by Lisa Lynch
Given that just eight months previous, I was having a lovely, carefree, Corona-filled time in Mexico, and I was now flat out in pyjamas on my sofa, recovering from some pretty hardcore cancer treatment, I think a few flip-outs can be forgiven. But after hearing about my new kind of prescription, people were suddenly over-concerned about me – not least my folks. (‘How are you today? Really? But how are you in yourself?’) Clearly, the word ‘anti-depressant’ set off the same alarms in their heads as it did in mine, and I could see them making all the wrong conclusions. ‘Is she depressed? Should we go easy on her? Do you think we ought to say that?’ When Mum and Dad visited us the following week, I made some God-awful low-fat cookies that were tantamount to eating chocolate-chip jiffy-bags, and yet nobody dared admit how bad they were. It infuriated me. What made me even tetchier were the presumptions about my mental state, and my crabbiness was giving people even more reason to think that I was depressed.
And so, with the knowledge that my family were more likely to believe what I wrote than what I said, I took to my blog. ‘Let me say this for the record,’ I announced. ‘I. Am. Not. Depressed. What I am is shell-shocked and pissed off and actually pretty angry (still) that The Bullshit chose me from its one-in-three line-up. And, I’ll admit, all of those crappy feelings have made me prone to the occasional mood swing. But I’m not suddenly teetering on the brink of despair. Of course there’s nothing wrong with being depressed; there’s no shame in it. I’m just not, is all. I’d be equally narked if you tried to tell me I preferred The Stones to The Beatles, that I was bad at spelling or that I was a Nottingham Forest fan. Now there’s a thing to send a girl to the brink.’
CHAPTER 29
Restoration
February 2009
The last time we saw Smiley Surgeon it was snowing, and Central London looked as beautiful as I’d ever seen it. The usually busy waiting room at the hospital was deserted thanks to cancelled appointments, and the reception staff were giddy with the work-light excitement of two kids who’d been snowed out of school. P and I arrived early (only the second time in my life I’ve managed this; the first being our wedding day) and bagged the best seats directly outside the door to Smiley Surgeon’s consultation room.
He’s got a tough job, old SS. In one appointment he’s telling someone they have breast cancer, the next he’s congratulating them on getting so far through it (or, better still, letting them know there’s nothing to worry about). And, from the looks on the faces of the couple who saw him immediately before us, that woman had clearly been thrown down the rabbit-hole of the former category.
She stared straight ahead as she walked out of the room on auto-pilot, subconsciously tearing the edges off a crumpled tissue. Her husband followed close behind, his hand resting helplessly in the small of her back, carrying his wife’s coat and handbag because it was the only helpful thing he could do. And, just as we did after hearing the same news, they turned left out of SS’s door and walked towards a room down the corridor where a core biopsy would be done to assess the extent of her tumour. As I wondered whether the woman would also come to loathe watercolour paintings as a result of the artwork on the wall of that room, I tutted, shook my head and turned to P. ‘Poor sods,’ I whispered. ‘They won’t be able to enjoy the snow now.’
But, for P and me at least, London looked even more beautiful when we came out of our appointment, having heard from Smiley Surgeon that he was impressed with my attitude throughout treatment (I didn’t reveal the extent of my rant last week) and that my radiated skin was healing well enough for him to book in a date for my first reconstructive surgery. A vote of confidence from SS is like getting a gold star from the teacher you’ve been busting your gut to suck up to all term. And since it’s no secret how much I adore the man, I’m not embarrassed to boast about it. (Ner ner ner ner ner.)
And so, the chapter-ending goal of Operation New Tit has been scheduled. I’ll be going in for the main part in a month’s time – that’s the surgery to ensure a better shape for my boob (at the moment I fear it looks like a clenched fist), fit me with an A-list implant worthy of a modest-busted Dolly Parton (‘fit’ is the wrong terminology, I’m sure – that makes me sound like a BMW going in for a service), and create a new nipple. And that’s the part that fascinates me most.
In short, what Smiley Surgeon will be doing is lifting the skin that lies where my nipple was (the skin that originally came from my back), then twisting it into a point which he’ll fix in place to form a small mound that pretty much matches the height of my right nipple. It’ll be higher than a bee sting, but flatter than a coconut macaroon. More of a nub, I suppose. (A nupple, if you will.) As Smiley Surgeon described this to me (not in confectionery terms, I should add), he opened his suit jacket slightly and mimed the process by pointing to his own nipple, in much the same way that you might say ‘spiral staircase’ and do that twirly motion with your index finger. I couldn’t help but titter like a pubescent boy at the back of the class. P looked mortified.
Right now, here in my white vest, I look like the second image in a spot-the-difference game. Something’s wrong with the picture, but you can’t quite put your finger on what. But, like a once-glorious but now destroyed building, I’m slowly being restored to my former glory. A bit like The Hawley Arms after the Camden fire. It’ll never be quite the same again, but hopefully the regulars won’t be put off going back.
*
THANKS TO MY poorly timed panic attacks and our appointment with the Glamorous Assistant putting paid to any end-of-treatment revelry, P and I decided instead to celebrate something different: normality. With a month before my reconstructive surgery, we had a welcome break from hospital visits in which to stick a middle finger up to The Bullshit in the only way we knew how, and so we did our darndest to get on with normal life.
Having seen lots of our family over the past few months thanks to them being around to help out whenever necessary, it was time to get reacquainted with our friends, and so we invited a bunch of them round for a bit of an open-house at our flat one Saturday. It was an opportunity to catch up with all the people who’d been wanting to visit, but who we hadn’t been able to see because The Bullshit got in the way. It was what my mum would call a ‘gathering’. But then she’ll do anything to avoid the word ‘party’. Gathering implies Monopoly and Twiglets and the last tube home. Party implies gatecrashers and irritated neighbours and fag burns in the sofa. But, given our worktop-long row of spirit bottles, a table full of cava, the Beastie Boys played at volume and the fact that I was wearing heels indoors, I think we can safely label our get-together the latter. (We had Twiglets as well, mind. I mean, bloody hell, it’s not a party without Twiglets. Not even a gathering.)
And, as is customary at parties, I got drunk. Which, I’m sure, is just a normal Saturday night to many of you. But not for this cancer patient. For me, getting drunk at home with mates was positively throw-your-TV-out-the-window, set-fire-to-a-million-quid, drive-a-car-into-a-swimming-pool rock ’n’ roll. Of course having had The Bullshit hardly does wonders for your drinking prowess (making me the perfect credit-crunch date) and, judging by my mammoth hangover the following day, it doesn’t do an awful lot for your ability to shake it off, either. I felt sick, couldn’t hold my brew for shaking, spoke in a voice that you could gravel a driveway with and had a head so painful I felt like I’d had a run-in with Mike Tyson. Man, I felt like hell. But it was the sweetest hangover I’d ever had.
Since June, whenever I’d felt like shit, it had been for an equally shitty reason. But feeling like shit because I’d drunk too much (translation: a modest amount for most people) was marvellous; my emancipatory rebirth into normal life. And, baby, I worked it. I went to bed in full make-up. I made a grease-tastic bacon, egg and tomato ketchup sandwich when I got up. I watched sport on the sofa in the clothes I fell asleep in, then retired to my mattress when sitting upright became too much effort. I watched the Sex and the City movie twice (second time with director’s co
mmentary) and ate an entire box of Green & Black’s chocolates. By myself. I caught up on Coronation Street over a curry with egg fried rice and chips, then polished off the prawn crackers during an episode of Shameless. It was a glorious, lardy Sunday, and I went to bed early with a contented smile on my face, nestling my cheeks into a pillow of eyeliner-smudge and prawn-cracker dust. ‘This,’ I thought, ‘is what normal people do.’
My flirt with normality didn’t stop at the weekend. Just when I thought the reckless abandon of my cancer shackles had reached its Twiglet-eating, dancing-in-the-living-room pinnacle, I pushed ordinary life to its limits and went back to work for a few hours for the first time in months. And, lawks, things had changed since I’d been holed up in my Bullshit bubble. Lots of lovely Soho shops had closed. There was a new security code on the front door. Different faces sat at different desks. I had a new log-in. Same old weak tea in chipped mugs, mind, but there was something quite poetic about that. But while I was busy figuring out what had altered in the office, others there were more intrigued as to what had altered about me.
‘So, having cancer,’ asked Kath over a bowl of miso soup when she took me out for lunch that day, ‘do you think it’s changed you?’
Without really thinking, I immediately answered ‘yes’, and launched into a monologue about my newly lowered tolerance for tears, particularly on reality TV shows: whinging on Masterchef because you ballsed up your halibut and all you’ve ever wanted from life is to ‘spread joy’ with your food; crying at American Idol auditions because you’ve ‘been through hell and back’ to get to the second round; sobbing in front of Sralan on The Apprentice because being ‘successful in business’ (whatever that means) is your life’s ambition.
‘I mean, come on,’ I said. ‘Find some sodding perspective!’
‘Ha! I reckon you’re just the same girl you ever were,’ smiled Kath.
But while that was pretty surface-skimming and flippant in answer, the ‘have I changed?’ question was one I spent a lot of time thinking about. Of course you could argue that everything changes you in one way or another. A different job changes you. A new handbag changes you. Hell, a good shit changes you. But I’m talking about the more profound changes. Am I a better person as a result of having cancer? Do I have a new-found gratitude for each dawn? Have I uncovered a cosmic significance to all of this? No. I don’t have a new appreciation for the scent of a rose or the taste of champagne or the beauty of a discarded newspaper tumbling along a windy Soho pavement. Cancer may have made me many things, but spiritually enlightened ain’t one of them. Zen and the Art of Cancer this is not.
I had the same cancer debrief in my last (and possibly final) session with Mr Marbles. After confirming that he was 100 per cent with me on the I’m Not Depressed, It’s My Cancer Treatment debate (take that, antidepressants), he asked me to list the good things that had come out of the previous few months.
‘Nothing good has happened as a result of this,’ I spat.
‘I’d challenge that,’ he replied, in that lovely, noncommittal therapist-speak that basically translates as ‘stop talking shite’. And, of course, he was right, damn him. (Maybe he should form a tag-team with Always-Right Breast Nurse and go on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?)
I just didn’t want to give anyone the false impression that breast cancer could in some way be a good thing. Nor did I want to give it credit for the better things that had come out of my cancer experience. So instead me and Marbles settled on a compromise: of course I’ve changed as a result of having breast cancer, and a number of pleasant things have undoubtedly come along as a consequence – but, with or without The Bullshit (just as with or without the therapy), I’d have got there eventually. Cancer was just the catalyst, is all. It just got me there faster. And, like taking the Heathrow Express instead of the tube, it cost me a fair bit more, too.
Foolishly, I tried to talk over the has-anything-good-come-from-cancer question with Jamie, too.
‘Frankly, sis, I think you’ve done us all a favour,’ he said on the phone the night before our treatment-is-over family trip to Rome. ‘Because if you hadn’t got cancer, we might not have been going away this weekend.’
‘Riiight. So you’re saying that my getting cancer was merely a selfless act to ensure that you got a mini-break?’
‘Exactly. You orchestrated the whole thing. And, on behalf of the family, I’d like to say that we’re very grateful.’
CHAPTER 30
What’s my age again?
March 2009
Probably conscious that its days are numbered, I’ve been taking the wig option more often of late, despite the fact that what’s growing underneath makes wearing it even more uncomfortable. Plus, I reckon I’ll miss making that relieved ‘ahh’ noise whenever I take it off. (Also applicable to being released from handcuffs, the first sip of lager on a hot day and taking off your high heels in the cab home.) Back in my early wig-wearing days – when my hair was falling out fast, but I wasn’t quite bald (the Bobby Charlton stage, if you will) – I bought a little lycra cap that’s specially designed for wig-wearers to flatten what remains beneath the syrup, ensuring a better wig-fit. It was a bit like pulling a pop sock over my head. If I’d yanked it down over my eyes, I’d have been one swag bag and a stripy jumper away from turning into a cartoon bank robber. But the pop sock worked, and I suspect that, if I keep up the current wig-wearing status quo with the barnet I’m now growing, I’ll be forced to head back to one of the wig shops I swore I’d never again set foot in to buy myself a new hair-flattening device.
I’ve not ditched the headscarf altogether. It’s just that, lately, I’ve found myself in a few wig-necessary situations. Passport control, for one. What’s the protocol on hair loss and passport photos? (See, that’s the kind of thing those ‘welcome to cancer’ leaflets should tell you. I want practicalities, dammit, not a namby-pamby side-panel on ‘understanding your emotions’.) In my passport photo, I’m a tanned lass with long, blonde hair (who, inexplicably, looks like she’s overdone the valium). But the reality now is, of course, different (I look like I’ve overdone the Veet). So does that necessitate a new passport photo? Would they stop me if I went through airport security in a headscarf, and publicly humiliate me by forcing me to run it through the X-ray machine with my boots, then carry it on board in a see-through plastic bag? Are headscarves now up there with matches, tweezers and copies of the Qur’an as terrorist-suspicion-arousing signals?
All of this only occurred to me the night before our trip to Rome so, to save my blushes, I reached for the rug in the hope that it’d just look like I’d had a haircut, and not had my head shaved by some loony School For Terrorists. Not that the wig stopped me acting suspiciously when I handed over my passport, mind. I put on my very best show of I-get-on-flights-to-Italy-all-the-time nonchalance (chewing gum + headphones + fiddling with iPhone = seasoned traveller), but couldn’t do much to disguise the shaking hands, sweaty palms and hot flush. They let me through anyway, of course. I’m sure even airport security staff would rather mess with a terrorist than an early-menopausal woman.
Then there’s the recommended wig-wearing business of being a tourist in Rome. And not just because I suspect the fashion-conscious Italians would be more receptive to a Hermès headscarf than my H&M one. Nope, tourism = photo-taking, and I was buggered if I was going to look back on family photos of everyone gathered around an obvious-looking cancer patient posing unsteadily outside the Colosseum, like a doddery old dear on day release from the nursing home. There are very few photos in existence of me in a headscarf, and I’m keeping it that way.
All that said, I found out the hard way that certain city-sightseeing situations are less rug-receptive than others. Tourism Tip For Cancer Patients #1: wigs and open-top buses don’t mix.
*
‘DID YOU TELL your family you were going to do this?’ asked Tills.
‘And ruin a lovely weekend in Rome? God no.’
‘But your mum’s going
to freak, no?’
‘Probably, yeah. But bugger it, Tills. I’m doing this for me. Anyway, it’s pretty daft that I’m nearly thirty and sitting here worrying about what my mum’s going to think.’
‘Yeah, maybe. But it’s also pretty daft that you’re having hot flushes at thirty, too,’ she said, handing me a magazine to fan myself with as we drank our coffee.
‘So I’m doing it,’ I said.
‘You’re really doing it,’ repeated Tills.
Being able to get back to the kind of chatting-over-coffee, weekend-away familiarity that I’d been craving for so long was undoubtedly wonderful, but in many ways it also served as a reminder of just how much had altered before I had been able to get that normality back. When your life has changed in such a gargantuan way, there’s a sense of wanting to change something else to reflect it – be it your haircut or your career or your relationship. And so, with my hair still stalling, my job ready and waiting for me to return to and my marriage on the Not-To-Be-Messed-With list, I guess that’s how I ended up leaving that coffee shop with Tills and walking into a tattoo studio.
Since treatment finished, I had been thinking a lot about my mum’s favourite poem – ‘Warning’, by Jenny Joseph – and its subject of growing old in outrageous style. Thanks to a sudden inability to know how to act my age, I especially identified with the line ‘and make up for the sobriety of my youth’. Here was I planning debauched weeks at Glastonbury and rapping into my toothbrush one moment; then the next turning purple from a hot flush as my mate fanned me with a copy of Take a Break. It was time to do something about it.
And yes, getting a tattoo was probably fifteen years too late for teenage rebellion. But then, I figured, nothing about my ageing process was working to rule any more, so going from a hot flush to an ink-filled needle seemed strangely appropriate. That morning, an hour’s menopause-related Googling had confirmed that it was the right thing to do. During my search, I discovered a ‘menopause scoresheet’, on which you could log the severity of your symptoms and learn … well, nothing you didn’t already know. But at the top of the page was an image of three smiling fifty-something women, by way of we’re-all-in-it-together reassurance. One of them was even wearing sports gear, clearly in preparation for an afternoon of tea and tennis at the Menopausal Ladies’ Club, of which I was now a scoresheet-approved member.