Loop theory

(Challenge: see if you can pick the cunningly concealed, very exciting piece of news in this post.)

********************

I did not have a happy menopause.

Think night sweats so diabolical that I had to leap right out of bed and run outside in the middle of winter. Think mood swings so intense that I completely failed to conceal from my then partner that I was head over heels in love with someone else (whoops). Think complete failure to maintain a straight line in either thought or behaviour.

I was a right old mess, I was. And it lasted for over six years.

Well, here we go again. This evening I took my first hormone therapy tablet. Arimidex is designed for women who've already endured the 'change of life', but that doesn't stop it throwing you straight back into the bull pen.

Pity my poor Bear. This is his third round of breast cancer, but I do believe it'll be round four of Living With a Menopausal Maniac. And I'll be responsible for two of those.

********************

Along with the joy of menopausal loop theory- send no money, we will bill you!- comes the delight of rattling like a maraca in the hands of a Parkinson's sufferer for the next five years. Yes, I don't just get to take the Arimidex; I also win a concurrent five years of glucosamine and krill oil to counteract the joint pain, plus ditto of calcium and Vitamin D to counteract the reduction in bone density.

I did not enjoy returning the granny-style pill organiser to the dining table tonight. It's bad enough wearing granny bras.

Ah, cancer. How you piss me off.

***********************

So why, you might ask, am I being subjected to this latest indignity?

The idea of the Arimidex is to starve any remaining fragments of hungry Freeloader of yummy, delicious oestrogen by binding to the enzyme needed to produce it. That puts a chemical spanner in the works of the oestrogen production line and the whole thing comes to a crashing halt. (At least, that's what I gather from the page upon page of information provided with my script. I'm not a doctor, I'm a wild-eyed woman with chemo brain. Look it up before you quote me.)

Mumbles reckons that this drug, on top of the treatment I've already received, improves my chances of avoiding a recurrence by about 60%. That sounds pretty radical to me- I may have misunderstood him- but the message I get is that I'd be a fool not to try it. So try it I will, side effects and all.

If my hair starts to fall out again, mind you, There Will Be Trouble. I like my Megwig, I do, but There Are Limits. I've only just got to the point where I can pinch the regrowth between my finger and thumb. Sure, having passed through the Monkey incarnation my head now resembles a silver-arsed wombat in retreat, but small steps. Small steps.

******************

The Bear decided not to come in with me at today's appointment with Talk To The Knee. When we walked into the consulting rooms a neat three minutes before my designated appointment time of 11am, only to be told that Mumbles was running over an hour late AND there were four people waiting before me AND he hadn't even arrived from the hospital yet where he was doing rounds, the Bear silently turned on his heel and walked out.

Not a good sign. Even with my back turned to him I could feel the steam rising above the dreadlocks.

In the end, we went downtown and layered Bunnings Rage on top of Medical Waiting Room Rage for a while. May as well be hung for a sheep as a goat, and all that.

"No, we don't carry that paint in 2 litre pots." 

"Oh really? I bought two 2 litre pots here two weeks ago, you clown."

Oh alright, I didn't actually call the (non-)assistant a clown to his face, but if he'd had another neurone to match the lonely one banging around in his skull he might have been able to translate my tone of voice.

And wonder of wonders, one little phone call to Management and ... here comes another red-apronned fool carrying- yes- a 2-litre pot of my paint!

(Head. Desk.)

Painting, you ask? Yes, we've been sealing the wood on the treehouse where this
whole story started. One of these posts is the reason I found the damn lump in the
first place, so I guess I owe this building my life. Nice to be able to get back to it.

********************

So by the time we were summoned back to Mumbles' rooms by the shrill of my mobile, which irritatingly interrupted our excellent coffees at Cafe Cappello, the Bear was in no state to take the Mellow-Mumbles gamble. He dropped me at the door and scarpered for a while with my full consent.

I grabbed the initiative at once; by now I was in no mood for mucking around either.

"Had a bit of a busy morning?" I parried, grinning as I looked him in the eye.

Back in the filing cabinet, Mumbles. Paging Dr Mellow!

"I love starting my day two hours behind the eight ball," was his wry riposte. Turns out the other oncologist was missing in action today, so someone had had double ward rounds.

Fair enough.

*****************

Writing the script for the Arimidex, he started to find a little twinkle as we manipulated our merry way to a Medicare-refundable bone density test. Hallelujah for my somewhat early menopause; apparently having bugger-all hormones left at age 42, according to a blood test way back then, might just swing me a baseline test that doesn't cost me my house. Or something.

Checking out my nuked chest, he agreed cheerfully that it was a remarkably mild reaction. Hardly burnt at all, really. I asked if the Lyrica I'm taking for the stabbing nerve pain (radiotherapy- another gift that keeps on giving) was compatible with Arimidex, and got the nod (hallelujah again).

Less worthy of hallelujahs was the list of possible side effects he reeled off, but at least the suggested fixes weren't all produced in a test tube. I was glad I'd taken a notepad, as there's no way my chemo brain would have remembered the shopping list by the time I got to the chemist. Also not gaining any happy-clappy praise was the news that my continuing peripheral neuropathy would go away when it damn well felt like it, not when it suited me.

Bugger.

I have no idea how we ended up talking about my cholesterol levels, but it's just as well we did. Turns out that those cholesterol-lowering margarines I've been using, to counteract the unwelcome effect of the chemo on my cholesterol levels, are full of phyto-oestrogens.

Not the greatest idea for someone who's had an oestrogen-positive tumour.

He pulled up my most recent blood test then- what did doctors do before the internet, I wonder?- and smiled.

"Your cholesterol's gone right back to normal anyway," he informed me. "So you can stop worrying about that."

(Done. Yay for me.)

He reiterated that my exercise regimen was a fabulous idea, as it would help with just about every side effect I was likely to experience. I have to admit to preening a little there. I've not missed a day since the beginning of radiotherapy, and as an added bonus I'm actually starting to drop a little bit of weight.

Nothing like a life-threatening illness for increasing one's willpower, eh? It would be ironic if it was cancer that finally got me down to my ideal weight in a sensible way. I've always been either 'quite a lot' to 'way, way' over... or, once, way, way under. My weight charts when I was young made a yoyo look sluggish, given my foolish attempts to diet my way to social acceptance by starving myself in between binges.

It would be nice to think that this cattle-car journey had given me something more, in the long term, than a lopsided chest and anaesthetised extremities.

******************

And then, the crucial question. How often do I go under the machines to check for recurrences?

And the answer is... I don't.

Whew.

"There's no evidence that constant tests improve outcomes," Mellow reassured me. "In fact all those x-rays are counter-productive. If you ring me up complaining of constant back pain, we'll put you under the scanner again, but otherwise there's really no point. It puts you more at risk from all the radiation, and it makes you unreasonably anxious while you wait for the results."

And that made me a very happy little camper. Even if I do have to loop-the-loop back into crazyville for the next five years.

*******************

How did you go with the challenge?

*******************

Smack yourself heartily on the back if you spotted the fact that I enjoyed my first cup of coffee since DECEMBER. Yep, three months out from my last chemo I can finally enjoy the smell again. And that is a bit of loop theory that I'm very happy to entertain.

Monkey business, cliches and sonic screwdrivers

I've wanted to write for a while now about the language of cancer. The way we talk about it as a society. Honestly, it is so deeply culturally screwed that you'd need a sonic screwdriver to fix it.

Paging Tom Baker.

I mean, take the headline that appeared over the story in our local paper about my helicopter evacuation during the floods. I wrote the story, but the sub-editors saw fit to add the headline in which I was referred to as a 'cancer victim'.

A WHAT?!!!

******************

Does that sell papers, calling someone a victim? Or is it just a moment of editorial thoughtlessness that's repeated over and over every time a cancer story comes up with no Angelina Jolie to drool over?

Nobody called her a victim. Victim. FFS. The very word implies a helpless, hopeless state of existence.

(from the Oxford Dictionary)

Passive? Are you kidding? Passive is a one-way street to dying from this bugger of a disease. I am taking part. Like Angelina, who grabbed her fate in both hands and started steering, I refuse point blank to be a fucking victim.

Sure, I might not be in control of everything that's happened to my body lately, I might have been unlucky enough to score a Freeloader that's done me some harm in the health lottery- but people, that doesn't make me a victim.

It makes me a patient now and then. That's all.

***************

Sure, it's made me depressed on occasion. Of course it has. If it hadn't, you could probably diagnose me right now with some sort of detachment-from-reality disorder. Sure, I've spent some time feeling so terrified that I considered sleeping in the bathroom to save time.

But those moments are fleeting, in terms of eight months of vile treatment, and when I eventually bounce back I'm neither helpless nor hopeless. When I bounce back, it's usually with some sort of monkey business- because whatever life I've got left isn't enhanced by misery, and laughter is the best medicine.

Forget the 'stay positive' mantra, which is so far past its use-by date that it's walking to the bin on its own, trying to escape its own rancid smell. PLEASE. FORGET IT, and NEVER say it to a cancer patient again, or you might just find yourself with a sonic screwdriver up your fundamental orifice.

Stay positive? No. It's much more important for us just to accept the inevitable lows, ride the wave of despair, and then try to return to a point where we can laugh.

******************

Example.

A day of feeling despairing about my appearance, after having to look at myself in the mirror naked from the waist up to apply cortisone cream to my radiation rash, had me on the mat. I would never be the same shape again; I'd never look like the old me, the one with the amazing and eye-catching cleavage. And god, my head looked ugly without my makeup and the Megwig hiding the awful truth.

My students were once inspired to give me a Dolly
Parton LP as a joke- can't imagine why.

How could my Bear love that? How could he ever find me attractive again?

This moment was a long time coming, really, but it was inevitable. When you've had your physical image ransacked like that, it doesn't matter how much you tell yourself that it's all vanity and physical appearance is overrated, or that it's all in how you look at yourself. Eventually, you have to face that moment when you realise that some of this experience is going to be with you forever, and you hate it.

I didn't need comfort right at that moment. I needed to vent without being censored by a society that is deeply uncomfortable with acknowledging hard truths.

I certainly didn't need some batshit-crazy hippy do-gooder telling me I had to 'stay positive'. (Paging Mr Baker!) I needed to experience that moment, survive it, and then move on with the knowledge that I could survive it.

***************

And sure enough, it was followed the next day by the realisation that my peculiar pattern of hair regrowth made me look exactly like the star of that old Japanese kids' programme, Monkey.

Monkey Me! (Note: with
clothing and makeup on.)

Don't you think?

Of course, I posted that picture in my Facebook breast cancer group, Young Pink Sisters, because laughter shared works so much better than laughter alone. We don't pretend to feel wonderful all the time in there. We don't even TRY to be permanently positive. It's not possible.

But boy, do we bounce back. Boy, do we laugh.

******************

There are no victims in that group, either. There are people who are probably going to die, there are people who are momentarily down at heart because of pain or fear or emotional suffering, but nobody is lying down passively waiting for the steamroller of cancer to crush them. You just don't. You wail, you scream, you hide under the doona for a day- of course you do. But then you push the bad stuff away- because all you've got guaranteed to you is this moment in time, and you'd best try to enjoy it if you possibly can.

We don't need to be bombarded with cliches to get through cancer treatment. They don't help one bit, and they're often counterproductive. Far more useful is to hear support of our stubborn refusal to quit, to hear (briefly!) what you're feeling- honestly- and to share our enhanced sense of the ridiculous.

Ridiculous? You don't think that word fits in the context of a possibly terminal disease? Think again. The other morning I found myself sitting in front of the TV with a vibrator in my armpit.

Stop laughing for long enough to listen.

See, this was my thinking. I'm getting massage from Miss Sunshine, the lymphoedema physio, to try to reduce the build-up of fluid in my armpit. Another technique she uses is ultrasound, which uses sound waves to break up the hardening lymph. I can reproduce the massage at home, but not the ultrasound.

Hmm. How else can I get deeper wave movement into my armpit?

Well? Are you still laughing? My armpit's gone down a LOT. It's ridiculous, but it's working.

And it got a lot of laughs, too, from people who really needed help that day to bounce.

*******************

There are plenty more cancer cliches out there where those ones came from. I already told you what I think of brave.

Survivor is dodgy, too, because it's just not accurate. How the fuck do you know whether I'm a survivor or not? Any day I could be diagnosed with a secondary. It could be tomorrow, or it could be in ten or fifteen years. That's something else that's permanent, that we have to stare down every day for the rest of our lives and learn to live through.

We are survivors of daily fear and sadness- that's all. Not of cancer.

*****************

And there are words that trigger some of us and not others. Journey is one. To many of us with cancer, that word belongs to joyous holidays and adventures, not to a disease that steals a year or more of your life.

It doesn't bother me, possibly because the word has less delightful connotations in the context of my reading and my life. I used it happily in the subtitle of my Fighting the Freeloader Facebook page- A journey through breast cancer.

I was thinking of the cattle trucks on the way to Auschwitz, not of Jetstar on the way to Hamilton Island.

I was thinking of the agonisingly slow and uncomfortable train trip to my first teaching job in the country. I was alone and heading into the unknown, with absolutely no reason to believe that anything but trauma was waiting at the other end.

I was pretty right about that, too. Being a first-year-out music teacher in a disadvantaged country school, with a Head of Department who knew absolutely nothing about the subject and was a sexist bully bordering on frankly abusive...

...not all journeys promise an exciting and recuperative break from the grind. Some are hell on earth.

I'll stand by my journey.

*****************

I guess what I really want from the language of cancer is a little more honesty. A little more authenticity. A few less glib cliches rolling off the tongues of people who haven't been there, and so haven't a clue what it's like.

If you don't know what to say, this is what you say: "I don't know what to say."

Hold the advice, unless you've actually been there and done it; hold the easy cliches, slipping from between the pages of your third-hand tabloid experience like cheap advertising brochures. Hold the facade of empathy, because you once knew someone who had cancer; hold the anecdotes with miraculous or disastrous endings, because none of those people are me.

Here is what you say: you make 'I' statements all the way.

"I would like to help, but I don't know how." 

"I feel so helpless." 

"I'm really angry that you have to go through this." 

"I'm so glad you came today."

And if you're writing a headline, enough with the labels. It's not a battle, we're not heroes, we're not being brave, we're most certainly not victims and we'll never know if we're survivors till the day we die. We're people with cancer. That's all.

And hey, all of you- don't take cancer so bloody seriously all the time. I had my breast removed, not my sense of humour. And even if I was dying, then like my friend Lucy the Lump I'd want to go laughing all the way. Give me some honest-to-god monkey business over a graveyard expression any day. Give me Monty Python, not Thomas Hardy. (Andrew Denton, I salute you: the first man to laugh about cancer, WITH the patients, on national television.)

And a little word of warning. I am lucky to have such clever and sensitive friends, who rarely make a verbal misstep. They're lucky too, because heaven help anyone who tries any of those cliches on me. I may not have a sonic screwdriver, but I'm very creative with certain other pulsating devices...

...and I happen to have one right here.

Lemmings and wild horses

I've got it. I've finally worked out what all those people in the radiotherapy waiting room reminded me of.

Lemmings.

Pale-blue-gowned lemmings, sitting in blank-faced silence till their name was called. Then trotting meekly one by one into the industrial-strength-bunker-disguised-as-treatment-room, where they'd agreed to lie splayed and alone amidst the unnerving clanks and whines and whirrs of the terrifying machinery, being nuked to within an inch of their life.

I couldn't sit in that waiting room, you know. It wasn't working for me. I couldn't sit there like a lemming waiting my turn to go over the cliff. My brain is way too busy for that, too full of what if's and why's and how's. I had to find a way to disengage from what was happening before I got anywhere near the Kraken.

***************

That's where the wild horses come in. There was this jigsaw puzzle set out in the lounge across from the waiting room; the box showed a painted woodland scene. Wild horses galloped through it, hooves akimbo, manes flying. Dappled greys, chestnuts and blacks, rejoicing in their freedom.

When I first noticed it, only the frame was done. Edges are always the easiest. Someone had started piecing together some bits of horse leg, but otherwise it was a thousand pieces of chaos waiting for someone to take charge.

Did somebody call my name?

*************

Five weeks later, I walked out of there for the last time without a backward glance at the puzzle that had served me so well. The nurses always knew where to find me after the first few days; I'd be sitting on the floor in the lounge, scanning the chaos for that tiny black bump to complete a hoof or that white flick of mane that was eluding me.

It was another meditation of sorts, I suppose. The calm required to search a thousand pieces for the exact piece needed. The quiet rotation of each puzzling fragment, until that eureka moment where my brain recognised where the fragment fitted in the whole scheme of things. The return to the calm search.

I'm good at jigsaws. Excellent spacial relations, said my vocational guidance report, after my mother took me to be IQ tested at age 5. And an unnatural serve of patience.

My aunt was good at them too- cousin Nancy's mother; people were always shipping off their old puzzles to her, and every time I visited there'd be a half-completed picture laid out in the living room and a stack of puzzles waiting in the corner. So many calming echoes were captured in those fragments of horses, as I turned them and matched them and smiled quietly to myself.

By yesterday, my 25th and final session, the wild horses were all complete; that's all that mattered to me. Bugger the background. The horses could run away now they were finished, and so could I.

I'm no lemming. Don't ask me to queue to be nuked. I was me all the way to the Kraken's lair.

*****************

The Bear isn't good with waiting rooms, either. He took to dropping me at the door when it was his turn to drive me in, or parking and then going wandering in the park down the road. If he came back before I emerged from the bunker he'd sit in the little outdoor eating area, tapping his feet to dispel some of the tension. Right to the end, he expected me to burn to a crisp, or have a heart attack on the table, or some such disaster.

That's his cancer experience: disaster. Overwriting it is hard work, slow work. It tries my patience over and over.

"I'm fine," I've said again and again, showing him the barely-reddened skin where the nuclear fallout has entered my chest; but his eyes see it differently. Invariably, he winces and goes to pick another aloe vera leaf to soothe my skin.

He sleeps a lot. I think that's how he handles fear, depression, exhaustion: just lie down and sleep, and it all goes away for a while. I've never known anyone to fall asleep so quickly, no matter what emotional chaos surrounds them. He mutters goodnight, and he's gone.

I should be so lucky.

*****************

My sleep was so screwed up by last week that I consulted Dr Google. I found that my deep desire to crash out every afternoon was completely normal; mind-numbing fatigue usually sets in a few hours after the treatment. And of course, that messes up one's sleep patterns at night. All through rads, I'd lie down around 11pm thinking I was tired again now; hours later, my eyelids would be drooping but my body refusing to let go.

And then, of course, it did require wild horses to get me out of bed the next day after I'd finally crashed out in the wee small hours. I'd think of the puzzle waiting for me, sip the tepid green tea the Bear had brought me half an hour ago, drag myself up and set up the Wii.

Bloody Librans. I need a pre-ordained schedule, or I spend all day unsuccessfully trying to decide what to do first. If I had to think about what exercise to do today and when, I'd never do it at all. Much better to just get up on autopilot and click the same series of buttons every day.

What's that Jools said to me? Don't waste time thinking about whether you want to do it- just DO IT.

Wise words, especially for me. I loathe exercise.

****************

So the wild horses have dragged me, finally, to the end of my formal treatment regime. It's another lemming moment, you know- just like the end of chemotherapy. They trot you forward through the treatment, one foot after the other, and then push you off the cliff at the end.

You're done! Bye! 

I guess they assume because you're thrilled to get out of there with your life, you're going to be fine with the emotional fallout from being poisoned or burned alive. And it's not their job to deal with the lifelong uncertainty that awaits every cancer survivor, is it?

Is it?

Anyway, nobody with a medical degree has mentioned any of that tricky stuff to me at the end of their part of the programme, let alone asked me the really pertinent questions about life after cancer and helped me to answer them.

Do you lie awake worrying about whether it's coming back? 

Do you wonder whether the whole treatment was a waste of time? 

Do you want to know how, and how often, we check whether this worked or not? 

Would you like to know how soon you can expect to go back to work or resume your normal life?

I guess they think that's what social workers are for. But I want my answers from someone with the science of my cancer behind them. I don't want fairy-floss reassurances and one-size-fits-all platitudes. I don't need to talk it over and let it out. I do that with my friends and my partner. That helps, sure, but it doesn't answer the 3am questions. I want to know about the science of my illness, and how it fits in with the truth of my life and the reality of my emotional state.

The best answers I've found were passed on to me by my dear Lyn, who hasn't let the fact that she's got weeks to live stop her from helping everyone else around her if she can. Of course, this essay doesn't answer my personal questions about my personal case, but at least it was written by a doctor- and at least it doesn't pretend that finishing the poisoning and burning and mucking-with-the-hormones is the shining Nirvana at the end of the 'cancer journey' for the patient.

Here's a link to the essay.

****************

The rads nurse, checking out my skin before I made a break for freedom, raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"That's one of the best skin responses I've ever seen," she enthused.

Never mind that over the long weekend before my final treatment, the skin over the lymph nodes at the base of my neck had raised the red flag and screamed enough; she gave me some more cortisone patches for the reactive rash, asked me the usual list of questions culminating in the third "So how are you going to celebrate?" I'd fielded that day (actually, dear, I don't feel like celebrating right now unless it's a pillow-and-doona party in front of a log fire), and sent me off to see Professor Power Ranger for the ultimate approval to gallop home.

Sadly, Prof P-R was running catastrophically behind schedule. I say sadly, because my Bear is no more a lemming than I am. He Doesn't Do Waiting, He Doesn't Do Queues, and he most certainly Doesn't Wait In Line To Jump Off Cliffs. He started swearing from the moment he arrived back from his walk in the park, expecting me to be ready to leave, only to find me morosely flipping through a tacky magazine outside the doctors' rooms.

What is it with waiting room magazines? I should have binned the lot of them and done my fellow-sufferers a favour. Nasty, trashy, screaming-celebrity-gossip rags that they are, and all months out of date. Worse still, given the number of waiting rooms I've inhabited for hours on end over the last eight months, I'VE READ EVERY SINGLE ONE BEFORE.

But I digress.

The receptionist must have extra-sensory hearing, or maybe the Bear's growling was louder than I realised. Eventually, knowing that the doctor wasn't going to be available any time soon, she suggested we go have lunch and come back later.

"McDonalds or the Square food hall?" I asked, thinking of speed-of-service and ability-to-park rather than edibility-of-product. (When will I learn.)

But the Bear had better things in mind. Seated on the pavement at the Mecca cafe after a parking space opened up miraculously at the door, we watched the world go by in all its colourful Northern Rivers glory and feasted on generous and delicious burgers that shat all over McDonalds' (even if they did cost twice as much). I mused over the change chemo has wrought in me as I gave the last quarter of my fishburger to the Bear to finish; recognising that I'm full never used to be a strong point, particularly where seafood is concerned.

The excellent food seemed to calm the raging beast in the Bear's restless soul, though on reflection, it may have had more to do with the Crown Lager that accompanied it. By the time we headed back to the radiotherapy unit, the professor was ready to see me and the Bear was far less dangerous. I chained him to a chair in the waiting room, not wishing to stir the sleeping giant by inviting him in to yet another medical consult.

***************

The professor was all apologies for the extended wait and, like Dr Mellow, seemed pleasantly surprised that I'd survived the whole course of treatment without the need for intervention or lowering of the dose.

It seems I'm one tough old turkey, and it seems they've all thrown the book at the Freeloader. Which is exactly what I asked them to do, isn't it?

When I asked for more information about what they'd actually done to me over the last five weeks, the prof called up some pretty pictures on his screen and showed me the hot spots that they'd nuked (correlating nicely with my real-life skin irritations) and the angles and focus strategies they'd had to adopt to avoid zapping my heart. This explained the use of a weird extension that had been placed on the face of the Kraken before my chest got a direct blast; to avoid missing one spot, they'd had to go head-on without going deep. I guess the extension bent the rays somehow, so they didn't get as far as my heart.

You'd want to be good at maths to work in that department, I'm telling you. It's all angles and measurements and plusses and minuses. It's all numbers, blended with a code of bizarre non-words flying over your head as you lie there immobile.

7 point 4 inf, one girl would state. That's minus seven point 2, the other would reply as she stamped on pedals and clicked the gurney sideways (and I'd feel like saying no it's not, unless I've somehow found myself in Wonderland).

Nine centimetres soup, the first would continue. WTF? my head would reply. Oh, 'sup' not 'soup'. Superior, I suppose.

MLC 100, the first went on, and my head said that's a building in Sydney the last time I looked.

And so on.

No wonder I felt the need to go into a trance.

But back to the Power Ranger's office. He drew me a little graph of nuked-cancer-cells versus nuked-normal-cells, which closely resembled the one Margaret had drawn for me at the beginning of chemo. Eventually, he explained, the nuked cancer cells become so disabled that the body can deal with them on its own, whereas the normal cells recover more quickly and never get to critical level.

In the best of all possible worlds, one might add. And fortunately for me, it seems that my body was playing nicely, if my skin's anything to go by.

Good body. Well done, body. Hope you enjoyed your fishburger, Ferdi.

He did.

****************

And so, moving on. It's back to Dr Mellow in two weeks, who'll prescribe Arimidex to bind to any oestrogen floating around my system and stop the Freeloader feasting on it. Sadly, it'll probably also turn me into the Bitch From Hell for the second time in my life, as I get to experience an encore performance of Menopause, the Musical.

(Come on, everyone- a few rounds of The Bitch is Back, followed by one more chorus of I Will Survive...)

Meanwhile Dr Goodguy gets the joy of sending me for ultrasounds every three months or so, to check whether the Freeloader's miraculously survived the fire and brimstone and is growing back in the same place.

Well, not quite the same place. Presumably his original residence is now sitting in a jar of formalin somewhere, with a startled look on its face. But they check the armpit, the remaining lymph nodes that couldn't be removed in surgery, and the chest wall. The prof says the tumour is much more likely to grow back in exactly the same place than anywhere else in my body; that's kind of a relief, after too many of my Facebook BC-suffering friends finding out they had a little surprise waiting inside their skull after they thought their ordeal was over. (Yes, two is too many.) Some forms of tumour, it seems, tend to metastasise in preordained spots.

At least I know what to watch as a first preference, and it's not the inside of my head.

There'll be trips to the chemo suite to get my port-a-cath flushed; there'll be visits to Miss Sunshine to get my arm's lymph status checked. And eventually, there'll be more surgery- maybe my ovaries will take a hike, or maybe I'll talk them into whipping the lot out, given that gynaecological cancers seem to have little hesitation in popping up in related organs (and I'm on my second dodgy smear test already). Hopefully, eventually there'll be some construction work on the demolition site and I'll be able to put a 'c' back in front of my leavage.

But compared to the last eight months, my life will be more my own. This Libran will be able to schedule a few non-Freeloader-related activities around the daily sessions on the Wii, the arm massages, the catnaps and so forth.

Am I excited about that? Sometimes. It was exciting, for instance, to be able to plan to paint the window frames of the treehouse over three days, knowing my energy wouldn't be sapped any more by the daily trips to town.

(Even more exciting to actually achieve it.)

Stop laughing. I know, I know, I should get out more, and not just to visit another waiting room and whine about the crap reading material.

But mostly, I'm too tired to be enthusiastic about anything. It'll take months or years to shake the exhaustion, I'm told. I still have a hangover of tiredness from the chemo, with the radiation's grand pianos hung over the top. And then there's the hormone therapy and its glorious side effects to cope with- hot flushes and crawling, jumpy legs in the middle of the night... sometimes I wonder if I'll ever get my sleep patterns back.

So still, it'll be one day at a time, one hour at a time, until my body finds a comfortable rhythm again. Till then, I'll just be dragging myself up in the morning and going through my exercises on the Wii, then assessing how I feel and what I'm up to doing. I'll be needing the wild horses a while yet to get me going.

But the lemming days of treatment are over. And hopefully, I'm not heading for a cliff any time soon.

Get over it

My name is Candy Lawrence, and it's been nine weeks since my last chemotherapy.

Pardon the shades of AA. Sometimes I feel like I'm addicted to talking about it. Sometimes I feel like I must be boring you.

You'd think I'd be over it by now, wouldn't you?

*************

It's hard for people who haven't been through it to understand. Chemo isn't one of those things that stops, and you instantly get over it. I know you're all keen for me to feel better. It must be hard sometimes for you to know what to say to me in this weird in-between period, when I'm through the worst of the treatment but not quite myself yet.

Let me help you out.

************

In answer to your questions:

No, my hair has not started to grow back yet. I've been as bald as a badger for weeks while people have asked me this. In this last week I've finally (FINALLY) started to develop what they call 'peach fuzz'- a soft layer of down all over my skull which is the first sign of the follicles recovering.

Peach fuzz.

Surprisingly, the fuzz makes a noticeable difference in terms of insulation. My head gets less cold. I can sleep without a beanie.

But I won't need a brush or comb any time soon.

No, Ferdinand has not been flushed down the drain yet. My stomach still randomly rejects various foods, usually after the event (thanks, you smelly old fish).

The pepperoni pizza, for example, seemed like a good idea at the time, and hallelujah, I could taste everything on it! But half an hour later Ferdi was moaning and groaning about hot chilli and inconsiderate aquarium owners. Similarly, chocolate ginger looked attractive as a way to reintroduce my favourite folly into my diet, until I realised that it had ushered that ghastly metallic taste back into my mouth. (WTF is that about?)

So I am still going gently, gently with food and drink. I can enjoy a Tia Maria and milk, for example, because of the tummy-soothing milk, but I wouldn't dare pour a G & T into Ferdi's tank. I'm sure there would be an uprising.

(Try not to picture that.)

No, I still can't feel the ends of my fingers and the soles of my feet. Dr Google paints an unattractive picture of the waiting time to be rid of that inconvenience. I can expect to be free of my peripheral neuropathy in something between three months and never.

Head. 
Desk.

Is it getting better? Well, some days I think so. And other days- well, let's take yesterday, when I picked up the pot of boiling water that we use for immersing the turkeys before plucking them, and promptly spilled a big slosh of it down my leg. My hands just aren't reliable when I can't feel my fingertips.

(Thank heavens for aloe vera. I don't even have a mark on my leg today, let alone any pain.)

And then I was sewing up a tear in the Bear's shorts (don't ask), and I dropped the needle, and do you think I could pick it up? No way in hell.

So let's just say the frustrations are continuing on that front.

Yes, I still have chemo brain. If anything, I'm noticing it more.

Certain things seem particularly good at slipping out the sides of my memory. Several times now, I've been talking to a close friend and have realised I can't remember their name. (That's deeply disturbing.) Phone messages? No idea. Did someone call? Multi-tasking is a thing of the past, because I just forget I started the other job.

That's hard on someone who's always had a memory like the proverbial pachyderm.

Yes, I'm still painting my nails. And I'm bored to death with it, thank you, so no, I'm not doing it because I've realised how empty my life was before I spent an hour every weekend slapping colour on my fingertips in a totally amateur way and then worrying about how soon I'd crack it all off by actually doing something.

My kingdom for a tame manicurist. (MEGAN!!!! Come here!!!)

It takes up to 5 months for the whole nail to grow out from the bed, and so that's how long I have to go on painting the damned things. My bare nails are a total fright, so hiding them has some merits. They're still red at the tips from the taxotere, and they're flaking and breaking even with the polish on- but (thank heavens) they're not lifting from the bed, and that's the way I intend things to stay.

No, I am not yet up for a full-on social life. And it's not just because the Grand Pianos of Radiotherapy have finally descended onto my back (though they have). I never stopped being tired before the rads started, so I'm not quite sure which treatment to blame for this one. I have good days- occasionally- but, more often, I have day after day when I have trouble dragging myself off the mat.

This is what my day feels like, every day.

Wake up unable to open eyes.

Bear brings me a cup of green tea (no, I still can't do coffee- waaaah!). Still can't open eyes, let alone sit up. Let tea get half-cold.

Feel ungrateful. Finally drag myself to sitting position. Sip tea, slowly, attempting to prise eyelids open.

Put cup down. Think about lying down again and going back to sleep.

Time check. Where did that hour and a half go? Realise that if I don't get up Right Now, I'll run out of time to fit in everything I have to do before leaving for rads.

Drag self up. Turn on Wii Fit. Flog self to wakefulness for 40 minutes or so. Remember why I never owned a hula hoop. Crash virtual bike into sea. Remonstrate with Bear for laughing hysterically at me.

Force down light breakfast. Realise I'm bored with Burgen raisin toast but am too buggered to think of anything else. Place remainder of toast into black furry garbage disposal unit. Wipe slobber off knee.

Fall into shower. Wash randomly, trying to remember to use Moo Goo milk wash on the nuked bits. Stand under shower massaging swollen underarm in a trance whilst hoping that's not full-on lymphoedema starting. Rinse thoroughly for fear of retribution by rads staff.

Look for cortisone patches. (Therein lies a tale too long for this short history.)

Get dressed. Get made up. Put on beautiful wig that suits me, but which will feel like a steel band around my forehead within about two hours. Curse my big head. (Shut up.)

Fall into car to go to rads. 

And so on. Are you seeing a theme? The theme is 'fatigue'; absence of spoons, if you liked that analogy. I Do Not Have The Energy to socialise. I'm flat out just doing the stuff I have to do.

If I'm foolish enough to tell you that I'll drop in or attend some event, don't believe me.

*************

About those cortisone patches.

The radiotherapy is still treating my skin well, but last week I started to develop an itchy rash. (Just my skin cells complaining about torture by fire, apparently.)

Pretty remarkable after four weeks of rads.
The red bits are the rash.

The rads nurse had a look and gave me some stick-on patches, which can apply slow-release cortisone for up to a week, so that I wouldn't scratch and break the skin. (The last thing I need is a burns infection.)

Well, I don't know who thought this one up, but see if you can spot the obvious mistake here. Rule One of radiotherapy is moisturise, moisturise, moisturise. And cortisone patches refuse to stick to skin that's had anything at all applied to it. You have to wait till all lotions have been absorbed completely before you can use them.

So, given that I'm moisturising at least three times a day, there are long periods when those reusable sticky patches have to be placed, sticky side up, on a flat surface for some considerable time.

Our house gets very cold in winter. There's no insulation in the roof, so all the warm air from our combustion heater goes straight to god instead of circulating. Right now the only cosy spot to sleep is on a mattress on the lounge room floor, right in front of the heater, so that's where we are. And that's where I carefully laid out my two sticky patches while I put on my night-time lotions the other evening, on top of my discarded t-shirt.

Can you see where I'm heading.

An hour of tedious TV later, when I was convinced the moisturisers had all soaked in, I went to reapply the patches.

WTF?

They were gone.

At first I blamed chemo brain. Obviously, I'd put them down somewhere else and forgotten. I searched every surface of the entire house, including the outside bathroom.

No patches.

I turned the bedclothes upside down, trying not to disturb the sleeping Bear who'd given up on free-to-air TV (twenty four stations, nothing to watch) some half hour before, staggered over the mattress after stoking up the fire and crashed out beside me.

No patches.

I woke the black furry toast-eater, who was curled up in his usual spot on the genuine leather lounge chair he regards as his 'throne' (poor deprived beast).

No, my patches were not stuck to his arse.

I gave up, mystified. Whacked on some cortisone ointment instead, which doesn't work anywhere near as well.

The fire was really quite hot that night. The Bear stirred, rolled over. Stuck his bare feet out from under the covers.

And there were my patches, stuck to the soles of his feet.

*************

Never let it be said that radiotherapy has been without its moments of redeeming slapstick. I tried to control my giggles lest I woke the sleeping patch-thief, but several hysterical snorts issued forth regardless.

*************

So... as I was saying...

...if you were holding your breath waiting for me to get over the chemotherapy, I'd advise you to stop it before you faint. It's not going to happen any time soon. The rads nurse says 12 months is a reasonable time to wait for some sort of normality to return after chemo.

(Excuse me while I punch something.)

Apparently, I look great. It's sort of reassuring to be told that, but at the same time it's fucking irritating. (Don't expect a chemo sufferer to be rational, either.) I mean, yes, I can look almost normal on the outside when I'm tarted up (if you don't count the fact that I'm suddenly a short-haired blonde), but it doesn't mean that I'm over it. I'm still not the picture of glowing health on the inside, and I won't be for ages.

That's not to say that everything's dreadful, of course. I can taste my food again, I can cook and eat and enjoy it as long as I stay within certain parameters, and that's wonderful. I don't spend whole days in bed moaning.

I've spent odd hours doing some things I used to do without thinking about being sick. Painting the wood of the treehouse, where this whole crazy story started. Bringing in firewood- two pieces at a time instead of an armful, but at least I'm helping.

So yes, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel more clearly. Mind you, I'm not quite sure what the scenery's like out there in Post-Treatment Land. And I still have the joys of Arimidex hormone therapy to traverse before I get there, remember. It ain't over till the fat lady in the throes of a second menopause sings.

But over it? No. I don't even know whether I'll ever be completely over it. And I certainly can't tell you, to answer yet another question asked by an innocent bystander, whether I'm cured.

I feel cured. I feel like the Freeloader has been ejected, and I'm just coping with the clean-up. But then, I never noticed he was there in the first place, so how the hell would I know?

And honestly, the cancer experience isn't something you ever get over, really. There's always that little voice in the back of your head, that little bit of paranoia about every lump and pain and wheeze.

Over it? No, I'm not over it. But I'm getting through it. And I'm a damn sight closer to the end of the tunnel than I was last October.

Facebook can break your heart

This post is dedicated to my friend Lyn Wemyss, with love.

*************

My Bear doesn't understand Facebook.

"How the fuck can you be friends with someone you've never eyeballed?" he splutters, as I try to explain who I'm talking to and why.

He's an old-fashioned guy. And he's not a reader. He'd rather be outside doing something practical, or- better yet- having a beer with his mates, eyeball to eyeball. The concept of being emotionally invested in the welfare of someone you've never met, someone only known via the written word, is completely foreign to him.

Yet these invisible friends of mine, the ones he can't quite believe are real, have often been my lifeline. For someone who lives miles from anywhere and a day or two's drive from her real-life friends and family, the connections made through that little black modem are crucial. I have Facebook friends all over the world who've helped me maintain my sanity through one crisis or another.

Mostly, they share a profession with me. Bless those smart, savvy and hilarious Early Childhood workers who've brightened my darkest days with their wit and wisdom. Recently, thanks to the Freeloader, they've been joined by a group of women I've never met- women who have the dubious honour of sharing my path through the daily horrors of breast cancer.

I would probably pass these women in the street without recognising them, yet I care deeply, sincerely, for many of them.

When they disappear from my feed for a few days, I worry. When they reappear, I rejoice. When they're frightened or confused, I'll happily spend hours talking things through with them- and they'll do the same for me.

Which brings me to my friend Lyn.

*************

The trouble with caring about a lot of women who have cancer is that some of them, inevitably, are not going to make it. They're going to die, and you're going to have a front row seat.

Yep, Facebook has ways of breaking your heart that you'd never dreamed of when you joined up.

And Lyn, damn it to hell, is going to die. She's the first woman who ever reached out her virtual hand to me when I was diagnosed. She followed my blog almost from the start, and met me on my Facebook page after I'd run screaming from the censorious breast cancer forum where we'd met.

See, my truth is too loud for some people. I call it like I see it, because I honestly believe that you have to go through the hard stuff with your eyes and ears open if you want to come out the other end without permanent emotional damage.

But there are plenty of women who would rather press the mute button on the reality of cancer. They'd looked at my forum posts, shoved their fingers in their virtual ears and started singing "LA LA LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU."

Lyn isn't like that. She scorns ear plugs. She's always listened to my truth; she's liked my frankness.

I soon found that we had much in common beyond the nature of our illnesses. Like me, she'd christened her tumour and given her story a Facebook page. 'Lucy the Lump', with its little pink icon, was soon gracing my feed every day or two with a thoroughly engaging progress report that never ducked the issue. Like mine, her truth was always there on public display, no matter how awkward or unpalatable.

That icon popped up on my Fighting the Freeloader page, too, nearly every day. Lucy or Lyn seemed to be there almost all the time, balancing my misery or hope or fear with wisdom, experience, clarity.

And like me, she spiced her comments with wild humour, no matter how dire the situation.

With Lyn and Lucy around, no dilemma of mine has seemed too grim for too long. I'll post some miserable comment, and sure enough, up pops a little smiling face or that pink icon with an answer that's either practical and reassuring, or the verbal equivalent of a Pythonesque Morris Dance.

Or both.

Mostly, I end up giggling and wiping virtual mackerel scales off my face.

Lyn is living proof that the Theory of Positivity is a load of crap. You can't save yourself from cancer by thinking only positive thoughts. If that was the case, she'd be the one who was going to live and I'd be the one who was going to die. All the way through chemo, I seemed to be scraping my belly over hot coals for a week or more- but no matter how grim things got for Lyn, she'd somehow come up with a post that had her friends in stitches. Months ago, I knew that the hormone treatment was screwing her to the ground with as much genteel grace as a Makita hammer drill putting a plughole into concrete; yet still the one-liners and slapstick stories popped up in my daily feed.

And all the while, every single post of Lucy's ended with that mantra: "Today is one day closer to being healed."

Fuck the Theory of Positivity.

*************

Oh. And 'living proof' is totally the wrong expression, when the 'proof' is dying.

Is my truth too loud?

**************

So what do you say when someone you love, but only know online, is dying? What's the Facebook etiquette for that, Zuckerberg?

One thing I do know is that I won't be saving up my kind words for the funeral. I hate that. If you've got something nice to say to someone, for god's sake say it to them while they're here; that's my view. Lyn, here's your eulogy from me.

*****************

I guess the one thing we all want before we die is to know we made a difference.

That might be as simple as knowing we brought up our child the best way we could, or we made our family's life easier and more joyful. It might be that we worked hard and did our duties well, or created some form of art that was meaningful or beautiful.

But some of us aspire to more than that. Some of us want to make a difference even to strangers, to make the world a better place by reaching out our hand.

Lyn, you made a difference to me-  a woman you've never met. You made my journey easier to bear every time you put your fingers on the keyboard.

I'm betting I wasn't the only one.

You were just far enough ahead of me on the road that I could keep you in sight. If she can do it and keep on laughing, so can I, I'd say to myself. You could make me smile even when I felt like warmed-over dogshit, when my bones ached so badly that I wanted to die now rather than later, when I thought the dark corridor of chemo would never end.

And now it's nearly over. That bitch of a Lucy is throwing one last party in your poor tired body, trashing every room with her gatecrashers.

It's ironic, isn't it? In the end, you'll beat her. She'll knock over a candle and burn the house down, and as you take your final breath she'll suddenly see that she's going down with you. There's no escape. Every window is barred. Lucy the Lump is a goner at last.

Damn you to hell, Lucy. Why couldn't you leave my friend behind?

***************

I don't believe in Heaven- not in the way that Christians talk about it, anyway. I've had enough weird experiences to know that something remains, though, when people die. You can call it spirits or angels or ghosts, you can call it another dimension or the effect of quantum physics on time- whatever. I think some part of you will hang around for a while to keep an eye on the people you love, just like my long-dead mother seems to do for me.

Wherever you're going, know that I won't forget you once you're gone. I'll think of you every time I hold a hand out to some other woman who's just been diagnosed. I'll think of you every time some idiot tells me that cancer is caused by the wrong sort of thoughts, and I'll shout your name in their stupid ear till they go away and stop talking complete bullshit. I'll think of you every time I'm scared to death by another CAT scan, to see if my body's clear or if I've progressed to Stage 4, and I'll remember to stop taking myself so damn seriously- because all we have really is today, and bloody hell, what's the good of being a miserable sod? We may as well die laughing.

Wherever you're going, I guess I might see you there one day. I might not recognise your face, but I'll sure as hell recognise your sense of humour. You'll be the one leading the angels in a chorus of your latest hit, 'Fuck You, Cancer'.

Go in peace, my friend. And thank you.

On being brave

Courage, they say, isn't the absence of fear. It's being scared to death but doing it anyway.

Those of us engaged in a fight for our lives against that right bastard of a Freeloader, AKA carcinoma, are frequently praised for our bravery. I know that I greet such statements with a puzzled expression. I don't feel brave signing up for the amputation of a breast, or five months of poisoning, or five weeks of radioactive fallout.

I just feel that there isn't a choice.

No, wait. There's always a choice, as my therapist Rhonda used to say to me over and over when I was chickening out of ending yet another bad relationship.

The choice is to do it, or almost certainly die. And to choose the lesser evil, no matter how uncomfortable or hideously life-changing, isn't brave. It's just smart.

So let me rephrase that: I just feel that there isn't another rational choice.

************

It would be nice if there was another option. But you can't just stand on the sidelines and refuse to engage with cancer, as you might choose to do in situations where courage was required.

I'm thinking of my father, standing in a terribly vulnerable position giving covering fire to save the lives of his battalion in WWII.

I'm thinking of the firefighters climbing the stairs of the Twin Towers as they burned above them.

I'm thinking of that amazing Londoner, Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, who stood talking to a British soldier's armed murderers until the police turned up.

That's brave. That's genuine courage. It's highlighted by the contrast with less brave individuals' reactions, of course, as the photographic coverage of the London scene attests. Just look at the other people standing around, snapping the scene on their mobile phones but refusing to engage because it's dangerous.

That's cowardice, and that's a choice they made.

Cowardice is not part of an either/or choice when you have cancer. You either face the hideous treatment, or you face death.

Both are terrifying. Cancer makes cowards of us all.

************

Naturally, you can manufacture a third option- yep, you can delude yourself for quite some time if you want. You can believe there's some other way to beat cancer that won't be as unpleasant, but it doesn't make it true. Eventually, unless you have exceptional luck, option two stares you in the face and you fall into the pit of terror; you realise you chose death without knowing it.

I'm not into self-delusion. Please don't give me that 'miracle cure through natural remedies and positive thinking' crap. Some people- a very, very few- will spontaneously recover from cancer for no apparent reason, whether they've chosen course 1 or course 2. But until you have research-backed proof that something actually works as a cure and your 'miracle cure' isn't down to blind chance (or some avaricious charlatan's lies), you can stuff that one right up your jumper- and not down my throat.

*************

So what do we do about the terror, if we can't delude ourselves? We can't just avoid it and cower in a corner till it goes away. It's not going away.

I think the answer to this has come clear to me as I consider what on earth is happening in my mind when I lie alone under the Kraken face of the x-ray machine at radiotherapy. There I am, paralysed into total stillness by an act of personal will and somehow achieving a meditative trance state- when any sane and rational person, knowing they were about to be shot full of potentially lethal radiation, would spring off the gurney and run screaming from the room.

(Don't think I haven't considered that option.)

What the hell is that about?

I've decided it comes down to making a choice again- not between courage and cowardice, but between fight and surrender. Those are our primary choices if we want to survive, and both require a high level of mind control. But it takes far more control to surrender, and it takes wisdom to know when to do so.

To choose a mastectomy was a choice to fight. The choice was easy. I chose to fight the Freeloader rather than to die.

To lie there in the theatre anteroom in my hospital gown, calmly accepting the anaesthetic whilst knowing that to do so meant I was committed to losing my breast and totally at the mercy of the surgeon's and anaesthetist's skills? That was a choice to surrender, and it was far more difficult. It required extreme mind control.

In the same way, choosing whether or not to have chemotherapy and which course to accept- four and a half months of extreme hell, or six months of slightly lesser hell- was easy. Fight, or die? Get it over with quickly and hit it hard, or draw it out and maybe let something nasty survive in me? No competition. That decision, like the decision to have the mastectomy, was made in a moment.

Turning up for each chemo session, though- and not dwelling on the thought of it and the pain and discomfort to come, until I sent myself mad- that required surrender.

I slipped sometimes on that one. Truly, chemo is horrible. They do kind of tell you that, but you don't really realise how horrible until you're stuck there for months. I had to talk myself into surrendering, often, instead of beating myself up about how rotten I felt.

Accept not being able to do anything at all. 

Try to rest.

Ask for help.

I failed, often. I wailed, often. But bailed? Never. That would be choosing death.

Brave didn't come into it.

**************

And then there's the radiotherapy.

The Kraken is an image of terror from my childhood. I'd read John Wyndham's The Chrysalids, one of my all-time favourite books, and also of course The Day of the Triffids; both had scary moments aplenty, but nothing I couldn't handle at 8 years or so.

And then I picked up The Kraken Wakes, and lost my sleep for days. The concept of going so deep beneath the surface of the sea in a diving bell was bad enough (I'd nearly drowned when I was 6), but the cries of horror from the divers... the unseen monster only guessed at on the shore...the severed line... I was spooked for a lifetime, well before 3 in the morning when the Kraken emerged from the water to kill whole communities and I knew I couldn't put the book down till it was over.

The radiotherapy machine really does look like the front of a diving bell. There I am, staring into its blank face for half an hour, every day, for five eternal weeks.

I know that the Kraken can kill me. Sometimes, after all the talk about how hard it was to finalise The Plan, how tricky to get the angles right to avoid my heart, I get a shooting pain in my chest as I lie there. I know it's psychosomatic. At least, I think I know.

That's when I have to consciously engage my mind to surrender, and that's where I've discovered how powerful my mind can be. The only way for me to surrender, faced with that level of partly irrational fear, is to not be there at all. So off goes my mind into some other place, where absolutely none of this is happening.

Wow.

Pretty amazing, isn't it?

But it's not brave. It's just that I have a very strong mind. If you were to praise me for my stubbornness, for my determination, for the power of my mind, I would accept the praise without question.

So let's not talk about courage- not while I'm fighting the Freeloader. Yes, I can be courageous- there's plenty of my father in me. I was brave to stand up to my boss one day many years ago, for example, when a corrupt act of hers to advance her own student threatened the career of another student. (Would you believe she'd reversed the two students' results on the official submission to the Board of Studies?)

I know what brave feels like. Brave is when you're absolutely wetting yourself with fear (in my case, of career-ending reprisals, not to mention the rabid expressions of fury I knew I would field from my ex-boss), but you choose to act anyway because it's the right thing to do.

Not the only rational thing to do. The right thing to do, when you have a choice to do nothing without harm to yourself.

So to be called brave for dealing with this cancer, in the only rational way I know, makes me feel like a fraud, because courage isn't what's required to deal with cancer. What's required is the ability to know when to fight, and when to surrender. What's required is the mental strength to surrender, when you really want to run away screaming.

Yes, I'm being strong-minded. But I'm not being brave.

A touch of the tar brush

Nobody ever talked about my black great-grandmother. In fact, if I hadn't been quite so good at eavesdropping I might never have known that I had a touch of the tar brush at all. But it's remarkable what a quiet child can find out by simply being quiet until people forget she's there.

(Yes, I am- and always have been- just dandy at being quiet as well as at being still, though many of my friends might roar laughing at the very thought.)

The being quiet came from my mother's side, the supposedly shameful blackfella from my father's. Being quiet has given me an enormous supply of material to write about, as well as some privileged information now and then; I've been sorely criticised for my silence many a time (particularly during my schooldays), but it's just one of the odd twists of my nature that makes me me. Now, as an adult, I see that my eighth-share of native Polynesian is probably responsible for many of my other quirks.

My passion for seafood. (I could live on it, easily; remember, even when we were in dire straights thanks to the chemotherapy, Ferdinand and I could still eat fish.)

My wavy-curly dark hair. (Yep, the hair that I miss so badly now, no matter how well the blonde Megwig flick-style suits me.)

My ever-so-unfashionable figure, which flatly refuses to resemble anything but a well-fed Polynesian earth mama. (And has done so all my life, regardless of diet or exercise; I've been such a star for the last two weeks, exercising every single day, and not a single ounce have I lost.)

My antipathy towards WASP formal ceremony, marriage included. (Walking out on my father's arm, I wondered what the hell I was doing there; it felt wrong in some way I couldn't identify for years. It had nothing to do with the choice of male. It was the whole ritualistic deal that didn't fit. God help you all if you ever dare give me a funeral in a church.)

But my native heritage is probably also responsible at some level for today's achievement award at radiotherapy, despite what the 'experts' tell me.

**************

Segue to the nurses' rooms, post-treatment. I've just emerged from the change rooms, left arm aching, my chest slathered in cold aloe vera jelly which is sticking slightly to my hastily-donned clothes. The nurse who calls me in for my weekly check-up is a stranger; the staff down in radiotherapy continue my impression of public-hospital-as-manic-cuckoo-clock, with the faces changing daily. Continuity is at a premium.

I strip back down to bare-chestedness (why ever do they ask you to get dressed again between appointments, I wonder) and she inspects the condition of my skin.

It looks even paler some hours later...

"Well, that's excellent," she says. "There's some pinkness here, but the skin looks moist still and there's no sign of breakdown. What have you been using on it- just the sorbolene cream we gave you?"

"No, I bring fresh aloe vera leaves with me on an ice pack. I cut them and apply them as soon as my treatment finishes, then I use Moo Goo later on. And I use Vitamin E cream for massages on my underarm."

"That's great. You're doing absolutely everything right, and your skin looks fine. So, this is the end of your first week of radiotherapy?"

I look dumbfounded, I'm sure.

"No, actually. I'm two days into Week Three."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not."

The time has certainly flown. Tomorrow I'll be halfway through my radiotherapy.

*************

The nurse picks her jaw up off the floor.

"That's amazing. All you've got to show for it is that little bit of pink. If your skin was going to break down, it'd have started to degrade by now. But it's not dry or flaking or blistering at all."

I just smile.

The nurse smiles, too. "I can see you're a fighter," she volunteers.

I resist the temptation to tell her the name of my blog.

*************

It's a bit of a different story from the one I got from Dr Nobody yesterday. I'd thought the doctor's appointment set out on my schedule meant I'd be seeing Professor Power Ranger, but no; I got a bulk-bill style appointment with his registrar (think, what's the world record for strip, look, analyse, dress and push her out the door?).

And the aforementioned Dr Nobody was a true prophet of gloom, predicting that regardless of how great my skin looked now, it'd all fall apart by the time they were finished with me. Well, the 'Fighter' wasn't convinced by that- not at all. And when I tried to extract a rationale for his assessment of the situation, the waters became significantly muddy.

He tried to tell me it was cumulative, but that didn't seem to make sense given that my skin hasn't shown any reaction at all up till now.

So I asked him a few pertinent questions. No, the dose doesn't increase as time goes on- in fact, they take away the gel layers (a sort of cold-pack-like arrangement that goes on my chest during part of the treatment) and the dose gets administered deeper below the skin level. So the skin gets less wear and tear as time goes on, not more.

Go figure.

Somehow I think I prefer to believe the nurse on this occasion. Hey, the nurses are the ones who get to see the patients every single week and dress their burns. I reckon they might know a little bit more about likely progression of my skin's condition than Dr Who-the-Hell-are-You.

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So the 'Fighter' is this week's star pupil, it seems. Or rather, my Polynesian skin is, in combination with the Bear's faith in cold, fresh aloe vera. Not that everyone will agree with me, of course. Some would say I'm just lucky.

I'd been told by the other nurses that cultural heritage had no bearing on how my skin would hold up- that skin reactions to rads are completely random and unpredictable. I've chosen not to believe that. Not in my case, anyway. I prefer to think of my heritage as an invisible shield between me and the Kraken; the touch of black in my skin refuses to be damaged and defeated by mere radiation.

Hell, my ancestors played in the New Caledonian sun for generations without sunscreen or sunburn. Why wouldn't I be protected too?

And so I thank the Fates for my touch of the tar brush. I'm doubly blessed, in that it's never been a problem for me. I don't look black, you know; you won't recognise it in me unless you're black yourself. The Aboriginal assistant at my work knew at once, without being told. None of the others did; they were 100% WASP. But she watched the way the black kids ran to me and trusted me at once. They knew, too.

So rather than being a burden, my black heritage is a gift. And it seems that some gifts are barely visible until you really need them.

Thanks, Great-Grandma. I'm not the least bit ashamed of you.