Counting the sunny hours..

Day 90

General status update

Jaw: It’s more or less stopped twing(e)ing, so we should be all set for the root canal treatment on Tuesday. Excellent. Yeah. Terrific.

Nose: Still unsightly, but no longer actively painful. Let’s face it, I look like the Wreck of the Hesperus anyway, at this stage. Vanity is no longer a consideration.

Hair: see above

Nausea demon: He’s got the job offer from the expectant wife of the Russian oligarch in Knightsbridge, but is now agonising about whether or not to take it, on the grounds that it might be compromising his artistic principles and ‘selling out’.

Anti-Tooth Fairy: trying to keep herself busy until the root canal treatment on Tuesday, she has borrowed Chemo Brian’s knitting needles (he got discouraged in the middle of the whole Knit Your Own Nativity Scene extravaganza when he just could not master the donkey, despite repeated attempts) The trouble is that whilst Chemo Brian knitting was cute, especially when he knitted and purled some of his ponytail after a tad too much wacky baccy, The Anti-Tooth Fairy knitting is just downright sinister – think Anna Wintour channeling Madame Defarge.

Chemo Muse: plotting something – she’s drawing up colour-coded timetables again, and not in a good way.

Despair Demon: We’ve kicked him out again until the root canal treatment –he’s bedding down on a bench in Hammersmith Bus Station, and not happy about it AT ALL.

Chemo Brian: he’s so beside himself with excitement about Bruce (see below), he even got off the sofa, briefly. He says he going to stay on specially for the concert, which is on the 30^th June, but I gather Chemo Brian often lingers on for some time after the last dose of chemo, anyway – fatigue and an addled brain frequently persist for several months after the chemotherapy treatment has finished.

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Fatigue/weakness: kicked in big time late this afternoon on our trip to the South Bank  – I had to sit down and rest in the Poetry Library at the Royal Festival Hall, which is a very pleasant place to be if you’re in need of instant rest and recuperation.. Did you know there is a spiffy glass lift there that sings to you? It’s wonderful, and was donated by the JCB company, and is painted in Big Digger colours, i.e bright yellow. So it’s like you’re being transported upwards in a singing, transparent piece of earth-moving equipment. Surreal.

Anxiety level (1-10): We’re not doing anxiety again until Monday night, OK?

State of mind: Looking forward to that light at the end of the tunnel, and devoutly hoping it will not signal a District line train to Upminster.

Have you ever seen one of those old sun dials that says ‘I only count the sunny hours’? That’s not something this blog could ever be accused of doing: it is documenting not only every day of what is proving to be a highly unpleasant 18 weeks of chemotherapy treatment, but also recalling the shock, pain and anguish of my encounter with breast cancer from the day I discovered the lump in my breast last August, through the surgery and beyond. Much of the subject matter is dark, and I know that some of it is painful to read.

When there are sunny hours, though, it is important to count them, not just to offer a little light relief, but also as a reminder that even when times are hard you can find little oases of enjoyment and enjoy small quotidien pleasures that help you to recuperate and regroup, and give you the strength to carry on.

They tell you to try to plan something nice for the third week of the chemo cycle, a treat that will help you remember normality during the few days when the side effects have subsided and you’re not feeling too bad. We had planned to go to the South Bank today, to listen to some poetry recordings at the Poetry Library, and to browse amongst the second hand book stalls by the river, but after a pretty brutal couple of weeks, with the nightmarish administration of FEC4, a few truly demented days with the side effects, and then the whole toothache extravaganza, I was at a fairly low ebb this morning.  I was having a hard time getting up my enthusiasm for anything,feeling unutterably weary, and just beaten down by it all. 

Then, out of the blue,  R produced some wonderful surprises: first, he came back from ‘getting the papers’ with a clutch of presents for me - some lovely, bright stripey socks, a particularly beautiful edition of the Alice B.Toklas Cookbook (by Serif Books, highly recommended) and a bottle of Calvados, my favourite drink. A little later, after tapping away on the computer for a while, he announced that I should keep Saturday, 30^th June free, as we were going to go out – he had got us tickets for the Bruce Springsteen concert at ‘Hard Rock Calling’ at the Olympic Park in Stratford, as an ‘end of chemo’ celebration.

You would have to know just how big a fan I am of The Boss to know how happy that made me.We reminisced, then, about how we saw Springsteen together last summer, along with our good friend Kirstie, at the now notorious concert in Hyde Park where Paul McCartney made a surprise appearance for the encore, but then a council official pulled the plug on the sound because the concert had run over time, and the Boss and Macca were left singing into microphones that no longer worked.

Then something occurred to me: ‘Was that before I got cancer?’

R nodded, and I was struck by a pang of grief for my lost life before cancer, remembering how my biggest problem that evening was sore feet from having to walk for miles in Wellington boots after the concert finished.

Tears came into my eyes, and I felt bad that I’d spoiled the moment.

R gave me a hug, and said, as so often, exactly the right thing:

 ‘That concert was before the cancer, and this concert will be after the cancer – by the end of June you’ll have finished chemo, finished radiotherapy, and be free from the hospital. You’ll be swimming again. When we go to see Bruce this time we’ll be celebrating you getting your life back, and us getting our life back..’

Yes – that’s exactly what we’ll be doing, and I just can’t wait.

R knows how to count the sunny hours, even when I forget.

And the trip to the South Bank was brilliant...