Three steps back

It's while I'm running the filleting knife down the rib cage of the freshly slaughtered turkey that the analogy hits me between the eyes. I am, for all intents and purposes, performing a posthumous mastectomy on this poor creature.

It's hard to get every last scrap of flesh off those ribs. The only thing at stake, in this case, is household economy and my own idiotic perfectionism; the older I get, the more I become aware of my underlying OCD. Dr Goodguy, on the other hand, would have been leaving me vulnerable to recurrences if he left a single strand of breast tissue in place.

Just as well he's the surgeon and I'm the amateur butcher.

The knife slips, slicing into my left middle finger. Fuck. I'm covered with little nicks, thanks to the Lyrica making me sleepy and uncoordinated. I reach for yet another Band-aid, pushing away the knowledge that I'm meant to avoid breaking the skin on any part of that arm.

This is reality. I can't sit here swaddled in cotton wool for the rest of my life. We still have to eat.

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

The human breast that Dr Goodguy filleted away two weeks ago is definitely better gone. My ovaries were as pure as the driven snow, and for that I'm immensely grateful; changes there are symptomless and frequently deadly. But the pathology on my right breast did show some small aberrations- not anything that could be classed as pre-cancerous, nothing to cause undue concern, but any changes at all make me damn nervous after the year and a half of crazy I've endured. I think of the white spots on my last mammogram, which didn't set off the alarm bells in anyone but me, and know that we've cut off the Freeloader at the pass this time. He won't be slipping any messages into Paul Revere's saddlebags, bound for my lymph nodes, before we even know he's arrived.

And there's that, isn't there? My last mammogram. I have no regrets about a future in which my sexual parts will not be slammed between two icy plates and flattened till I wince. For long, long minutes.

Honestly, men complain about a finger up their arse to check their prostate? Been there, mate. No comparison. Come, let me take my hair straightener out of the freezer and apply it to your nuts, and we'll talk.

But I digress.

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

There are things I'd forgotten about post-mastectomy recovery. The scales tip this way and that; to balance the load of crippling fear I carried through the last mastectomy, I have my brand new and total lack of tolerance for being ill or incapacitated. In hospital I ran on equal parts of adrenaline and denial, refusing pain killers completely by the second morning so that they sent me home on day three with nothing but a drain bag and a cheerful wave. It felt like a win.

Bloody-mindedness continued to be my friend for some time. I spent the first day at home sort of in bed relaxing, then normal service was resumed as I started to cook and do a few chores around the house. Realising I wasn't sleeping all that well- I blamed the annoying drain in my side, which made lying down singularly uncomfortable- I dug out an old packet of Targin and started dropping one each night.

It didn't help much, but still the penny didn't clang on the bottom of the piggy bank and bring me to my senses.

Day seven, and the drain came out with a cheerful 'see you in six months' from Dr Goodguy. I am Superwoman! Nine days out from the operation I was walking four kilometres to our creek and back on my own, bush-bashing and climbing trees on the way.

And still not sleeping.

Well, that was only to be expected, right? I haven't been able to sleep on my left side since the axillary clearance- the ache in my arm becomes unbearable within minutes if I lie on it. And obviously my right side was going to be sore after being filleted. I'm really not a back-sleeper- I've always curled up on one side or another, or even slept face-down (not an option at present). So of course I wasn't sleeping well.

Ten days out I started to crash, as the sleep deprivation hit me. It finally struck me that the pain over my new scar was getting worse, not better. I checked for redness, but no- it all looked perfectly normal. But anything touching the wound was agony, and that included clothing. (Sadly, running around nude in the middle of the Bungy winter is not a viable option unless I want snap-frozen spare ribs. Very, very spare ribs.)

But wait. Anything touching... where have I heard this before?

I'd forgotten about the nerve pain that accompanied Round One, making it impossible to even rest my poor gutted wing on the arm of a chair. I'd forgotten about it to the extent that I didn't recognise the sensation that was driving me crazy as nerve pain, simply because it was in a different place- under the arm and across my chest, rather than running down from shoulder to elbow.

And so, back to the Lyrica, which makes sleep possible at night and turns me into a zombie by day. If I only take the evening tablet, I can sleep at night and sort-of function during the day.

Sort of. If I don't count cutting my fingers to ribbons while processing a turkey.

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

Along with the zombie mode which lasts well into the morning, along with the deep reluctance to get out of bed, comes the Black Dog sniffing around my heels. You're failing, he snuffles. You're backsliding. You're lazy. Knowing it's bollocks doesn't help me when I'm this flat. I can't even shout at him.

I know exercise would help, but I just can't find the ergs. Riding my bike seems too risky; breaking the scar open would set my reconstruction plans back to zero. Walking seems too slow to make a difference to my mood. My motivation feels like it's gone in the incinerator with my fine sections.

I get on the scales to see how much ground I've lost, but of course I'm well over a kilo lighter thanks to the missing breast; small comfort when your two steps forward are surgically achieved. Should I be trying to lose the rest of this weight? Should I say fuck it and just turn back into a pile of lard on the couch? Should I try to find the middle road and somehow maintain this weight till the reconstruction surgery?

And that, of course, is a whole new can of worms to deal with; another surgery, at this moment, seems as desirable as an anchovy and Vegemite sauce on my ice cream sundae, but I know it has to be arranged. My reconstruction requires a whole day in theatre, and if I don't book that theatre well in advance I'm screwed. Within a week of the mastectomy I'm on the phone and lining up the reconstruction for November 21st.

"What's the hurry?" grumps the Bear. "You've just been through one surgery. Why the rush to put yourself through it again?"

Because I hate the way I look. Because I'll have to pay another excess on my health insurance if I wait till next year. Because I want this to be over. I have many genuine, heartfelt and logical responses, but none of them fix the real problem at the heart of this conversation: my Bear is at breaking point. He's had enough. Three rounds with the Freeloader in his life, killing and maiming his women, and he wants it to stop. No more hospital, no more anaesthetics, no more surgery and recovery and watching people he loves in pain. He's started to believe he's cursed. He's started to believe he's caused it somehow, and seeing me go through this shit all over again is undoing him.

"You're not your boobs," he says to me. "You were blessed with wonderful breasts and I enjoyed them, but they're not you. It's you I love." And he's saying all the things a dream man would say in these circumstance, and I can't fault a word of it, and it's never going to change my mind. Because that's how I am. My body, my decision.

I'm even dreaming of having breasts again. I wake devastated to find it was just my subconscious playing tricks. I drag myself to the bathroom, look at the wasteland of my chest in horror. The slashes, the knobbly ribs- I look like a goddamned turkey carcass. I may as well feed myself to the dogs and be done with it.

Dressing to go out, I put on an ah-bra and the old teddybear tits long before I should be putting any pressure over the wound- just to feel normal, just so people don't stare, just so I don't hate my own reflection. At the end of the day they've ridden up to my chin, and it's hilarious and ridiculous, and under the laughter I feel like a freak.

And so we're sinking together, my Bear and me- him from sheer emotional exhaustion, me under the weight of our combined physical and mental pain and my desperate attempts to keep our relationship from imploding. One step forward, three steps back.

Throw me a lifejacket, someone.

Make 'Em Laugh

WARNING: This post contains some full-on photos of my surgical work. If you don't want to see, don't look!

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

Back in the days when I was teaching classroom music full time to sometimes unwilling adolescents, my long-suffering colleagues and I used to give ourselves the odd 'time out' by educating (!) our Year 9 students about old musicals. (And yes, I confess that often meant turning on the video player- remember those?- and sitting on our exhausted arses for the last forty minutes of the day while the next segment played to a restless and clearly indifferent audience.)

Snorts of derision were the stock reaction to most of the old-fashioned and over-sentimental songs which drove the creaking plots of many of these old shows, but one sequence invariably cut straight through the carapace of teenage cool and had whole classes of 14-year-old girls writhing with hysterical delight.

I give you 'Make 'Em Laugh', from 'Singing in the Rain.' Go on, watch it. Be a devil!

Make 'Em Laugh!

I suspect that the inherent philosophy of this song- that everyone will love you as long as you make them giggle helplessly- has underpinned far too much of my interaction with the rest of the human race. Never mind that Donald O'Connor had to be hospitalised after filming the song. It's only pain, right?

And so it was that I turned up to Admissions last Monday for my prophylactic surgery wearing bunny ears.

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

The world is divided into two types of people: those who thought this was hilarious, and those who immediately looked away and tightened their lips into a semi-audible 'tsk tsk'. I found it an incredibly useful way to shortcut the business at hand. The tsk tskers wanted to get straight down to the business of getting me sectioned (and you can interpret that any way you want), and the others were happy to notice that I'm a human being, not a diagnosis, before they got right down to treating me.

So I smiled, regardless of the cool reception, and filled out forms; or I returned the smiles and talked about the Jolly Old Jolie Gene as I filled out forms. Laughter does sort people out awfully quickly.

What did you notice first?
The ears or the commode chair?

Here is my tip of the day for people going to hospital: be memorable, but for the right reasons. From the time I walked into that building, the majority of the staff who came into my vicinity had smiles on their faces. My bunny ears declared my intent not to be a fucking miserable sod, and hardworking underpaid people tend to like that.

It's a choice, right? Pretty much every attitude we adopt is a choice. If I'm the one on the receiving end of the shit sandwich, I reckon it's empowering to choose to make 'em laugh.

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

Of course, making 'em laugh also served to divert attention from my very real and intensely personal feelings about losing my remaining breast. I'd got totally tired of being asked if I was alright by well-meaning people, and it was easier to project the humour as a smoke screen than to be either angry (which would hurt them for no good reason) or honest (which would leave them as confused as I was, and no doubt convinced they'd said the wrong thing). Was I alright? How the fuck would I know? Define alright. What was there to feel about this surgery, other than complete bewilderment?

I knew only one thing. I wanted to live, rather more than I wanted to maintain one real breast (or indeed two); that's the only part that's ever been clear. In the days leading up to last Monday, whenever I touched my doomed nipple it felt numb- as though all feeling had already resigned itself to landing the hospital incinerator. Whatever grieving has to happen about that sexual loss will hit me when it hits me, but it hasn't happened yet.

What I do regret- and knew I would- what I do feel angry and sad and not alright about is the way I look now. There's simply no pretending that I look like anything but a huge pink pear. With my narrow shoulders, small back and generous Polynesian hips, I was balanced visually only by my excess of breast. I've gone from hourglass to bean bag, and I hate it.

Turn the mirrors to the wall? It's only temporary, right? Yes, sure, Dr Yes will fix it. First World problem, vanity, beauty-is-not-skin-deep, wee-waa wee-waa blah blah blah, STFU. For now, it's my reality, and I'll be damned if I'll do anything but face it and feel what has to be felt. Alone. But don't ask me to define it.

The ovaries, on the other hand, I regret not one whit; I was done with breeding long ago, and all I think of when I think of them at all is how fucking lethal they can be in someone like me.

Or, indeed, in someone like my mother. QED. Sayonara, and slam the door on your way out.

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

This hospital visit proved to be my turn to upset the surgical apple cart, in the most minor of ways. First on the afternoon list, I slid straight into theatre without my backside touching the waiting room chair and proceeded to screw up everyone's schedule. My ovaries, clearly picking up on the rabbit-hole theme, wanted to play hide and seek. It took some hours longer than planned for Dr Goodguy and friends to blow up my abdomen with gas (truly, they do!) and go hunting around the back of my uterus via three tiny incisions in my belly. We're late, we're late, for a very important date.

All things considered, the team did well; I'm lucky they didn't testily abandon the laparoscope and slash a bigger hole to make it easier. Face it, Dr Goodguy's just not like that. All the staff commented on his amazing neatness as they surveyed my tidy white rectangles of Fixamol (the only tape I've proved not to be allergic to), and I had just cause to thank him for his patience yet again. I ended up with the promised three small nicks, which will make Dr Yes' job that much easier.

That done, Dr G set upon my chest with the intent to make the scar on the right resemble the one on the left as closely as possible. Looking pretty good so far to my untutored eye.

But honestly, do you see what I mean about the pear? Once you take the breasts away, your body unexpectedly goes in under your arms and then out again at the bottom of your ribs. And out, in my case significantly, to your hips.

There's a pun in there somewhere about pairs and pears, but right now it doesn't feel funny.

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

I woke up without remembering a single thing after the anaesthetist told me he'd 'just give me something to relax me'. Whatever he gave me obviously sent me straight to coma, do not pass go, because I didn't get to see Dr Goodguy at all before he started sectioning the bunny. And perhaps because of the extra-long time on the operating table, I don't remember much about the waking up either, other than that it was unusually uncomfortable- a need to cough, which hurt like hell, and a certain discombobulation of the mind. My mouth felt like the whole of the Simpson Desert had been deposited in there, complete with camels and minus the waterholes.

I guess five hours' paralysis with tubes shoved down your throat will do that to you.

Back in the high dependency ward, I was treated like royalty. The male nurse waxed lyrical about the talents of Dr Goodguy; he cut my throat a few years ago and I lived to tell the tale, he joked, showing me an almost invisible thyroid scar. I drank gallons of water, desperately trying to remove the sandy expanses from my throat. The proffered sandwich was too hard to swallow, though my stomach loudly protested the need. A full bladder pressed alarmingly and immediately on the recently-reamed areas; I noticed with some satisfaction that I was able to use my yoga training to get myself onto a bedpan unassisted, though once there I needed to use my muscles in an unaccustomed way to help release the pressure.

A helpful nurse passed me my phone. A selfie was enough to reassure my friends that I was all done and fine.

Go me. I can do this.

Of course I can.

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

Doing the hospital's instant coffee for the next few days, however, was another matter. I'd been spoiled in the high dependency ward, the staff quietly conniving to bring the bunny percolated coffee from the nurses' station, and once back with the throng I was forced to post a less reassuring picture on my Facebook.

Make 'em laugh.

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

Happily, though, and in stark contrast to the Base Hospital which I could see across the valley through my window, the food was edible and relatively nourishing. Seriously, how hard can it be? The vegies were still slightly firm and noticeably the right colour; the meat was still moist.  Nothing appeared to have come out of a packet except some of the regrettable gravies and sauces (first ingredient salt, second ingredient sugar if my slowly recovering taste buds were telling me the truth).

Nevertheless, after three nights I was stir crazy and ready to come home. The third day had been spent feeling pretty miserable, probably a kick in the teeth from the anaesthesia as well as a little exhaustion with looking in the unforgiving bathroom mirrors every time I had to relieve my extremely impatient bladder before it exploded through my stomach wounds (well, that's how it felt). The bunny ears went back on. The call for horse and carriage was made. I waited impatiently for the Bear's time to coincide with reality- always an imperfect art.

Lemme outta here!

And so here I sit at home, mostly just lying in bed reading or playing around on Facebook, a drain still sticking out of my side to remind me not to get too ambitious too soon. I admit to feeling a little vivisected when I look at it, though of course the results of the experiment are long in. People with BRCA mutations live longer if they have these surgeries. A LOT longer.

Physically, I guess I'm doing really well. I've only had one pain tablet since yesterday morning, and that was mostly to help me sleep in a bed also occupied by a man who's all elbows and a dog who's missed me too much. I've taken two walks with the dogs today without doubling up or falling down.

But emotionally? How do I feel?

I have no idea.

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

Love, loss and learning

The world is divided into two types of people: those who think everything that happens has some sort of moral lesson to it, and those who believe that shit happens. Randomly. Deal with it.

Of course, that's bollocks; the truth lies somewhere between, and a third group of us have worked that out. Reading that first paragraph back, I fear I've been influenced by my midnight reading as I lay awake last night trying not to think about having my other breast lopped off next Monday. 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' might better have been named 'Krispy Kremes for the Simplistic'. I found it deeply disappointing. It's a book I've been meaning to read for years, ever since some well-meaning teacher got up at assembly and read us tender females an extract that resonated with my embryonic understanding of the world.

An understanding which was also terminally infected with bollocks, I might say. Happy ending or tragedy, I've discovered to my cost, are not the only choices in life, though my youthful literary choices would have me believe so. A lot of life is tedious or plain exhausting. We all end up dying in the end, even if the roller coaster ride was fun up till then. Worse, the ones we love die, and instead of having a weep and closing the book with a sort of morbid enjoyment, we're sentenced to keep on living that same story- to find a way to manage without them.

But of course, as a career educator I'm the first type of person. I'm more inclined than the next person to look for the lesson in everything that happens to me. And so I'm sitting here with my trepidation and my sadness, trying to see if I can learn anything useful from the loss of my beloved Blinky.

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

It was the dog barking over and over that drew my attention to him the first time. Looking out through the forest near our house, I couldn't see a single thing to be alarmed about. Then a bouquet of gum leaves dropped almost on my head, and I looked up and started yelling for the Bear.

"Come and look! There's a koala in our yard!"

Now, perhaps you might think that this is a fairly normal happening for people who live in the Australian forest. Not so. The koala population in our area has been decimated by logging, disease and various forms of human stupidity, and is in severe danger of extinction. Nobody we know can remember seeing a koala anywhere remotely near our place before- not even the local bushmen who used to live here in humpies rather than houses, cutting ti tree by hand or dropping trees for a tiny sawmill that was swallowed by the forest long ago.

It was a magic moment.

Over the next two months we watched Blinky with increasing reverence and awe, as he selected a new tree each night in a game of hide-and-seek that he was always going to win. Finding a solitary koala in the two acres of forest nearest the house was a more diverting game than Candy Crush, and I found myself spending more and more time outside, walking through the trees with my neck aching from craning upwards. He was rarely low enough for us to photograph, given that the trees around us make Cleopatra's Needle look bent and stunted.

Are you hearing me.

TALL.

It made me educate myself in a way I'd never bother to do before, despite my love of nature. I found myself consulting Google again- thankfully not about breast cancer and BRCA2 and salpingo-oopherectomy and DIEP reconstruction, but about eucalypts and feed trees and scratch marks and droppings. I needed some 'cheats' to play the highly distracting find Blinky game more effectively.

I was no match for him, of course. He gave plenty of clues- fresh droppings, distinctive hand marks on the smooth-barked gums- but it was as though he'd turn up in plain sight and then magically vanish. Once he went AWOL for ten days and we thought he'd moved on, only to open our eyes one morning and be confronted by a furry ball tucked high in the flooded gum outside our bedroom window, in clear view.

Here I am. Gotcha.

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

And then one evening, as I walked out in the late twilight to catch a last glimpse of him, I found him sitting on the ground at the base of a grey gum. Hastily tying the dogs up, I raced back with a flashlight. Something was definitely wrong. He shouldn't be on the ground at this time of the evening.

And he most definitely shouldn't let me get close enough to brush the flies off the back of his neck. He sat awkwardly, his bright eyes regarding me with a resigned stare.

I called the koala rescue service.

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

24 hours later my little friend was dead, released from the misery of the final stages of the koala's form of AIDS, KoRV (koala rotavirus). He'd probably fallen from the tree out of sheer weakness, fracturing his forearm in the process.

It was, to me, completely unbelievable. For over two months I'd told myself stories about this little chap. He felt safe here. He had everything he needed. Our trees were so attractive because they were in fertile soil, thanks to our turkeys free ranging around them. In spring he'd start to call, and attract a female. Soon we'd have a whole colony of koalas outside our window.

All bollocks. My head had been firmly wedged in the sand. Wild koalas don't appear near houses unless they're desperate. All the time, he was sick and hungry; perhaps when I didn't see him, he'd not been hiding- he'd simply been too weak to climb and had lived on the ground, scrounging a few fallen leaves where he could.

He wasn't the start of something. More likely, he was the end- a sign of the dire state of our koala population, ravaged by KoRV, chlamydia and a decimated, fragmented environment.

What was there to learn that I didn't already know? The human race is selfish, greedy, deluded. There is no hope for us. We will cut down the trees and flatten hapless wildlife with speeding cars till there's no magic left.

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

I could, so easily, throw Blinky out with the bathwater, just like that. I could so easily discard everything good about the experience, simply because the ending was bad, sad, too hard to deal with.

I could let him confirm my worst, most depressing thoughts about humanity.

There's always a choice, my therapist used to say. And so, actively, from Blinky I learn yet again to choose differently, even though it's hard work.

I can choose to learn that life is a series of cameos, each one carrying its little basket of emotions. I can choose to hold onto the best vignettes, even when they're in the past, instead of letting them be eclipsed and made meaningless by sadness. Looking at my few photos of Blinky, remembering the joy he gave me while he was here, I can still smile as well as ache. Touching my poor doomed breast for the last time, I can still recall the fun we've had together, even as I mourn the coming loss of that particular sensation- surely? Can't I? Can I?

I can try.

I can choose to learn not to tell myself such alluring stories. I can acknowledge that when I really don't know, it's best to store up a little realism with the determination and optimism. Blinky's presence was a farewell, not a greeting. These operations may go wrong. I may get an infection, my wounds may break down, the reconstruction may fail.

Learning is always possible. Shit happens. The truth is somewhere in between.

And while I'm stuck with my story, the story where my breasts will be gone forever- and with them one dimension of my sexuality- there are other dimensions of my story coming that I can't imagine from where I am now. The more I close myself off, protect myself, allow myself to be miserable and fatalistic, the less open I am to turning new pages.

Vi's grandson- remember Vi?- Vi's grandson has helped me turn a page to get past the sadness of my Blinky story. He's turned up here on a bicycle, ridden all the way from the Central Coast, and he's started to clear our track through the forest down to the creek. Remember those huge storms while I was having chemo? The tree that nearly killed the Bear when it fell? Those storms wrought havoc down the back. We couldn't even walk down there, let alone get a vehicle in.

Losing access to most of our property has been a huge thorn in our sides. But with everything else that's been going on, dealing with the carnage down there just hasn't come to the top of the list. Now as I walk down the first part of the track again, for the first time in two years, I see that the enforced lack of human presence has been a boon for the wildlife.

And I find myself looking upwards again, craning my neck to see the distant treetops. Checking the ground. Checking the bark of the smoothest trees, looking for those tell-tale scratch marks.

It's good exercise, walking. It's something I can do almost immediately after my surgery. I was wondering how I'd cope with suddenly having to drop my exercise routine back to the bare minimum; walking down the road simply doesn't have the pull of cycling. What would happen to my motivation?

But walking down the bush track- that's different. If I stop, wait, listen, there's always magic to be found.

And listen. There are scratch marks on those trees. Fresh ones, since the last time the trees lost their bark.

They may be from a goanna, I say to myself. Google said it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.

There are droppings, too. Fresh ones.

I'm no expert, I say to myself. They may be from some other animal.

But I keep looking upwards anyway.

Flying to Antarctica

I never sleep well the night before I fly- not for some time before, if the truth be told. I have trouble giving up my illusion of control to the invisible man in the cockpit. It's hard to entrust a stranger with my life.

Once aboard, bag carefully stowed in the overhead locker and seatbelt firmly tightened, I accept that the choice has been made. I'm headed up to the endless acres of rolling white, as much a toy of the gods as Scott of the Antarctic. Perhaps today they'll do what they've threatened for the last 18 months, and kill me for their sport. That would be the ultimate irony.

But the wisdom of Pooh comes back to me. Perhaps they won't. Either way, there's nothing I can do but surrender to the experience. I give in, just as I do before each surgery. I imagine I'm sledding hundreds of miles in a frozen, ethereally beautiful landscape, the numbing snow spreading in infinite dappled contours to every horizon.

It was some small measure of comfort
to travel with Keith Urban on my lap.

And on this occasion, I wonder more pragmatically if I've brought enough warm clothes, because coming from the subtropical Bungy to the chill depths of Victoria might just be a little bit of a climate shock. But it had been notably cheaper to fly with only the Bear's carry-on sail bag; I'd been damned if I was going to succumb to the Jetstar website's siren song and add checked baggage. How much could I possibly need for five days in Melbourne?

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

A little back-story. I'd realised some time ago that I just couldn't sit comfortably with the idea of a double latissimus dorsi reconstruction. (No pun intended.) Since I saw Dr Mattel, I'd started to hear louder and louder internal voices screaming that I was tempting fate. God knows I've had enough nerve pain from the surgeries I've already been forced to endure on my upper body; why on earth would I screw around more than absolutely necessary with the sensation and function I had left up there?

No, I wasn't happy with Dr Mattel's advice. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the gradual dawning of awareness that his expressionless face, so impossible for me to connect with, had probably been Botoxed to within an inch of its life. What did it matter if my plastic surgeon was trying to cheat time, as long as he was a great technician? What did it matter if he was as empathetic as an Easter Island statue, as long as I ended up with a great rack?

Who am I kidding? I didn't trust him. You don't tell a patient who's had a life-threatening disease that you wish she was bordering on obese, instead of working to be more healthy, just because that would make your job easier. You don't tell a patient that the timing of her operation will have to work around your skiing holiday, for fuck's sake. I'm a slow burner, but in the weeks since my appointment with Dr Mattel, burn I most certainly did.

Cancel my follow-up appointment I also most certainly did. The fact that no human was available to take my call during normal business hours seemed to confirm my decision. I've had second thoughts, I said to the answering machine; no point being rude. I'm sure he's exactly the right surgeon for some females.

Like, say, Barbie.

But I am not a plaything. The time had come to seek a second opinion.

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

Jools had been telling me for some time that she knew some excellent practitioners south of the border, in that great state which the Bear has always called 'Mexico' (to the complete confusion of our less lateral-thinking friends). 'She's gone to Mexico for a few days,' he'd say down the phone when I went visiting, without a single syllable of clarification; the last time I dropped in on my best friend, certain people expected me to return with sombreros and chilli sauce.

But this time I was going in search of something far more elusive than fancy hats and cooking ingredients. I wanted to come back with hope, because I'd decided sadly that if the lat dorsi was the only option, I'd settle for being flat-chested for the rest of my life. It wasn't an idea that appealed very much to a girl who spent her late adolescence balancing her conversational shortcomings with increasing lengths of exposed cleavage.

Nevertheless, it did sound more like fun than having my back muscles excised, exported to Twin Peaks and told to learn to be Laura Palmer's deceased and numb perky bits, instead of holding me upright. Apparently they're liable to spasm now and then without warning while they're being schooled. Tourette's tits don't really strike me as desirable to anyone, except perhaps the sideshow manager at the circus.

Dr Goodguy was completely amenable to the concept of a second opinion. "It's important that you're sure," he'd said when I suggested by late-night email that I might like to front up to the exchange desk at Boobman Carvery. Not for a moment did he ask me to justify the request- confirming yet again that the sun shines out of his nether regions 24 hours a day. Referral arranged, I headed down to Jools' sculptor-of-choice in Mexico City.

On the chosen day for my first encounter with this purported Rodin of the flesh, I walked seven kilometres through suburban Melbourne to get there. Perhaps this was sheer bloodymindedness. It had flashed across my mind that I could choose to drop my exercise routine back a little, to avoid losing any more abdominal weight, but the angel on my shoulder had replied that the Freeloader's always on the lookout for a job opportunity in my body. Perhaps constant vigilance might be a reasonable position, regardless of my desire for new tits of substance.

Sounds fair. 17 kilos gone and counting. Above all- above even the reincarnation of my soon-to-be-extinct boobies- I want to live.

The first encouraging sign was that I only spent twenty minutes in the waiting room beyond the allocated start time. Hoorah! I passed the time with a Facebook friend who happens to see the same surgeon; she too assured me of his worthiness. The stars were aligning.

And then the heavens parted and let me through. I found myself in the company of Dr Yes.

Yes, it was possible to perform double DIEP flap surgery using this amount of abdominal fat. A C cup, or something approaching it, was entirely possible. And given that a patient's entire silhouette would be altered for the better by this procedure- the tummy tucked, the breasts more pert- women often found that they were in fact content with a somewhat smaller cup size than they'd anticipated.

Yes, if I found I really needed to be a D cup he could insert implants at a later date. Mind you, this would negate one of the advantages of this type of procedure- the durability of the new breasts. DIEP breasts last for ever, grow with the patient if weight is gained, shrink with the patient if weight is lost, age naturally, never need tinkering with. Implants have a shelf life (no pun intended). In ten years or so, they might well need to be replaced, and who wants to be bothered with more surgery every decade?

Yes, this procedure would ideally be performed without particular interference with the muscles. Only in the case of unforeseen complications would he attempt a TRAM flap process instead, and use the rectus abdominus.

Yes, it was poor logic to gain weight in the hope of a larger cup size. For surely the aim is to stay fit and well? And on losing the excess weight again after the surgery, the artificially inflated balloons would simply deflate once more and turn into saggy baggy elephant mammaries.

Yes, I would only need to be away from home for a few weeks; I could fly perhaps a week after leaving hospital, which would be somewhere between the fifth and seventh day post-surgery.

Yes, the price included everything from the time I decided to proceed until the moment I was finally completely happy with my new chest. Adjustments, if there should happen to be some asymmetry. Pseudo-nipples added creatively, some three months after the original surgery. Implants later on, if I wasn't happy with the size.

And all this imparted with kindness, humour, sensitivity and an attention to detail which made me realise exactly how superficial my previous experience had been.

Hoorah.

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

I emerged triumphant into the waiting arms of my fellow breast cancer blogger, Lisa. It's a treasure chest discovered deep in the sewers of cancer, this making of new and close bonds all over the world as you face your Freeloaders side by side. Thank christ for social media. How else would we survive the emotional battering? How would we ever let out our deepest fears? Aside from Dr Yes, this was the other shining star in the Antarctic sky; I took the chance to meet up with some of the women I've previously known only from a profile picture- women with whom I've shared everything from our cancerchondria to our partner problems to our drug-induced sexual disfunction.

These women know more about this new, cancer-compromised 'me' than almost anyone else in the world. To meet them face-to-face was liberating, heady, exhilarating. We chattered like monkeys on crack. We laughed almost to the point of incontinence, as two of the girls swapped wigs in the middle of a restaurant and caused the spunky waiter to lose his carefully cultivated nonchalance. We fell about again as the same two exhorted some random young women, standing smoking on the sidewalk, to stop before they gave themselves breast cancer. One of my bosom buddies ripped off her wig once more to make the point, sending the youngsters scattering in alarm, teetering like drunken stick insects on their stilettos as they fled.

Sure, it was essentially a business trip- but I had fun.

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

And so I will return to Antarctica in due course, but not before Dr Goodguy removes both my ovaries and the remaining breast. That will give Dr Yes a level playing field, and it will give me a shorter time under anaesthetic. It's a massively long operation, eight to ten hours, thanks not to its invasiveness- it never goes inside the body cavity- but to its complexity. It's fiddly. It's all about finding, preserving, extracting and then rejoining major and minor blood vessels, so the flap continues to thrive in its new location. Flap death is a very real possibility- but as Jools points out, with the amount of intense exercise I've been doing, it's likely that my abdominal blood vessels will be in superb shape and the transplanted flesh will have the very best chance of survival.

Hoorah.

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

And this I know: when the time comes, about three months after the second mastectomy, I'll have plenty of visitors. These days I can fly to Antarctica in almost any direction, and still find enough true friends to keep me warm.

A gypsy, a ghost and the function of swear words

Every family has its personal volume of mythology- the book of stories passed from generation to generation, handed down like Chinese whispers till they become some sort of mutant truth. In the end nobody's quite sure what was part of an original tale and what was a verbal embroidery by some canny descendant, a little baroque trill designed to catch the listener's ear.

Such is the story of my mother and the gypsy. I remember her telling someone- friend or relative? I can't remember- over the top of my head that she'd visited the fortune teller's tent at some country fair when she was a young woman, and everything the gypsy had said to her on reading her palm had come true.

She was very clear on that. Everything.

I was very young, mind you; my memory may be flawed. Perhaps it wasn't a country fair. Perhaps other parts of the story have been embellished by time. But I do remember her spreading her fingers out to scrunch up the side of her hand, showing the two little lines that represent my brother and me- the two living children she was yet to bear back then.

This I also remember: after my mother died, her brother's wife- one of her closest friends- told me that all her life, my mother had been terrified of dying of cancer. Twenty seven years later, I put two and two together and wonder if that gypsy was guilty of the sin of too much information.

My friend Vi, if you recall, read my palm a few weeks before I was diagnosed and told me I was about to bear a huge burden; she saw it crossing my life line. "But the line keeps going," she assured me. "You'll get through it."

Perhaps my mother's life line stopped at that crossing of the creases. Who knows? I shan't pretend it's truth. It's extrapolation. But something had put the fear of death by cancer into her head, long before her own mother succumbed to the silent tumour in her breast.

And when I ask Vi why she doesn't read palms and tarot for a living, given that she seems to have a gift for such things, she replies "I only see the bad stuff." What, indeed, is the point of telling people about the bad, inevitable stuff ahead of time? What do you do if you see a person's death? Do you lie?

Yes, you do. Fuck you, gypsy. I don't care how right you were.

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

I reflect on all this now, as the shock waves from my BRCA2 result finally hit me. The faulty gene that my grandmother and my mother (and perhaps others before them) carried and passed on to me was discovered a mere five years after my mother died of ovarian cancer- that sneakiest of ticking time bombs, the one that gives only the vaguest symptoms until it's far too far advanced to be curable.

The time frame seems unbearably cruel to me as I reflect on her last few years, repeatedly visiting the doctor with terror in her eyes, repeatedly being rebuffed as a hysterical woman with psychosomatic symptoms. The research must already have been in the pipeline. Five years later, and somebody surely would have smelled a rat.

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

So in the end it was my mother's ghost that reduced me to tears over my diagnosis. I could never bear injustice. To think that she had that goddamned gypsy's prediction jammed in her consciousness all her life, that when the vague symptoms hit she fought so hard to be heard but nobody was listening, that she was right all the time, that there was a scientific explanation right there but nobody at the coal face knew-

-yes, that makes me cry.

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

The tears have been slow to surface, and as ever, they don't seem to be about me. Anger and fear are a different matter. I woke up a few mornings after I wrote my last blog post thinking every cell in my body has a mistake in it.

It wasn't a particularly palatable thought, and I didn't really know what to do with it. By evening my preferred coping mechanism had chipped in, and I replaced my Facebook profile picture with a mutant cow.

As you do.

Naturally, cancerchondria arrived in the wake of this realisation, as night follows day. The sudden painful twinge in my right armpit- the good armpit- while I was doing star jumps as part of my exercise routine was enough to throw me back into shitsville. I remembered having twinges in the left breast and armpit before I was diagnosed; I passed them off as nothing, because they went away very quickly. Until next time. Now I realise my body was probably trying to alert me to the invader.

Was there an invader on the right too? Did my recent clear mammogram miss something in my armpit? Was the Freeloader laughing at me again?

Naturally, it's all bollocks. I had an ultrasound as well as a mammogram, and it was very bloody thorough. And hello, I've had enough chemo to kill a black dog. Dr Mellow went over me very thoroughly indeed at our appointment last week- it seems that a BRCA+ diagnosis comes with a thorough pelvic as well as breast palpation- and declared me to be in great shape and looking astoundingly well.

But you wonder. Just for that moment, you wonder, and it can send you nuts if you let it.

Then there's the pending surgery. My discomfort with the idea of having a lat dorsi reconstruction has ebbed and flowed. Some days, I'm confident; trust the doctors, they've done you proud so far. Other days, the voice in my head screams trust your gut- you know you regret it when you don't.

I've never been good with decisions unless I make them instantly, based on my gut feeling. Otherwise I go to and fro, balancing, balancing, balancing. Seeing both sides. Vacillation has become my personal art form. And this time it's not just a wavering that will eventually settle one way or the other- I feel totally bamboozled, because it seems like my choices are no boobs at all or massive invasive surgery on my upper body, with relocation of two major muscles.

And there's pressure to decide, which never helps. The time bombs are ticking.

Time for a second opinion, methinks. And maybe even a third. I expect Dr Goodguy is enough of a good guy to give me another referral. It's my right, I know, but it still makes me feel bad, to question his choice. I'm sure Dr Mattel is a very fine technician...

...but then, there's that gut feeling.

It makes me angry, to be in this no-win place. It makes me infinitely sad, that my Bear has to put up with my constant moodiness, that he'll have to live with the physical and emotional fallout from whatever reconstruction decision I eventually make.

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

So what do you do with all that sadness and anger? There's only so much therapy a girl can afford, and it's not like it makes the daily ramifications go away.

Maybe you swear a lot. I know I do. So many of my friends are doing it tough right now, and we're all hurting for each other, and because we've been through the mill we've learned what not to say. Sometimes swearing is all we have left to express what we do need to say, which is pretty much reduced to how the fuck is this fair?

Sometimes the only empathy needed is a well-chosen swear word.

One friend has just discovered that her hair loss after chemo is permanent. My heart absolutely breaks for this gorgeous, smart, funny woman. But once it's confirmed, you don't say to an unwillingly bald woman who used to have stunning, flowing, long blonde locks, you're still beautiful to me. You don't say you're always beautiful inside. You don't offer up solutions like hats, wigs, hair transplants, head shaves, tattoos and acceptance as though that's some sort of answer to her loss and grief and anger. You don't tell her to be grateful she's still there for her kids.

What is there to say to her but shit, shit, SHIT.

Another friend's much-loved partner of 22 years collapsed and died a mere five days after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. You could have a few months, the specialist had told them just the day before.

I didn't tell her it was all for the best. I didn't reassure her that he was in a better place, or express relief that he didn't suffer for long, or any of that mealy-mouthed, well-intentioned bullshit. She texted me that he was suddenly and unexpectedly dead, and I texted back fuck.

Because that's what that word is for.

That, of course, is not all I said, but I'll spare you the blasphemy. We've known each other over forty years. We know that the best way to offend either of us is not with a swear word, but with a platitude.

And so, here's the thing: the doctors who ignored my mother's symptoms were a pack of arseholes. Being BRCA2+ is another serve of shit. And Facebook needs a button that says

Two dozen double damask dinner napkins, and other inheritances

When my brother and I were little, my mother would occasionally launch into a rendition of a tongue-twisting comedy routine she'd learned as a child herself. It was, I suppose, the 1960's equivalent of reciting the Monty Python parrot sketch, and it would usually reduce us all to helpless giggles. You can hear the whole thing here:

Two Dozen Double Damask Dinner Napkins

I was mildly amused by the verbal acrobatics of the tongue twister, but much more so by watching my mother's own amusement with the whole routine. "Danner nipkins," she'd splutter. "Donner nupkins." And finally, "Oh blast, give me 24 serviettes." And she'd fall about.

Given that this sketch was recorded for radio when I was minus 24 years old, and I never once heard the original until I Googled it tonight, I consider it part of my family's oral tradition- a piece of inherited verbal art.

How ironic, then, that this very piece of my mother's cultural estate should have been brought into my mind yesterday as I waited to consult the plastic surgeon. There I sat, worrying that I was wasting my and my surgeon's time- because, one day short of the promised eight weeks from my blood test, I still hadn't received the results of my genetic test for a faulty BRCA gene. Yep, the one I may also have inherited from my mother.

And without the result, we had no map to guide our next part of the trip down the Freeloader Freeway.

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

Dr Mattel was young, handsome in that swarthy Bollywood way, confident, smooth. And desperately tired. I could see it in his eyes as he darted from room to room, being unfailingly polite and charming to every patient as he strove to be in two or more places at once.

I sat in that waiting room for nearly two hours, after driving for nearly three hours to get there, while he dealt with complicated case after complicated case. The receptionist apologised repeatedly for the wait; "It's not usually this bad," she flustered. I just smiled sweetly and gave my stock response, the one I learned from the Bear many years ago in my pizza shop kitchen as I attempted to deal with an impossible number of diverse orders as quickly as I could on a bench the size of a playing card.

"It takes as long as it takes," he'd say calmly from the sink, where he was ploughing placidly through scouring a ridiculous number of dishes anointed with dried melted cheese. And I'd remember to breathe, and discover I was thinking better already and making fewer mistakes.

"It takes as long as it takes," I replied to the sweetie behind the desk- because if you don't want to make mistakes, it does; and I think she would have kissed me if she could have reached me across the schmick polished acres of counter.

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

At first it didn't bother me, this ridiculous wait. I'd learned to bring something to do months ago, as soon as I'd worked out that every doctor's waiting room contains exactly the same supply of ancient and crappy women's magazines peppered with one or two huntin', fishin' an' shootin' rags to cater for any stray Y chromosomes. I pulled out my library book and immersed myself happily in a Vonnegut I'd somehow managed to miss reading in my quirky-grim-touching-humour period.

BRRRRRRRRING, shrilled the phone of the gentleman to my right.

Note: I use the word 'gentleman' with a certain clenching of the teeth. He was, clearly, the Partner of Barbie, who'd entered Dr Mattel's inner sanctum with him some half hour ago; possibly his surly presence was distracting, as he'd rapidly been ejected back to the waiting room.

"Have you chased up that invoice yet?" he hollered.

(Because, as you know, the trick of using a mobile phone is to shout so the words travel faster and further. Right?)

"Well where is it? Find it. They owe us money. How long since they paid us? When? Well find it."

(And it's important to hang up with a flourish as though you're poking an enemy's eye out, right? Because, as you know, these days we really have no proper equivalent of slamming down the receiver.)

I returned to Vonnegut. Where was I? That's right, trying to distract myself from the uncertainty of not knowing whether I was going to have my stomach, back or chest sliced open in the near future.

Or some creative cocktail of the above.

BRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIINNNGGGGG.

Another one-sided fortissimo monologue, stage right. Clearly, the entire Australian economy was in mortal danger if this man's invoices were not found and paid instantly!

POKE!

(Insert thirty seconds of silence.)

BBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIINNNNGGGGGGG!

And so on, and on, and on. Gentle reader, I was in that waiting room for nearly two hours, remember? It was a generous waiting room, for sure, but not so generous that this constant shrilling and screeching wasn't appallingly intrusive.

And then it happened.

BBBBRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!

"What month did they pay? And what about the dinner napkins?" squarked Mr Congeniality.

Gentle reader, I started to giggle. I stuck my nose deeper into my book, pretending it was the sole source of my lack of control.

"Well find the dinner napkins!"

Unable to restrain myself further, I snorted, my shoulders shaking helplessly. Ah me, not diamonds after all... not gold bars?

Around this point, Mr C. finally noticed me, but he was still deep in conference, saving the economy single-handed.

"Well which dinner napkins were they?"

By now I was roaring with laughter. I couldn't help myself. I was cackling so hard I was crying. Every time he said dinner napkins- and he did so repeatedly- I exploded all over again. And sorry, but in the end I had to look at him, and I didn't even care that I may have seemed rude. It was taking every vestige of my shattered self-control not to interject "double damask donner nipkins, surely?"

And miracle of miracles, the penny dropped. He may not have blushed- he was far too brash for that- but he stood up and took his fucking phone outside.

Small mercies, my friends. Small mercies. At least it stopped me from thinking about being rearranged with a scalpel.

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

Dr Mattel also apologised. "Every case this morning had a complication," he sighed. Eating nuts out of a glass tumbler.

"Late lunch for you today," I smiled. It was already well after one o'clock.

"No lunch for me. Just nuts."

And that, I suppose, is the life of a doctor.

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

And so to business.

If you don't know how breast reconstruction works, the simple explanation is that you have three choices.

You can have the skin across your chest stretched with internal balloons which are gradually inflated with saline, until you've got enough loose skin to put implants in. That doesn't work too well on cooked skin- think of the way a sausage skin explodes when you cook it too fast and the insides expand faster than the skin can cope with, and you're getting the (very unsavoury) idea- so given my radiotherapy treatment, that's out for me.

You can have your tummy fat cut out- effectively, a tummy tuck- and turned into one boob, or even two boobs (possibly with implants behind them) depending on how well-laden with lard you are and what cup size you're aiming for. That's called a TRAM or DIEP flap, and it's what I had my heart set on. It's major, all-day surgery, but you end up with a soft boob that feels like the real thing to your lover (even though it has absolutely no sensitivity to you) and doesn't hurt to lie on if, like me, you often sleep on your front.

Or you can have one or both of your lat dorsi back muscles removed and brought around to the front of your chest, where they'll make the basis of your new breast/s in association with those balloon things (they're called expanders). Again, there's the inflation process to put up with- it can be painful- and eventually your balloons get replaced (more surgery) with implants. They look fine when you're standing still, but they're Barbie breasts; they're hard and they don't move with your body. I've never liked the idea of the lat dorsi procedure, for numerous reasons. I mean, front chopped up- back chopped up- how the hell do you sleep?

But it wasn't really up to me. I was here to find out what was possible.

There is something deeply unnerving about being looked at as a lump of play dough, about to be forcibly rearranged into a different shape. God knows I've had my naked torso inspected by enough doctors over the last 18 months to be immunised against modesty, but this was truly creepy. I was photographed, turned, squeezed, photographed some more.

Squeezed some more. Particularly my much-reduced tummy.

"I would prefer you had more fat here," quoth my doctor.

And that is a fucking first.

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

Laugh all you like; I was actually deeply upset, especially when I was told that it would be better if I hadn't lost the the 16 kilos I've managed to shed through daily exercise and healthy eating since I was diagnosed. Because, you know, being overweight and being sedentary are actually proven risk factors for cancer recurrence.

"For a flap procedure, I'd really prefer you were about 10 kilos heavier," he went on.

"Hang on a minute," I spluttered. "What happened to healthy living to reduce your risk of recurrence? I've worked really hard to lose weight and get fit. You're telling me I should have stayed fat? Personally I'd rather be alive."

He shrugged. "We have barely enough skin and tissue there to make a C cup, let alone anything larger. If your test results come back positive and we have to make two breasts from this, I'm not sure I could even make A cups from this."

"The lat dorsi is a better choice for you," Dr Mattel went on. "It gives a better result in any case- you get better symmetry if it's a double, too."

"I don't want my back muscles messed with," I whined. (Well, I'm sure it sounded like a whine to him. To me it was more of a whimper.) "I play the piano. I don't want my strength compromised."

"The only activities that are permanently compromised by the lat dorsi procedure are competitive swimming, notably butterfly stroke, and mountaineering," he countered. "Anything that requires pulling yourself upwards with your arms needs that muscle. Otherwise, other muscles will take up the load. And I don't scar your back if that bothers you. I can go down your sides under your arms, or place the incision along your bra strap lines. Or you can try to gain some weight before we do a TRAM or DIEP procedure. Or we can do a flap surgery and you can come back when it's healed and have implants put behind it to increase the cup size."

So much choice. Everything but what I wanted. I felt like a vegetarian at Yum Cha.

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

I drove home feeling tearful and angry- not so much at the doctor himself, who was just a somewhat insensitive messenger, but at the universe. How the hell was that fair, that I could work really hard on my health and increase my chances of survival, but in the process cruel my chance to have a normal, soft-feeling boob after reconstruction? HOW WAS THAT FUCKING FAIR?

But then, as a wise teacher used to say to me many years ago, "When did I ever pretend to you that life was fair?"

When indeed?

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

So I spent last night moaning about Fate, leaning on my support group friends until my Bear arrived home and I could lean on him instead.

"It's you I love, not your boobs," he said, holding me tight.

"But you always loved my boobs," I sobbed.

"They're a wonderful thing, but I'd rather have you," he replied, squeezing me a little tighter.

He's a good man. He really is. And for a taciturn Aussie bloke, he does have a wonderful way of finding the right thing to say in a crisis.

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

By this afternoon, it was all irrelevant anyway. Just one day too late, and eight weeks to the day from my gene test, the results came in.

I wasn't really surprised, in the end, to find out I'd tested positive for BRCA2. The professor had made it pretty clear that my family history was screaming genetic mutation at me. I felt completely calm as I talked it through with the genetic counsellor; Coping Ice Maiden Candy had taken over on cue, simply looking for the next sensible step in the process.

If the truth be told, I was relieved. The decision had been made for me. I didn't have to play Russian roulette, deciding without the appropriate information whether to have the other breast removed just in case. An inconclusive result would have been much harder to deal with.

The Bear was less calm. Much less so. As I suspected, he will need to grieve the loss of his playthings, whether or not it's me he loves best.

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

So, double lat dorsi it is. The other breast has to go; there's no particular rush, given that I've recently had a clear mammogram and ultrasound, but I'll try to schedule it for August and combine it with the lat dorsi reconstruction.

More urgent to me is that my ovaries and fallopian tubes need to go. I've already rung Dr Goodguy's surgery to ask for an appointment, which was treated as an urgent request by the ever-so-efficient and understanding receptionist. The trouble with dodgy ovaries, you see, is that the signs of trouble are so nebulous. A lot of ovarian cancer is diagnosed way too late, just as it was in my mother. So the sooner the better, say I; it's not a big deal, just day surgery, so if I can get that scheduled well before I go on tour as an Early Childhood lecturer during July, I'll be happy.

And I've rung my son and my two cousins on my mother's side, and emailed my brother. All of them now qualify for a free test to see if they've inherited the time bomb too. Yep, even the men; they can be carriers and pass the dodgy gene to their kids, but men are in the BRCA2 gun sights too. There are links with prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer. And hello, men have breasts.

That was pretty tough, making all those calls. Who wants to be the bearer of tidings of anxiety and stress? But they need to know sooner rather than later. Both of my cousins have children. They need to know if there's a red laser dot on anyone's forehead so they can tell them to duck.

It's better to know.

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

So. From my mother I have inherited my way with words, my sense of humour, my diplomacy, my connection to children, my talent for teaching, my artistic eye, my tiny hands, two dozen double damask danner nipkins and one faulty, lethal gene.

Probably, on the balance of things, that's more than fair.

Bandwagons, bait and a seven dollar poppadom

All my life I've had a problem marching to somebody else's drum beat. I used to list one of my hobbies as jumping off bandwagons- not just to generate laughs (though it did), but because it was a truth about my compulsive reflective practice that I'd understood for a long time.

See, the trouble with bandwagons is that people stop thinking. They jump on because it seems like a good idea at the time, or because everyone else is doing it; once they're there, it's comfortable to just blend in without question. Because, Peer Pressure.

Ah, the Power of the Flock. And the flock mentality around cancer fundraising is particularly strong.

The desire for a symbolic table-turning on the Freeloader- yes, it's almost overwhelming, and it seems to be pretty well universal. So many times I've heard my fellow players in the cancer tournament express the desire to do something that turns their personal shit sandwich into something closer to a plate of chocolate brownies. In the end, many of them pour a lot of energy into positive, constructive activities like painting the entire world pink and walking in endless circles.

Because, Cancer.

I know, I know. Call me a cynic. But my reflective mind will not allow 'Because, Cancer' to get even as far as first base without a drug test. ('Because, Peer Pressure' never even made it out of the team dressing room.)

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

Lawrence of Arabia

Don't get me wrong. I have no wish to call universal bullshit on cancer fundraisers- not at all. Full disclosure: last Saturday night I too walked in endless circles, as part of the 20-hour local Cancer Council fundraiser marathon known as 'Relay for Life'.

And I'm proud of what I did, and of what we did as a group. I'm proud to have been part of the effort that extracted a significant amount of money from a community where hundred dollar bills aren't exactly lying thick on the ground.

We need the fundraisers. We do- desperately. It's bleedingly obvious that as long as most taxpayer funds are poured into shoring up politicians' retirement schemes, buying anachronistic weaponry to fight unnecessary wars and destroying the environment to keep up with the Joneses, we'll have to fund most of the research ourselves.

And that means getting people onto that damned bandwagon. And that means putting out people-bait. And people-bait means lots of hard-working, dedicated people tirelessly creating these gimmicks, because they need to do whatever works.

I accept all that. I accept that getting people to put their hands in their pockets and come out with something other than a used Kleenex is an art form requiring a certain knowledge of the baser aspects of human nature. (You know, the aspects that keep Joe and Jenny Average avidly viewing The Biggest Apprentice Block-Loser and anything about the Kardashians. Please pass me that large brown paper bag.)

But me? I can't help critiquing my actions, and the actions of those around me. I yearn for authenticity, and I strive for consistency in my professional actions. I hate being a hypocrite, and I can't abide it in others.

And so last Saturday night, as I walked round and round in circles for quite a large part of the 20 hours- oh wait, 21, because of course I had to do it the year it coincided with the end of Daylight Saving- last Saturday night I found myself examining the whole concept in detail.

It started with a seven dollar poppadom.

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

I am, I admit, a little bit of a food snob. You know, to the extent that I prefer my food to be edible- particularly when I've just walked far too many kilometres in 30 degree heat and it's a good eight hours since my last proper meal.

So when the woman running the Indian food caravan lifted the lid of the bain marie and exposed the vegetarian curry that I'd just paid seven good dollars to have slopped onto my plate with the might-as-well-eat-cake jasmine rice- hunks of deceased khaki and cream vegetable matter in a sea of curry-coloured hot water- it was, um, a little shattering.

I'd chosen the vegie curry purely on nutritional grounds; it seemed to be the only vegetable matter available at the entire venue. But in the end, the only thing on that plate that was edible was a lonely and anorexic poppadom, which in terms of nutrition was basically a slice of hot, crisp flour dripping with cooking oil. As I crunched it sadly, my stomach rumbling, then dumped the rest of the loaded plate unceremoniously in the bin, I reflected on the peculiarly inappropriate food available to cancer 'survivors' (and I shall get to that word later) at a fight-to-end-cancer event.

As I looked around the grounds at the other choices, I realised that the high-GI jasmine rice and cooked-to-nutritional-oblivion vegies were the high point on an increasingly slippery slope. The sausage-sandwich and bacon-and-egg-roll tent seemed to have missed the Cancer Council memo about processed meats, high fat foods and empty-calorie white bread. Everywhere I looked, people were selling sugar hits- cupcakes, lollies, soft drinks. Even at the afternoon tea for 'survivors', I'd been offered plate after plate of white bread sandwiches and sugary dessert slices; some high quality fruit platters were the only 'on message' food in the building.

Sitting there wearing my 'survivor' sash and reflecting on how hard I'd worked to change my personal eating habits, I was surrounded by wall to wall WhatTheFuck. And I asked myself, to raise funds for cancer research, do we really have to offer people the exact foods that are contraindicated?

Because, Logic.

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

And you see, I've just jumped off the bandwagon again. The message of the opening and closing ceremonies, alongside remembering lost loved ones, was overwhelmingly expressed as a positive. Hope had a separate ceremony all to itself. And here I am jumping off the positivity wagon and finding fault, when perhaps providing this sort of crap food is a really good way to make lots of money.

Is it wrong of me to suggest that a level of hypocrisy was accepted without question? I put this idea forward with a sense of trepidation. So many people gave their time, their efforts, their peace of mind to make the event a success. Already over $100,000 has been raised, with funds still to come in. This is, without doubt, a huge achievement in a financially challenged country town.

Does it matter how it was done? Do we have to stay on message all the time? Is that a reasonable expectation?

To me, it would have been more considerate to provide at least some healthy food choices for the many participants who've been deathly ill and who are now trying desperately to stay well. I walked those many circles fuelled only by determination and the small bag of dried fruit, unsalted nuts and plain dark chocolate I'd had the foresight to bring with me. Because, Bushwalker.

Am I a lone logical voice for health in a wilderness of economic realities? I honestly don't know. Sometimes I feel like an intruder from another planet.

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

And then, the 'survivor' sash. Again, I'm an alien.

A very large part of me spent the day and night wanting to tear it off and run around screaming WTF, we don't know whether we're survivors until the moment we die of something else. It felt like a lie, walking around with that word across my body.

Worse, it felt like I was tempting fate. All I could think of was my friend Lyn, who'd been pretty much at my stage of 'survivorship' when she started throwing up and falling over thanks to the brain mets.

A small but stubborn part of me, however, knew that the people who'd worked terribly hard to make the event a success would be deeply hurt if I decided to start a one-woman rebellion. And so I'd better shut up and put up. Or rather, put on.

So I did. Because, Compassion. Consideration. Kindness.

I've survived the first diagnosis, I rationalised. I've survived the first year out from chemo.

For a compulsive honest, deeply reflective person, it was a confronting experience.

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

I wish I could say that I got over it, and remembered what we were trying to achieve, and everything was fine and dandy. But that wouldn't be true. My discomfort increased rather than settling. As the night went on and the speeches burst forth in all their hopeful glory, I became aware that only two categories of cancer patients were being recognised.

The 'survivors'.

The dead.

And I thought but wait, what about all the people with Stage Four disease who are still here?

Were they even invited?

It made me terrifically sad.

You see, people with Stage Four are off-message. They don't fit in with the whole fight-back We-Will-Eradicate-This-Disease-By-(fill in suitable close but suitably distant date) message of hope, because there's this uncomfortable awareness that most of them will probably be dead by then.

But they're not dead yet either, so they can't be slotted into the It's-Okay-To-Cry message of remembrance.

Should we pretend they don't exist, in the interests of fundraising success? Because, Awkward.

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

Unfortunately, I can't and won't buy that for one nanosecond. This far into the game, and running a support page as I do, I've grown close to a number of women with a ticking time bomb inside them.

They're still here. They want and need to be acknowledged; they deserve to be acknowledged. They're my friends, and I can't just sit here on a bandwagon that ignores them simply because they're awkwardly off-message.

Something needs to change. Because I know full well that this is not a situation exclusive to this event- it seems to be consistent across the board in cancer fund-raising. To be Stage Four is to be on the outer.

And when a dying woman declares that she'll have no pink worn at her funeral- not a single pink item on anyone- because she's so furious about the exclusion and the sense of being a failure for not toeing the 'curable' line, then it is time to call bullshit.

Lookin' at you, Amanda R., up there with the stars in the beautiful night sky. Because, Remembrance. And this is a relay, and I think you just handed me the baton, even though I am not classed as 'awkward' myself. 

Yet.

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

Perhaps after writing this I'll not be invited back to another Relay event, despite ending up as the impromptu Master of Ceremonies for this one and giving a sincere speech in support of the Cancer Council which was very well-received. I did enjoy being the MC. I did enjoy delivering my speech. While I was doing that, it felt completely authentic and I felt like I was doing good, contributing to the effort, going the extra mile.

I hope I do get invited back.

I hope that I can somehow help make some changes. Would it be so hard, really, to make the sandwiches on whole grain bread? To limit the number of teams selling sugary crap?

Would it be so hard to consult with Stage Four patients, to provide wheelchairs or comfy chairs or transport if necessary, to find a word for their sashes that sits well with them? If 'survivor' and 'carer' are the only options, it does feel like active exclusion.

And I'd happily volunteer to make the speech that acknowledged the presence, the very existence of people with terminal disease. Perhaps it would do everyone good to hear 'anger' acknowledged as an emotion that needs to be released, along with the tears of remembrance for those who've already crossed the finish line.

I could do that.

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

It's two years to the next Relay. Perhaps by then I'll have the energy to follow up these reflections in an active way. Right now, the thought of being on any sort of committee makes me want to dive into the ocean and swim to New Zealand.

Till then, all I can do is be the change I want to see.

Eat well, and help others to do the same if I can.

Hold my hand out to my Stage Four friends, be listening, help them to insist on their rights.

I can do that. Because, Voice. Leader. Creative. If I must insist on jumping off bandwagons, the least I can do is start making a better float and join the parade.