by Lisa Lynch
So, despite his words, I worked myself up into a panic after recounting to my family and friends the words that Smiley Surgeon had told me. Was I speaking too soon? Should I shut up about it? I thought I was healthy once before – was The Bullshit going to come back to bite me on the ass again? I hated raining on my own parade in this way, because, hell, this was amazing news. Better than that – it was the best news in the history of the known world. But it was also just another false finish.
It’s a question of semantics – something in which the medical world is deviously skilled, and in which I was hurriedly having to coach other people.
‘Wow! You’re cancer free!’ they’d say.
‘Um, not exactly, no,’ I’d say.
‘But your surgeon said …?’
‘He said there was no sign of cancer in my left breast.’
‘And isn’t that the same thing?’
‘Unfortunately not, no.’
Bloody cancer. It’s a whole other language. And just as everyone around me figured they’d got the gist of it, in I’d swoop with my medical clarifications to hand them a D grade and put right their mistakes, like an annoying pedant who corrects everyone’s grammatical errors. (Oh, hang on, I’m that too.) I had no choice but to put them right, though. Because ‘no sign of cancer’ does not mean ‘cancer free’. Once you’ve had cancer, there is no ‘cancer free’.
But at the time, simply liking and lumping it fell disappointingly short of the mark. I wanted to scream, ‘I did it!’ I wanted to tell people that I ‘beat’ breast cancer. I wanted to refer to it in the past tense. But bloody, sodding, know-all medical science dictates that I can never say that. As I’ve said a hundred times before, there is no definite cure for breast cancer. There is no ‘all clear’. And so you’ve got to be happy with second place on the podium. (Kind of how I felt after Derby lost to Leicester in the play-off final of 1994, and I’ve still not got over that.)
That didn’t mean that there was nothing to celebrate, of course. The ‘it’ in ‘I did it’ just meant something different, is all. It meant that I’d seen off six successful sessions of chemo, twenty-eight successful sessions of radio, the first stage of a successful reconstruction, and that I was successfully edging ever closer to leading a more normal life. And since we all know from bitter experience that not everyone gets to celebrate those kind of successes, I decided that I was going to enjoy the moment as best I could. And so, from a lack of rooftops to scream from, I took to my blog and shouted it there instead: ‘I did it! I fucking did it!’
CHAPTER 32
Fitting image
April 2009
The last time I used my hair straighteners, I sat on them. Not with a quick glance of a jeans pocket, but flat onto bare skin, arse cheeks expertly manoeuvring themselves over the 100-degree aluminium, then lowering down carefully like a fairground grab-a-prize game. I dare say it was nature’s way of calling my hair-straightening proceedings to a halt. Because, in my quest to make good the hair that remained on my head, I wasn’t so much sleekening my locks as giving alopecia a helping hand.
Adding insult to balding injury was the corker of a burn it left on my right bum-cheek; a branding from the tribe of GHD. Two angry, parallel lines, each about three inches long, ensuring that the least attractive part of my body was granted another blemish to compete with my cellulite for unwanted beachside attention. I showed P and my folks the damage when my squeals beckoned them in. ‘You know what?’ said Mum, ever keen to find the bright side. ‘I’m sure it’ll have gone by the time you need to use those straighteners again.’ But, looking in the mirror when I got out of the shower last night, my short hair isn’t the only reminder of my Bobby Charlton period. My steroid-sculpted behind also tells a tale. Because, half-hidden by my knicker line but nevertheless visible, the bum-brand remains. Not quite as angry as before, but still obvious enough to demonstrate my idiocy to whoever’s on the next sunlounger.
Getting the straighteners out again turned out to be a tad premature, actually. It was a bit like the time I assured P I could rectify his short frizz after a ten-minute session with the appliance, but just ended up scalding his scalp. It’s not that I’m not happy to embrace my new curls (hell, any hair is better than no hair), but right now my ’do is more Brillo pad than brill. And so this week I’ll be spending the GDP of a small country on my first post-chemo cut and colour.
The advice is to wait six months after the date of your final chemo before putting any colour onto your hair. And although my appointment falls a fortnight short of that time, I’m hoping it won’t matter, since I’ve carefully chosen an environmentally aware (and therefore rinse-your-wallet-dry expensive) salon with 97 per cent natural hair colourants. Plus, since it’s been just shy of a year since I had a haircut I was happy with, I’m taking impatience to night-before-birthday levels and just. can’t. wait. any. longer. In hideous hair terms, two weeks feels like several millennia.
You’d think that I’d have got used to my short crop by now, but it still surprises me when I catch sight of my reflection. In my mind’s eye, I’ve still got hair like Jessica Rabbit. Not that I’d have admitted to that little boast before. Actually, ‘admitted to’ isn’t right – I’d never have believed it. But it’s funny how six sessions of chemo can change your mind. Now, when I look back at photos of Old Me, I realise that the ex-colleague I met in the pub not long before my diagnosis was right. Despite being perhaps the unlikeliest source of a compliment I’d ever known, he stood back and looked admiringly at my newly grown-out fringe. ‘Bloody hell, lass,’ he said, ‘Your hair’s looking gorgeous.’ And he wasn’t wrong.
My post-chemo hairdo comes as part of a carefully choreographed New Image Week, in which I’ll also be seeing a Topshop style advisor (I haven’t got a spring/summer stitch to wear, having thrown away much of last year’s wardrobe in that tearful, post-diagnosis rage), as well as investing in red lipstick for the first time, enrolling at the Alice Cooper School of Eye-liner and disguising my pasty pallor with enough St Tropez to make me look like the spawn of an Oompa Loompa. And then there’s some serious underwear shopping to be done, too. It’s going to be an expensive week. (Is it okay to use the L’Oreal excuse with your bank manager? ‘And why do you need this overdraft extension, Mrs Lynch?’ ‘Because I’m worth it.’)
I’d love to tell you that all of this is about making myself feel better. Something I’m doing just for me, because I’m long overdue some self-attention, because I’ve earned it and because it’s a damn good opportunity to test out all the looks I would never have been game enough to try pre-Bullshit. And while all of those things are indeed true, they’re not the only reasons behind the New Me. (Truth is, breast cancer or no breast cancer, I can a-l-w-a-y-s find an excuse to shop.) Just like my tattoo, New Image Week is my way of sending a message to all of the many people I’ll be seeing again in pubs and bars and cafés and restaurants and dining rooms and the office. It’s a statement: ‘Hello, I’ve changed.’ Because there’s no getting away from it. I have changed.
Not that the Old Me is completely dead and buried, mind. There might be a permanent star-shaped symbol of the New Me on the inside of my right wrist, but there’ll always be a reminder of the girl I once was on my right buttock.
*
MUCH TO MY surprise, after ditching my headscarf, I wasn’t automatically sporting the kind of coiffured crop that Kylie carried off so expertly. Instead, I had the barnet of a six-month-old baby. My hair looked like something that had happened to me. And I wanted my hair to look like I’d happened to it. So, with the help of a newsagent’s worth of women’s magazines, I decided to go blonde. Not blonde like before. Stand-up-and-take-notice blonde. Think Marilyn Monroe, Agyness Deyn, Gwen Stefani, or Gary Barlow circa 1992. That way, I figured, it would look like a hairdo that was done out of choice; on purpose – and not because cancer had forced its hairdressing hand. But by, heck, did I get it wrong.
It’s funny what people say compared to what they me
an. Whether it’s ‘we must catch up soon’ or ‘no, darling, your bum looks positively tiny’, common courtesy dictates that it’s better to avoid offending someone than it is to tell the truth. And it’s a bloody good job. Because, after what I had assumed was an expertly planned image change, there was one question I just wasn’t interested in the truthful answer to: ‘How’s my hair?’
‘I love it,’ said Tills. ‘It’s sexy.’
‘I think I’ve made a terrible mistake,’ I said as we drove from the hair appointment to my session with a Topshop style advisor.
‘Nah, no way,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘It’s just a massive change, that’s all. But that’s what you wanted, right?’
‘I thought I did,’ I replied, checking my bleached crop in the rear-view mirror. ‘But now I’ve got it, I don’t think I can carry it off.’
We’d spent a lovely girly morning at the salon, me and Tills. I’d treated her to a manicure by way of thanks for her unending support, we’d had a lovely lunch flicking through the weeklies for some fantasy clothes shopping, and we’d nattered all the way through my appointment, boring the arse off my colourist with daft stories about our cats. With Tills managing proceedings like some kind of bleaching invigilator, the colourist was careful to listen to everything I’d asked for and duly obliged. Things were going well. New Image Day was looking like a success, and with everyone around me being especially lovely and complimentary about the shock of short, platinum hair that was confidently contrasting with my black gown, there was no reason to feel anything other than chuffed. Finally, I had hair I’d chosen to have.
But, as the harsh light of day and several suspicious sideways glances expertly demonstrated, the hair I’d chosen didn’t suit me. I might have wanted a funky, punky, peroxide, statement ’do, but Lady Gaga I ain’t. And so my poker face lasted the distance from the hairdresser’s to the Topshop changing room, where Tills took a few photos of my new crop on her mobile phone, and I collapsed into sobs when I saw them, just as I had when looking at the photo of a fat lass in a wig that Ant had posted on Facebook.
The fault was entirely my own. I had got what I’d asked for: the trendy, relevant, never-would-have-tried-it-other-wise look that would tell the world how I’d changed; how I was on top of cancer; how I was ready to take on anything that life threw at me. But what I’d asked for wasn’t right. It wasn’t hair that I’d chosen to have – if I could have chosen hair, I’d have had it exactly the way it was pre-Bullshit, and not have cancer force me into a pixie crop. And I had to confront the fact that actually, I just wasn’t feeling feisty enough to carry off the look I’d thought I wanted. It was hair that stood out from the crowd – and, as it turned out, I didn’t want to stand out. It was hair that screamed confidence – and I didn’t have as much as I’d thought. It was hair that suggested its owner was cool, attractive, hot and edgy – and I’d never felt further from those things. I could talk the talk all I wanted, confidently proclaiming my new image to be the triumphant, cancer-beating look that was all mine, making me way cooler than the girl I was pre-Bullshit. But, having surrendered all the goods to back it up along with the hair I lost in the first place, this was categorically not the time to be cashing in on my confidence. It was the time to start slowly building it back up again.
Sobbing in a post-salon coffee stop with Tills and P either side of me, I kicked myself for learning nothing since the last time the three of us attempted to make the best of my hair-loss situation. ‘Here we are again,’ I thought, ‘back at my first wig-buying experience.’ Back then, I walked into the room expecting to skip out with something I loved as much as my original hair. And this time around, I’d expected exactly the same. Better yet, I wanted people to pass me in the street and think nothing of me. Not ‘ooh, is she wearing a wig?’ or ‘crikey, she’s young to be wearing a headscarf’. Not even ‘wow, look how confidently she’s carrying that crop’. Nothing. Because them thinking nothing would mean that I was no different to anyone else. And when it came down to it, that was the kind of normal I was after.
My problem wasn’t just in failing to realise that a freckly gal needs something a bit warmer than bright, white hair. It was in allowing my expectations to run away with me. In my mind, I was going to walk out of that salon the new Agyness Deyn. Better than that, actually – I was going to walk out of there the New Me. I had built up New Image Day to be a defining moment in my escape from cancer’s grip: the day on which I stopped being the girl with breast cancer, and started being the girl with the funky hair. The day on which I could stop hiding away, and return to the world with a bright, blonde bang. I’d even given it a name, for fuck’s sake. New Image Day was going to be as significant a turning point as the day of my diagnosis or my mastectomy or my final chemo.
Almost eleven months into my experience of The Bullshit, and I still couldn’t get my head around the fact that I wasn’t in control. Cancer was in control. And no amount of new clothes or hair colourant or New Image Days could change that. The reality is that the milestones aren’t the scripted occasions, but the seemingly insignificant rites of passage that you don’t notice until they’ve passed. Washing your hair for the first time after losing it. Walking the length of your street without having to stop for a rest. Falling asleep without the help of sleeping pills. Catching yourself saying ‘I’ve had cancer’ instead of ‘I’ve got cancer’. These are the things that matter. These are the things that make a difference. They’re the niggling, nil-nil away draws that guarantee your safety at the end of the season. They’re not pretty, they’re not memorable, and they’re definitely not going to make it onto Match of the Day, but they’re vital nonetheless. They’re the things I should have been blogging about, when instead I was more interested in the showy wonder-goals that would make for a better highlights package.
‘When am I going to learn my lesson?’ I asked Tills after we’d ditched my Topshop stylist for an emergency appointment with my second colourist of the day.
‘You weren’t to know how you’d feel, darling,’ she reassured me. ‘Besides, you wanted peroxide hair today, and you tried it. Now you can try something else too.’
The junior colourist looked at me as though I were a lunatic. ‘Hang on – you only had this colour done today?’
‘That’s right,’ snapped Tills, back in no-bullshit management mode. ‘And she’d like it to be a bit less harsh, and a bit more warm. Are you able to do that?’
‘Um, yeah. I s’pose so,’ she conceded, heading across the salon to mix some more colour.
‘Nobody talks about this part,’ I complained to Tills over a mug of tea. ‘People warn you how hard it is to get a diagnosis and go through chemo and lose your hair. But nobody ever warned me how hard it would be to get over treatment, or how long it takes to feel right after chemo, or how difficult it is to get your hair back. There isn’t a leaflet for this stuff.’
But, then, how could there be? Hell, even now I wouldn’t know how to tell someone who’d just been diagnosed that there’s so much more tricky stuff to negotiate once treatment has finished; that you’re suddenly left to deal with the gravity of what’s happened to you; that you’ve somehow got to alter all of your expectations.
But harder than even doing those things is accepting that you’ve got to do them in the first place. Cancer changed my life, but I didn’t want to have to change the way I lived to accommodate it. I didn’t want to lower my expectations. I wanted to get excited and look forward and face my future with optimism. I wanted to plan ahead. I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to stop seeing cancer when I looked in the mirror. I wanted to take the credit for my crop. I wanted to turn the things that cancer was making me do into significant, fun moments that I was in control of. I wanted to turn The Bullshit into something brilliant.
The following morning – at my third hair appointment in the space of twenty-four hours – I poured out my heart to yet another hair colourist, who couldn’t believe that I’d wanted such a drastic change of c
olour in the first place. ‘You’ve always had long hair before this, yes?’ he asked in his devastatingly sexy French accent.
‘Mm-hmm,’ I nodded.
‘Then suddenly having short hair is enough of a new image for you! You don’t need crazy blonde too,’ he advised, before turning my hair just a couple of shades lighter than its natural colour.
And so there was no New Me.
But nor was there an Old Me.
There was just Me. Albeit with a little less hair (and a little more tit).
CHAPTER 33
A change of season
May 2009
I’ve always wished I had the kind of local that you could walk into, know everyone at the bar and order ‘the usual’. I fear the closest I’ve ever come is sharing a bag of crisps and the latest on my love life with my favourite old fellas at the golf-club bar I once served behind. But, last week, I think I finally got the Cheers-like local of my dreams. Except the building is a hospital rather than a public house, the regulars are over-worked medical staff and my usual isn’t so much a G&T as a strip to the waist and a flash of my boobs.
With P away on business, Tills came along instead, remarking how funny it was that I didn’t have to check in at reception desks any more. And while treating hospital clinics like an office I’ve worked in for years could be seen as rather tragic, in fact it’s a thing I enjoy. In I stroll, impossibly chirpy, offering a nod of acknowledgement to the fellow patients I’ve seen before and skipping the usual formalities with receptionists to talk trashy gossip instead of appointment times. Doctors usher me in with ‘hi, Lisa’ instead of ‘Mrs Lynch please’, greeting me in a manner that suggests we’re about to catch up over a brew and biscuits, not discuss the scab on my left nipple.