Death and the Elephant

by Raz Shaw

  ‘Ud oo ell eee urgh wyee do ner urrch.’

  The last word is church. You can guess the rest.

  I arrived at the beautiful little packed village church in surprisingly good time. I really didn’t want to attract too much attention. Before I left, in fact, I spent ages wondering about whether wearing a cap would attract or detract attention. I decided on the naked look. Naked head, I mean. Naked naked would probably have attracted some attention.

  I tried to sidle in the back somewhere, but incognito is a bit of a no-no when you’ve got lots of friends in the church and most of them haven’t seen you since you were diagnosed. When they did see me, and saw me looking this bad, however hard they tried to hide it they couldn’t conceal the sadness in their eyes. Some of them were lost for words. I tried to overcompensate by doing all the talking but my talking wasn’t talking. It was gargle-mumbling. If I wanted to be understood, I had to articulate and the act of articulation made me wince because it involved my tongue having to work too hard and, by doing so, knock against the remaining ulcers. So the words that I spoke were followed by an involuntary wincing, which only served to make the people that I was trying to make feel less uncomfortable, feel more uncomfortable. So much for incognito! Sitting down and shutting up was now the best bet. Before I properly upstaged this wedding. I found a nice spot next to my welcoming friend Caroline and I just nodded at people with my incognito shiny ‘I’VE GOT CANCER. I’VE GOT CANCER’ bald head.

  And it was a beautiful wedding. And I do have an annoying tendency to choke up at tick-box weddings. And I guess this wedding ticked more boxes than most. And, true to form, my emotions didn’t take long to rise to the surface. The Chairman taking his vows and his voice cracking slightly was all it took to make my stomach churn, my mouth ulcers throb and my tears flow. And I wasn’t crying out of self-pity, or anything like that. It was tears of pure unadulterated happiness for them and tears of relief that I was belligerent enough to force myself off my hospital bed, into a car and make it here to see this.

  But those aren’t the tears I am here to talk about. Those were good tears. Those were ‘wash away the pain of now and the pain of mouth ulcer’ tears. The tears that I am talking about come at the end of this overwritten true story.

  The wedding was perfect. Nobody expected me to stay for long beyond the ceremony. Least of all me. Maybe just the drinks bit rather than the sit down and eat bit as well. The attention I got at the reception was lovely. It was just what I needed at this pretty horrific stage in the journey. A reminder that all was normal beyond the Marsden walls and the world hadn’t run away from me. Life really does go on and, more than that, I don’t have to sprint to catch up, I just have to be present. If I am present in whatever form, even in my alien boy/elephant man form, I can click my heels and be back in the game.

  So I made it to the drinks and decided I would stay for some of dinner. My hospital curfew was ten. They were absolutely adamant that it could be no later than ten. Later than ten and it was a danger to me. I had to be dripped with antibiotics, monitored and steroided (I made up a word!). The whole nine chemo yards. So no later than ten then. It was roughly 7.30 p.m. when we sat down to eat. There was a woman sitting to my left. I hoped she was nice. She needed to be nice. I wasn’t at my small-talk best.

  Her opening line was a good one: ‘Hi, have you got cancer?’

  ‘Uhu.’

  ‘I am just recovering from a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘Uhu.’

  Holy shit.

  She quickly realised that my ability to speak was hindered by my physical inability to open my mouth without wincing audibly. Plus, if I tried to talk too much, there was dribbling. So my nervous breakdown friend to the left talked to me while I mumbled and nodded and dribbled wittily.

  WHAM RAP

  It was 9.46 p.m. I was supposed to be back at the Marsden by 10 p.m. I was in Cambridge. The Marsden is in south-west London. I had fourteen minutes to make a journey that would take seventy-five minutes in a Ferrari. I didn’t have a Ferrari. I had a Honda Civic. I’d better go. At the very moment that I was mumbling and spitting a goodbye to breakdown woman, I heard a strange calling from the direction of the DJ. It took me a while to work out what it was. It was camp. It was high camp and high tempo. Just up my street! It was Wham! Tune! It was one of my ‘stay-alive’ songs. It was a sign. Before I leave, I must dance.

  Cancer boy busting out his moves. Woo hoo!

  ‘Take me to the edge of heaven, tell me that my soul’s forgiven.’

  And there I was twirling with the world. For one brief moment I had got my mojo back. My me back. The newly crowned Mrs Chairman got a twirl, the Chairman’s mum got a twirl, the Chairman’s granny got a twirl, the formerly unhinged woman next to me got a twirl, even the Chairman got a twirl. Talk about stealing the limelight for a moment. And it felt fucking good. More than that it felt releasing and liberating. It felt like freedom (pardon the Wham! pun). If I was going to go, this was how I wanted to go. And I don’t mean go in terms of leaving the wedding!

  Having said that, it was now about 11.30. I was awash with adrenaline as well as the vast amount of pills (prescription) I had been taking and I really did have to leave. I didn’t want to. I could have stayed all night. Could have danced all night! And still have begged for more! But I had to go.

  A lot of people were really surprised that I had made it down to Cambridge on my own, let alone was going to drive back up late at night as well. Especially after all that Whamtastic dancing and very little food! To me that seemed fine. I was in my car. I was in control. I was fine. I was maybe a bit sweaty and breathless but I had taken all my pills and I was good to go. There was much consternation and offers of lifts and all sorts but I needed to do it alone. For me. For my soul. For my independent spirit. So I mumbled my goodbyes and left.

  HONDA CIVIC MAGIC CARPET

  The two-hour car journey back to my new temporary abode was a glorious ride on a rickety old Honda Civic magic carpet. I was floating my way to The Marsden Hotel having sipped from the euphoric glass of normality. I had sipped it. I had bathed in it. I had danced with it. I had realised for the first time in almost three months that it wasn’t out of my grasp. Just the opposite in fact. And for one brief moment, I had crystal clarity. I had an epiphany. Not a big one or a religious one. A little one. A mini epiphany.

  MY MINI EPIPHANY

  Floating along the M11, I realised that the wedding was made even more special for me by the condition I was in. My senses and feelings had been opened and heightened by dealing with cancer on a day-to-day basis. Oddly but rather wonderfully, my situation was allowing me to make discoveries about myself and the world that I could never have made without this illness. Wending my way to hospital at God knows how early in the morning, that felt like an extraordinary and perversely magical contradiction. It felt like an epiphany.

  If my journey through this thing was as much about trying to discover what’s different and special and unique about life as it was about actually getting well, then the one would probably take care of the other. And that seemed like my most positive thought ever! It also meant that I could get lost in the discoveries rather than always having to think about the illness.

  And it’s not such a radical new thought, but it did feel like an epiphany because it appeared to me with such overwhelming clarity. And that clarity felt truly invigorating amidst the absurdity of the chemo mayhem. That mini epiphany also allowed me to breathe a little easier. Maybe the next chapter wasn’t going to be as difficult as the last? Maybe I was close to overcoming one of the many giant hurdles? Only about eighty-four mouth ulcers left to kill.

  And in the claustrophobic bubble of my silver Honda Civic at 1.30 in the morning, tears started streaming down my face for the second time that day. These were gentle tears. Almost imperceptible tears. Warm tears. Cynicism-free tears. Comfortable ‘I can breathe a bit easier’ tears. These were important tears, but even these are not the tears I am here to
tell you about. These were journey tears. Tears along the way tears.

  HOME IS WHERE THE HOSPITAL IS

  I arrived back at the hospital at 2.45 a.m. Almost five hours late. In disgrace. Well, I say ‘disgrace’. The transgressor in me wanted to be shamed and shunned by the whole of the Marsden community. I wanted so badly to hear the words:

  ‘What time do you call this, young man? You’re grounded till further notice.’

  I sauntered into the ward. I had the look of a surly eight-year-old schoolboy. I looked the nurses straight in the eye. My head was cocked provocatively to one side and my eyebrows were raised as if to say:

  ‘Yeah, go on then, punish me, do it, see if I care.’

  Instead all I got was a cheeky ‘tutt, tutt, tutt’ from the duty nurse. I think he was from New Zealand. He was the most composed, most patient and kindest man you can ever imagine. Looking after me, he needed to be. I can’t remember his name. I want to call him Simon. He seemed like a Simon. He’s a Simon.

  Simon (feels right) had my mountain of medication armed and ready to go. To this day, I remember how calm and sweet and gentle he was. Calm, sweet, gentle Simon. The drugs took about fifteen minutes to administer and then he gently but firmly (that’s a good combo!) demanded that I go to sleep. And I did. I went straight to sleep. Fast, sound, cancer-free sleep.

  And the next morning instead of a continuation of last night’s euphoria, I awoke to find something strange alongside me. I was lying next to an ice cold body with a lifeless heart.

  I didn’t recognise it at first but slowly it dawned on me.

  It was me.

  Was it? Am I here? Or did I die? That’s it, I must have died. That’s it, I had died and yesterday was but a mere last-breath dream. Or even worse, I was still alive. I was still a patient. And I was still ill. Very ill. Nothing had changed. Nothing at all. Nothing was special. Nothing was unique. Just the opposite in fact. The magic carpet had dumped me back here and pushed my face firmly back into the grim dirt of reality. This hellish hospitalised reality. Despite the positivity of yesterday, despite the hope of yesterday, despite the epiphany of yesterday, today I was back in hell. Or worse, living purgatory.

  I flat-lined the morning, desperately trying to fuel myself on yesterday’s memory. That almost worked. Almost. But not quite. Gradually the early morning darkness gave way to a numbing void. I was staring into space feeling frozen and empty. And just as I was contemplating the longest Sunday in the universe, the most beauteous thing happened. The ward door was flung open and eight of my closest friends arrived. Almost literally straight from the wedding.

  Surprise!

  A post-wedding Sunday afternoon party!

  I’M NORMAL

  My gnarly little heart exploded. The darkness vanished. The seven-year-old me demanded all the sweets in the store. All at the same time.

  I ate my friends up with the voracity of a fucking raptor. The ‘afternoon after the night before’ went by in a flash. The wedding had shed all the awkwardness some of my friends had had about confronting my condition.

  Today, I was normal. For a couple of hours at least, I was more normal than something really, really normal.

  And we chatted around my bed, wandered around the hospital, visited the café – which was ‘rather OK for a hospital café’ – returned to the ward, laughed, chatted, reminisced, chatted, laughed. Did I mention we laughed? And because they were my friends (my friends who’d witnessed me dancing like a crazed fucker the night before), who got it, and got me, I didn’t need to do too much of the talking. Thank fuck. As it was pretty painful. Talking, that is. They were happy to just chat and chat and chat. However, the longer the afternoon went on, the chattier I became. The pain had all but disappeared. For that one afternoon only, I was ulcer-free. And pain-free. And chemo-free. And cancer-free. I was invincible.

  I am immune to reality. My bubble can’t be burst. I am floating on a sea of calm and chat and joy and laughter and hysteria. Calm AND hysteria. That’s got to be a cocktail everybody needs to try. It is my drug of choice. I immerse myself in it to the utter max. This euphoria of normality MUST NEVER end. It will not end. It doesn’t get better than this, right? It can’t.

  And just as I was surfing a wave higher than I ever imagined possible, the words that I knew were coming, came. I thought that if I talked forever without a breath that somehow, somehow those words wouldn’t ever appear.

  Those words, man. Those words. Those fucking words.

  ‘Look, Raz, I think we need to take off in a few minutes.’

  ‘Yes, us too, sadly.’

  ‘Shit, is that the time? Where did it go? Us too, I’m afraid.’

  Ignore it, Raz. Ignore it. Ignore it. Ignore it. Keep on floating. Embrace your ecstasy. You are pain-free. You are cancer-free. Be entertaining. Be funny. Be inappropriate. Be entertaining, funny and inappropriate and they may stay. Continue being ‘fuck-you, cancer’ and they may not leave. They may cancel all their arrangements forever and this moment will linger and linger and linger forever. It will not fade into the nothingness of just a memory. Be all those things and more and they will stay and this euphoria will stay and today will stay and tomorrow will never ever come.

  But they didn’t stay. They began to gather up their coats and bags and stuff. Their slow procession to the exit had begun. And even that was part of the exquisiteness of this moment because they were all genuinely pleased they’d come (I don’t think it was necessarily their number-one choice of venue for a hungover Sunday afternoon) as they could see how much it meant to me.

  They would walk away from the hospital with a vicarious swagger.

  STAY BRAVE

  And my face stayed brave during the goodbyes as I knew it was really important to show them how genuinely grateful I was that they had come and how much it meant to me. I am not good at doing any of that stuff, even now, so when I do remember to do it, I do it hard! And I didn’t want anything to sour their memory of this moment. I wanted it to be as special for them as it was for me. So I knew it was my job to enable them to leave on a bit of a floating vibe, too. And any chink in my exhilaration would put a chink in theirs and I wouldn’t let that happen. So I did my job and sparkled till the last.

  And then they were gone. They were gone and the silence was thunderous.

  But the post-show glow still remained.

  I sat on my bed in peaceful silence with the rest of the ward a blur and reflected on the beauty of the last thirty-six hours. I had defied my own odds, defeated the mighty force of the oncologists, broken a few rules, made it to the wedding, made it out of the wedding, been simultaneously told off and looked after by Nurse Simon (still feels right) and hosted my own wedding comedown party. Not bad for ailing alien cancer boy.

  SQUEEZE

  And as I was patting myself on the back reflecting on the wonderful oddness of life, I felt a hand begin to slide gently through the pit of my stomach. It crept slowly through my torso, twisting as it went. I knew exactly what was going on but I was powerless to stop it. The hand slithered further and further up my body until it calmly but firmly took hold of my throat and began to squeeze. I couldn’t even begin to fight it. It was too forceful. Too intent. Too direct. I had lost any strength I thought I had. It began to squeeze harder and harder until I almost couldn’t breathe. I could breathe enough to stay alive but not enough to not want to die. And as I sat on my bed, the hospital ward exploded. A gallery of grotesques sat staring at me and laughing at me and ridiculing me. This seemed to go on for more than ever. I slowly realised I had become the one thing I never wanted to be. A cliché. The hand had me in the uncontrollable grip of loneliness. I was alone. And only clichés were there to keep me company. I alone was fighting this illness and, despite everyone around me wanting to try and be there and be helpful, they couldn’t help me in moments like this. It was just me and my clichés. This was a prison with an indefinite sentence. This man was an island. I was back on a lonely road to oblivion. My friends w
ere out in the world now, choosing to do whatever they were choosing to do. And I was here, in the midst of this lunacy. In a world of pain. Alone. And riddled with cancer and clichés.

  REFUSE THE TEARS

  And it was late Sunday afternoon. And late Sunday afternoons always feel a bit shit. And this aloneness that was gripping my throat gradually extended to every fibre of me. And it was choking me. It’s the oddest kind of loneliness. Like you’re crawling through the Sahara on your hands and knees with no water and nobody around for miles and miles except a tiny screen in the corner of the sky that is showing you how beautiful and cool and charmed everybody else’s life appears to be.

  And for the first time since I was diagnosed, I just wanted it all to end. It wasn’t special. I wasn’t special. At all. I didn’t want to cope. The pain was irresistible and all-consuming. Tears didn’t seem enough for this moment. I refused the tears. Which made the pain even more concentrated. The pain swirled around inside me, prodding and pushing my skin till I felt like an inflated space hopper.

  At any moment I will burst and little bits of me will be scattered around the Marsden ward and it will be all over and that can only be a good thing because this pain is too much, and however tough I thought I was and however much I preach the word of enjoying cancer, this pain disproves all of that and shows me to be the cancer fraud I never thought I was.

  And then the tears came.