A good cancer

I walked with no discernible legs. Grateful that I was within stumbling distance of home, with shoulders back, eyes ahead I attempted to appear normal; the man with the giant, cancerous stick up his arse was struggling past a hundred oblivious neighbours. Sipping coffee, laughing into mobile phones, feeding meters, kissing cheeks, walking dogs, these are the people in my hell. This is my nightmare, get out of my way!

Back in the apartment, I waited for my head to reconnect with my spinal cord. As my surroundings began to take shape, gradually, a far more frightening dilemma emerged; my mother. The thought of breaking this news to her was far worse than the news itself. A constant and ridiculous worrier, my mother was one to make a sniffle into pneumonia and a headache, a tumour. To actually have to tell her that I had a tumour, was something which I never really believed I would ever need to do. She had to know, sure. But buggered if I knew the right way to go about telling her. And as a woman in her seventies, I was also sincerely concerned about the impact this news would have on her mind, body and soul.

The doctor who performed my colonoscopy (his name I've chosen to forget) had told me that most people recover completely without any loss of longevity and furthermore, that if you are going to have cancer, bowel cancer is a good one to get. Truly. Although he was almost certain of his diagnosis, the results would not be official for another seven days. I decided to wait until that time before telling my family. When the results come back, one way or the other, the prognosis itself would create the catalyst for moving forward. I eventually realise that I am breathing again, the room has slowed down, my heart rate is back in double figures and I may even be able to sleep.

Predictably, the next seven days go by like seven weeks. ‘Results Day’; and my doctor is not wearing the warm, comforting face I’d envisaged and my heart rate increases. ‘Michael, please come in’. He looks dour. He looks sorry.

‘Please sit down’. Is he pausing for dramatic effect? ‘Tell me Michael, are you married?’.

‘No’, I mutter.

‘Do you have kids?’ he asks.

A barely audible ‘no’ leaks from my lips and I wait for the worst.

He lets out what seems to be a ‘small mercies’ sigh of relief, and I am wondering if I have 6 weeks, 6 months or if I’ll see Christmas? He pulls his shoulders back and grittily announces that his initial prognosis was correct, it is cancer.

‘And...?’ I ask.

‘That’s it. Just like we spoke about’, he smiles and rubs my knee.

It took every fibre of my being not to leap across that desk and strangle that smug son-of-a-bitch. This ‘doctor’ who had remarkably had his ‘bedside manner’ surgically removed sometime during med school was now serving me copious quantities of his churlishness.

So now I knew. Next step, ‘Operation: Tell The Folks’.

Nothing for me to do

When I was thirteen I ran straight through a plate-glass door. I have a scar down the side of my nose to prove it. Fourteen neat little stitches and a newly acquired ruggedness from that day forward. At least, that’s what my mother told me. I ran down a long hallway, swerved past the lounge, hurdled the coffee table and was halted, in mid-air, by a very large, very clean glass sliding door. Bam!

The world suddenly stopped. I was frozen, lying among a million diamonds of razor sharp glass. The most significant injury was one long shard protruding from my nose. As anxious friends and family gathered around, I felt a sense of bravery, for although I was indeed hurt, the pain was defused by the shock. I stared at the sky above and let out small giggles.

The overwhelming memory that has stayed with me from that day was the serene comfort and calmness that washed over me. Once placed on the ambulance gurney, those men in white coats dedicated every shred of their being to my wellbeing. At the hospital, as I lay on that gurney swaddled in crisp white linen, I glanced back and forth at the myriad of hospital staff fussing around me and felt indestructible, immortal and completely protected from everything bad in the world.

My role in this whole episode was to lie there, and simply be treated and repaired. There was nowhere I had to be. Nothing for me to do. Just lie there and be looked after. Now sleep. Hmmm.

At 48 years of age, the nose scar fading, I found myself once more under the protection of those wonderful angels in white. And while for some, hospital is a scary place, full of horrible possibilities, for me, and with limited experiences therein, it has always been a haven. Within these walls, away from the ghastly world outside, and with every known remedy for every possible condition close at hand, I have always felt totally safe. That was until the doctor leaned over me, roused me from my anaesthetic and said ‘I’m sorry, I have some bad news. You have cancer.’

My stomach fell away taking every last drop of oxygen with it. The light above my head was spinning dangerously, the air in the room sucked away and the doctor’s face blurred into some grotesque caricature. I couldn’t respond. I was free-falling, nothing to hold onto, nothing to save me. ‘I’m very sorry’ he said.

Reality has slapped me hard every day since, and now, almost halfway through my chemotherapy treatment, I realise my boyhood beliefs, although once comforting, were fanciful. And though I still maintain a healthy respect for hospitals and know miracles can happen, they do not always happen, and between those times it’s just called ‘life’.

Happiness, sadness, joy, grief, hope, charity, pain, heartache, illness, laughter, anguish, love, fear, death and life.