifying hallway assault, I made it to the top of the stairs. I was just about able to unlock my door. I flopped on my futon/bed/dinner table/self-care unit. I was completely shattered. Physically and emotionally. I felt like I had cycled to New York, run the New York marathon and cycled back. In a day.
I peeked out of my top-floor window. The sea and the sand had been replaced by a grey, grim metropolis. My Med penthouse was now a small studio flat above a shop in Tufnell Park. My gaze took me above the shops, beyond the grey and back into my mind again.
Being free of my Pesky-Little-Brother-Cancer seemed like a hazy nostalgic very distant memory. And that’s the thing. The whole point.
I had successfully managed to ignore him for what seemed like a proper lifetime. A whole hour maybe. A whole fucking hour. Just under. Maybe. Maybe thirty minutes. Maybe less than that. I don’t know. But a whole bunch of minutes anyway. And now the miserable, invasive little fucker was back. Big time. And not only would he not go away and not stop reminding me of his presence, but the very fact that I had evaded his grasp for longer than a moment made his reappearance all the more bile-forming and painful. I felt my eyes moisten but I didn’t let them cry. Couldn’t let them cry. It felt painful now, yes, but at least I was allowed a brief glimpse of the other world. A world of normal that I had struggled to remember. And that brief glimpse was bound-making and glorious. And brief.
Too brief. My world had been invaded by cancer. I wanted to be normal. I wanted to b
e the youngest child again. All I wanted was for my Pesky-Little-Brother-Cancer to fuck off. And die.
But he didn’t die. Not for a long while, anyhow. He was right there in the heart of things. Mixing things up. Making those appearances when he was least expected and definitely least wanted. What I’m talking about here is:
Sex. Sex. Sex. It’s a complex, delicate thing. Sex.
At the best of times.
With cancer, it’s a whole different ball game. So to speak. As I detailed earlier, the getting to the point where I might partake in sex with another human being didn’t seem to be that tricky. The cancer swagger seemed to do all the work for me.
It’s one thing to think you want sex. It’s another to actually want it.
I’d find that getting to the point of being just about to have sex was great. Because it’s all about the chemistry, the body language, the flirting. And it was familiar territory. It was exhilarating and normalising. I found myself at the point of de-clothing and getting down to the thing. The sex thing. And the adrenaline mixed with the familiarity made me feel wonderfully normal. Wonderfully cancer-free. And the clothes departed and it was skin on skin. That first naked moment with a new partner is an irresistible moment. Thrilling. Deeply sexy. A little bit scary. And sometimes quite magical. Even more stimulating when you have cancer and it’s helping you escape. Helping you forget.