Day 76 Intermezzo: Another romantic interlude
General status update
Hair:
slumbering, safely wrapped in snood
Nausea demon:
hanging on in there – I find it quite astonishing that I still feel nauseous, despite
being on four different anti-emetic drugs. I seem to have inherited the stomach
of a feeble Victorian invalid, perhaps Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She was very
fond of sofas too, come to think of it.
Chemo Muse:
Fuelled by the steroids, she positively GLOWS. Keeping me at it.
Chemo Brian: tucked
up on the sofa under a warm throw, with Chemo Rat Brian’s little head poking
out out next to him. They are now inseparable.
.
Fatigue/weakness:
that won’t kick in until about day 5. They made me go back to the hospital
yesterday for an injection of something called Pegfilgrastim, which will
encourage my bone marrow to produce more white blood cells, in the hope of
avoiding another infection, and neutropenia, this chemo cycle. Worryingly, according
to the notes that accompany the drug ‘Pegfilgrastim is a protein produced by
biotechnology in bacteria called E.coli’ E.coli??
I guess I just have to trust my oncologist. Oh – have just noticed that
included amongst the very common side effects of this drug, apart from
joint pain (which I don’t have, so far) is …nausea. No wonder the Nausea Demon
has been smirking to himself, he’s got some added back-up.
Anxiety level
(1-10): It’s
only day 3 of this chemo cycle, and I’m still on the steroids. The truly bad
times don’t start until day 5.
State of mind:
A bit down-hearted after another rather extreme experience at the hospital on Thursday.
Still, taking comfort in the fact that there are only 2 more FECs to go.
Previously on Chemo Nights:
After ‘meeting’ in cyberspace during a discussion about procrastination with a
mutual friend on Twitter, R and I have developed a close on-line relationship during
the autumn of 2010, bonding over bonding over our mutual love of the London Review of Books ,
amongst other things. Our brains just match each other, and we quite like each other's photos, too. There are many
obstacles that stand between us in terms of our personal circumstances, not
least that I live in an old camel barn, converted into a library, on the north
Aegean coast of Turkey, and he lives 2,000 miles away in West London. R is very
keen for us to meet in person, and his approach to the obstacles in our way is
much that of an Olympic 400m hurdler on the starting blocks, impatient for the
gun to be fired so he can go for gold. I am considerably more cautious, having
read much about the low success rate of
converting on-line relationships into real life ones. Eventually, however, I am
persuaded that we should at least give it a try, and book a plane ticket back
to London during the last week of March, 2011.
Now read on…..
My mother, MamaFo, who is 81 and lives in a fortified redoubt
in the foothills of the Tramuntana
Mountains in Mallorca, where over the last 30 years she has cultivated a
spectacularly beautiful Mediterranean garden (including a small but fruitful wacky baccy plantation - for her personal use only, obvs - which is
planted and harvested strictly according to the waxing and waning of the moon),
gave up travelling a couple of years ago, on the following grounds:
1) She objects very strongly to the neo-fascist security
staff at Heathrow airport who, last time she flew, managed to give her serious
grief even though she was in a wheel-chair (Old lady in wheelchair! Obviously
smuggling explosives! Needs to be body–searched!);
2) She objects very strongly to not being allowed to smoke
between the time of entering the terminal at Palma airport and exiting the
terminal at Heathrow, a gap of at least 5 hours between cigarettes, which is
liable to lead to spontaneous combustion; and
3) She has done enough travelling for one life time – now is
the time for her to sit on her terrace with a cup of coffee, a glass of
Soberano, and a packet of Benson and Hedges, gazing at the ever-changing play
of light on the Tramuntana mountains, watching the eagles swooping and gliding
on the air-currents, and occasionally barking
instructions to my stepfather (somewhat younger than her – this is the way of
my people) as he labours in the gardens on the terraced hillside below.
Nowadays, then, if we wish to see MamaFo, we have to get on a
plane and go to Mallorca. This being the current state of affairs, I assumed,
inasmuch as I thought about it at all, that my mother, whose 80th birthday was coming up on April 4th,
2011, wouldn’t be holding a party; she had celebrated her 70th in
the UK with some style, but repeating such an event was now out of the
question.
Remember the aged uncle in the Forsyte Saga (I think it might
have been James) whose mantra was ‘nobody ever tells me anything?’ That’s my
role in the Fo family. It was sometime in February, and plans were already well
underway for Mama Fo’s 80th Birthday Weekend Extravaganza in Mallorca, before anyone bothered to
inform me that my presence was going to be required in the Tramuntana Mountains
in the same week that I was planning to meet R for the first time in London.
I simply couldn’t believe it.
I had booked to come to London for 3 weeks, arriving on
Sunday 27th of March, and MamaFo’s birthday weekend was beginning
the following Friday. A plane ticket had been booked for me, and I was to
present myself at Gatwick Airport on the Friday morning to travel with various
family members to Mallorca for 4 days, returning the following Monday. There
was to be a gala lunch on the Saturday at the Tramuntana Mountains Golf Club,
whose greens are grazed by a small herd of goats, followed by a smaller lunch,
for family only, at a restaurant down by the sea on the Sunday (MamaFo prefers
to lunch rather than dine, these days). We were all to be accommodated in a
historic finca, now converted to
boutique agroturismo, just down the
hill from Casa Fo.
It was to be a grand gathering of the clan, a celebration of
the extended family, and of 80 years of MamaFo adding to the world’s rich
tapestry in her own inimitable way. Everyone was thrilled and excited about it.
Everyone except for me, that is..
I was already a complete basket case about going to meet R,
and the only person who knew what I was planning was my closest friend in
Ayvalik. No one in my family had any idea that my first trip to London in
several years was about anything other than catching up with family and friends
and stocking up on marmalade. Now I was
going to have to fly 2,000 miles to London, stay for 4 days, and then fly 1,000
miles back to Mallorca for the party.
The entire family was in a frenzy of excitement about this event, and I just
couldn’t believe my bad luck, especially as I was expected to write a speech
for the occasion, being the family orator.
This is a Message from God, I thought darkly, telling me that
meeting R is going to be a complete fiasco. As the days counted down towards March 27th,
and my head became more and more frazzled trying to think about two things at
once, and people started commenting on my curious lack of enthusiasm for the
coming festivities chez MamaFo, my mood began to darken about my secret assignation
with R … should I just call the whole thing off?
