By Your Side

by Jason Carrasco

  I was true to my word. I circulated just enough to be a good host, but I gave the majority of my attention to Cass. I took a selfie of us together, and at the end of the night I posted it to my Facebook page with the note, ‘Wouldn’t want to spend my birthday with anyone else.’ That pleased her and she posted a copy of the same photo with the message, ‘Happy Birthday to the most amazing guy, ily.’ (For those who don’t know, ily is text speak for ‘I love you.’)

  And then, because she would do anything for a laugh, including publicly teasing her beloved dad on Facebook when he was getting into a bit of One Direction on the car radio, she posted another photo. This was of a mini hair straightener I had. My hair wasn’t long but it was very curly, and I liked to tame it into a different look every now and then. It wasn’t something I felt comfortable talking to anyone about, but now there it was for all the world to see. Fortunately, I too could see the funny side and I laughed as hard as Cass did.

  Chapter Thirteen

  In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent then love?

  – Igor Stravinsky

  I’d really worked myself up by the time I told Cass my idea for the CASNAS film project. I’d thought about the questions she might have about why we weren’t doing the book together anymore and what was the big hurry anyway and all the rest of it.

  I needn’t have worried, she looked over my cardboard sheets and listened to what I’d said, loved the idea right from the start and didn’t ask any of those awkward questions I could never have answered honestly.

  What I couldn’t say to her was, Every time I look into your eyes I think you are the most amazing and beautiful person I’ve ever come across. You are my hero and the reason I’m still here with a smile on my face. Everyone tells me you’re going to die, but I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to see you in pain anymore. It hurts to see you like this. But instead of denying reality like I have so often before, I’m going to do what you showed me to do. I’m going to fight. I fought for my life, and now I’ll fight for yours. Maybe I can’t save you in the same way. But maybe I can capture your message of hope, love and compassion and send it out to others who are fighting their own battles. People need your light, they need your sunny optimism and unbelievable courage to inspire them, before it’s too late. I’m so thankful for you, Cass. And I love you dearly. I wish I could tell you how much.

  Cass was excited about the idea of helping other young cancer patients. She picked up a pen and paper and started mapping out her own thoughts. Her idea was that the film we made would be part of a website, which would also include a photo gallery of young people living with cancer and those who had survived it, inspirational quotes to help people keep fighting, text that expanded on the stories of the people who appeared in the video, and more. It made me uneasy to think of coming out about something so private. No guy wants to talk to the world about losing a testicle. But I knew it was the only way. And as long as I remembered who I was doing it for, I could conquer my fears and insecurities.

  Cass was so fired up that she got straight to work on it. She found a make-your-own-website template and in the early hours of the morning sent me a copy of it with the message, ‘Tell me how good I am! I’ve been up all night and I haven’t stopped thinking about this. All we need now is to make the video, add some photos and change the title of the web page.’

  I had decided to leave my job. As much as I tried to put what had happened behind me, I could never seem to capture the enthusiasm I’d once had for the place. So I handed in my notice and moved to a full-time uni load, but that still left plenty of time for working on the project with Cass.

  I’d looked up questionnaires online and put together a list of things I thought might work really well. My parents had an old video camera and tripod. I set it up in my living room and we sat down to do the first lot of filming. I thought it would be really easy – Cass just had to answer my questions and we’d get enough for the whole first part of the video. With the camera focused on her and myself out of frame I asked things like, ‘What gets you excited about life?’ and ‘What can you do today that you weren’t capable of a year ago?’ and ‘Do you think crying is a sign of weakness or strength?’

  But Cass, who could talk to me from dawn till dusk and still not run out of things to say, couldn’t think of what to reply. ‘I don’t know, Jase,’ she said. ‘I just don’t know.’

  I told her to take her time and have a think and we’d go ahead. She did eventually attempt to answer all the questions, but her responses were full of half-thoughts and unfinished sentences and bits of anecdotes. There really wasn’t anything in there we could use in a film. I didn’t get impatient, but I was really puzzled as to why she was having trouble. She said, ‘It’s really hard. You have a go.’ So we swapped places. She was right, it was difficult. In fact, I did no better than she’d done, and I’d been the one who chose the questions.

  I realised that Cass was spot on when she’d said she couldn’t come up with what I was hoping for because the situation felt too artificial, like a box she couldn’t squeeze her thoughts into. If I had any hope of capturing her personality, I was going to have to come up with another approach. We thought that maybe it would be easier to give answers in writing, when you had more time to reflect on things. So we sent the questions off to the young people we knew who had been through cancer – my friend who’d developed testicular cancer, Bec and some of the girls Cass had seen at Wharf4Ward, and other people she’d met during treatment and stayed in touch with via Facebook.

  Everyone said they were more than happy to participate but they too struggled to answer such abstract questions. There was also a practical problem in that they were scattered far and wide around Sydney and beyond. When it came to actually filming them the logistics would be extremely tricky.

  By now it was mid-May and I was stressing over the project not coming together in the way I’d hoped but Cass was totally relaxed, even though she often felt very physically unwell thanks to the chemo drugs. I’d go and visit her, to hang out and keep her company, but also to talk about what we could do next, and she’d be green around the gills after vomiting but she’d just laugh it off.

  She loved a good gross-out joke. If I happened to arrive straight after she’d been sick she would make as if to hand me her vomit bag, saying, ‘I saved you some.’ It was her way of not letting the indignities of her physical state get to her. If I started getting tense about how we could get back on track with the plan she’d shrug and say, ‘C’mon, Jase, let’s just wing it.’

  No matter how crap she felt she had an iron-clad rule: whenever I was coming over I had to text her and let her know first. That was so she could make sure she was there to greet me with a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I told her so many times she didn’t have to do that, and sometimes she looked so weak I worried she was going to sink to the ground before I made it out of the car, but she never did and I knew things were going to be okay if Cass was there waiting for me on her front porch.

  While I was still figuring out how I could go about filming Cass herself, I asked her to tell me about some of the other young cancer patients she’d met and inspired. We went through her photos and she told me all their different stories. These were people I wanted to approach in due course to talk about what it was like to be a kid or teenager going through that experience and about their friendships with Cass. There were so many great stories, but the one that touched me the most was about a girl who had been eight years old when she was in the Children’s Hospital at the same time as Cass.

  They’d first met during one of the recovery days in Cass’s chemo cycle. Cass’s extended family had come and spent the whole day with her, so by evening she was exhausted, unsure if she could even get through a shower before bed. But as she was preparing herself to get up, Cass saw a young, frail, bald girl staring at her through the window from the corridor. She smiled and waved but the girl just stared back. Cass pressed t
he buzzer for the nurse to check if everything was okay, but the girl had disappeared. Still gathering her energy, Cass kept an eye out and 20 minutes or so later the girl reappeared, only this time she was crying.

  Cass went over to her, gave her a hug and asked what her name was and what was wrong. The girl said her name was Phoebe and through her tears said, ‘Why can’t I have long hair like you!’

  Cass took off the wig she’d put on for the family visit and said, ‘Look, sweetie, it’s a wig. I’m just like you.’ She then put the wig on Phoebe, who stopped crying and found the nearest mirror to admire the way the hair twirled as she turned her head. Cass let her keep the wig for the next day or two and Phoebe walked around the corridors, making sure as many people as possible saw her glamorous new look. She also began spending time with Cass, coming to her room for hugs and smiles.

  Cass asked her mother to bring in all her other wigs – short, long, red, blonde, blue, you name it – and every few days she would surprise Phoebe with a new one that she could borrow for as long as she wanted to. That simple distraction and bit of fun – and the friendship that came with it – made all the difference to Phoebe, who was like a different girl. Although to hear Cass tell it, she was the one who gained the most from the bond they’d formed.

  I put Phoebe on my interview wishlist, but I was still looking for someone who might be able to trade stories and experiences with Cass. Depending how it went, maybe the two of them could have a conversation on film, but at the very least it might help Cass with what she was going through. I tried to explain to Gloria that I thought her daughter would open up more to another young woman who had been through something similar, that maybe she would talk about all those fears and disappointments she never spoke about otherwise. ‘If she was to tell something to anyone, Jason,’ Gloria said, ‘it would be to you.’

  That meant a lot to me, but I knew Cass kept her courage up around me. She didn’t let her guard down the way I had so many times with her. To my constant amazement, even during the worst of her treatment, she refused to complain about being scared.

  On Facebook I came across a girl our age who looked like she might be perfect. I’ll call her Julie. A friend of mine had ‘liked’ a photo of hers and so her details came up on my newsfeed. Judging by her posts she had a lot in common with Cass in that she was bubbly and optimistic. Like Cass, she was also extremely attractive and stylish. She’d had leukaemia when she was younger but was in remission and was happy to talk about her experiences, and she lived nearby. Cass agreed Julie seemed like a really good person to reach out to. We contacted her via Facebook and made a time to meet up face to face.

  I started the conversation by telling Julie a bit about myself and Cass and what we’d been through together. In turn, Julie openly talked about her experiences and how tough it had been on her. The three of us felt an instant connection. I told her about how strongly Cass and I supported You Can, based on our feelings of isolation. And that the project was named in recognition of how important Cass’s influence had been for me, and how we now wanted to make things better for others in a similar situation. Julie understood completely. She had gone through the majority of her treatment on her own, longing to find someone with whom she could openly share things. She promised to do what she could to help this great cause.

  Around the same time Cass’s sister, Andrea, had her first child, a boy named Jack. Cass was overjoyed for Andrea and so excited to meet her nephew (although she didn’t miss the opportunity for a joke: one of the first things she bought him was a little top with the slogan, ‘I may be cute but you should see my aunty’). She and Gloria went back up to Queensland to spend some time with the new addition and ended up staying there for two weeks. Cass fell in love with Jack and would cuddle him and gaze at him for hours. She was very happy.

  While Cass was away, Julie and I met up at a café to talk more about the project. She totally got what I was aiming to do and was really easy to talk to. The conversation led to our memories of treatment. She, too, had been a patient in an adult ward and we chatted about how horrible that experience was. Although we were only just getting to know one another, it felt like we had a deep connection and understood each other very well. In the car on the way home I told her about my motivation in starting the project and got really emotional. I confided in her Cass’s prognosis and how much I didn’t want to believe it. ‘Everyone is telling me to prepare for the death of a girl I love, but how can I do that? Why isn’t there something we can do to change things? You’ve met her, you know how incredible she is.’

  Julie folded me into a hug. ‘I really need your help,’ I said. ‘I need you to be there for Cass and give her support. If I know Cass has that kind of help, I’ll be able to focus on getting her message of hope to all the people out there.’

  Talking about this with someone who really understood was a huge release of pressure. Julie was so compassionate and kind and comforting. It was as if a bubble that had been growing inside my chest for months had burst and I could breathe again. Before I got out of the car I said, ‘Promise me you’ll always remind me about CASNAS. Please. I’ll never be able to forgive myself if I don’t do this for Cass. She’s too special just to go like this, Julie. I can’t accept it. I won’t! People need to hear about this beautiful girl and I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure of it.’

  But despite my determination to get the project done and the goodwill of other people, it had stalled. I just didn’t know how to achieve my aims. I’d stumbled along this far, but now I needed expert help. So I put something on paper that I thought would get me the backing of an organisation that could make it a reality. In it I described Cass – ‘She has cancer, yet she meets life full on’ – then wrote about what I wanted CASNAS to be:

  ‘It’s an inspiration. It’s about connecting with people, including those who are struggling with an illness that is dragging them down, isolating them, and making them feel helpless. CASNAS is about bringing people together so that, as a strong community, no-one needs to feel alone … This is more than “just a cancer story”, it’s about the human spirit and it’s about how we form communities with other people who need us.’

  I felt pretty good about the material, but I had no idea how different it looked to the kind of professional proposals organisations would have been expecting to see. I still didn’t have a car, but Dad was as supportive as ever and offered to drive me to Sydney for meetings.

  Our first trip was so I could see Dr Antoinette Anazodo from the Sydney Youth Cancer Centre. I got out my sheets of cardboard and other pieces of paper, spread them across her desk and gave her my impassioned pitch.

  Antoinette heard me out, then explained that it wasn’t something the centre could help with as their work focused on medical and psychological treatment and support. But she did suggest contacting Sony Foundation since this was right up their alley and I already had a relationship with them. As a back-up, she also gave me a list of other youth-oriented charities that would be worth trying and wished me the very best.

  I followed her advice and got in touch with Sony Foundation. The CEO, Sophie Ryan, agreed to meet with me, so onwards to Sydney we went. Again, I pulled out my various sheets and spread them across the desk and went through my spiel. Sophie said she admired my passion but this was a huge project that would require hours of studio time, and at the moment they were unable to fund the project.

  I was deeply disappointed but told myself I need to follow Cass’s lead, pick myself up and keep going. So I did, trying to set up meetings with every other organisation I could think of. I emailed many charities and film producers without even getting a reply. Another film company for which I’d been given contact details got back to me and said they didn’t see potential in the CASNAS idea, but if Cass was available they would like her to appear in a charity film they were planning. I worked my way right through the list Antoinette had given me and met nothing but dead ends.

  Cass had started h
er second round of oncothermia and was back into the routine of travelling to Sydney three days a week, even though the chemo drugs were knocking her around. I felt that I was letting her down by not being able to find a backer for CASNAS no matter how hard I tried. What if, despite all my big ideas, it just never got off the ground?

  I stayed positive around Cass. She knew I was frustrated but I never let on that I was afraid the whole thing would come to nothing. The only person I felt I could really say that to was Julie. She was a great sounding board for my doubts and anxieties, and always made me feel like everything would be OK. She had faith in my ability to stick with it and get there in the end.

  At one point I was chatting to a mate at uni about Cass and Julie and saying how lucky I was to know two such wonderful girls, and by the way, what a bonus that they happened to be so stunning. I showed him photos of them both. His response was, ‘Hell, dude, I want cancer!’ I laughed my head off at that perfectly timed bit of dark humour.

  I was driving Julie home one night after we’d been out for coffee to have a catch-up and talk about who else I could approach. We were sitting outside in the car, which I’d borrowed from Dad, finishing up our conversation. She knew I was frustrated about CASNAS and she was giving me a final pep talk for the night when suddenly we were kissing. It was so long since I’d been romantic with a girl that it felt absolutely wonderful, yet at the same time it felt terribly, terribly wrong. I pulled away. I felt like I was cheating on Cass, yet she and I had never kissed like this.

  I knew Cass loved me and I loved her, but I was so confused about what that meant and what love between us could be. I’d never felt such an intense desire to want to be there for someone in my life. I’d said, ‘I love you,’ to girlfriends I’d had at school, but this was different. There had never been a period in the time Cass and I had together when one of us wasn’t fighting for our life.