The Blind Swine - an atypical north Yorkshire experience

Day 41 

General status update

Hair: Hair is a bit nervous in north Yorkshire, what with the extreme cold. It is anxious that it might be fixin’ to break off when frozen. 

Nausea demon: still away in Bilbao –  he's fixin' to come back on Tuesday, the Eve of FEC3.

Chemo Muse: she LOVES it here in north Yorkshire, since BigSisFo’s life is so much more interesting than mine, and is lobbying for an extended stay, which deep down she knows is impossible, as we have an appointment with Stan the Oncologist back in London tomorrow 

Chemo Brian: also totally enchanted by my sister’s house, where there are huge leather sofas for him to sprawl on, and roaring log fires on which he can toast marshmallows. It may be quite a job to persuade them both to get on the train back to London on Monday morning..

Fatigue/weakness: Even though I gave most of my cocktails last night to R, it is fair to say that the chemo cannot be held entirely to blame for a certain sense of fragility this morning. 

Sleep, lack of: now building up a sleep bank before the next dose of steroid mania on Wednesday. 

Anxiety level (1-10): We took Hank for a long walk in the snow around a frozen lake this afternoon, and the MC is cooking roast beef and Yorkshire puddings this evening. And, as I sit writing this, he has just brought me a glass of Manzanilla, with some olives and Jamon Iberico, in case I need a little something to keep me going until dinner-time. Life at BigSisFo's is the Antidote to Anxiety.

State of mind: Much improved. Have hardly given a thought to cancer or chemo for the last 24 hours; it’s so good to be out of London,and back in God's own county.

 

 

Previously on Chemo Nights: on Saturday evening disaster strikes as the MC, hanging his poor, beautiful, tragic dead pheasants (not that I’m biased in any way on this matter, obvs) in the wine-cellar, discovers that a frozen pipe has burst in the adjoining outbuilding, and that a fairly major flood is underway.

Now read on:

He comes into the kitchen and informs BigSisFo of this news, in the manner of one who expects her to do something about it, sharpish. BigSisFo, who has had it up to here with dealing with domestic crises recently

 – what with having had to cope single-handedly with the extended and very unpleasant north Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse  while the MC was away in London being corporate far, far away from the terrible, unforgettable smell of decomposing rat -

ignores this very strong hint: after a brief trip outside to inspect the catastrophe-in-progress, she returns and recommences pouring the champagne with which we are just beginning R’s and my early birthday celebrations, saying she will stay here and continue to look after her little sister, WHO HAS CANCER, while ‘you boys’ sort things out outside.

R goes pale, realising he is being called upon to metamorphose instantly from Professor of Bioethics into Man of Action with a sub-speciality in fixing outdoor plumbing emergencies in the dark and freezing cold; however, he rises to the occasion and announces ‘We just need to find the stopcock’, before striding outside into the dark and the snow with the MC and Hank, who is now barking furiously as he realises that something exciting is happening.

BigSisFo and I remain in the kitchen, nestling close to the warmth of the Aga; we drink our champagne and eat olives, meanwhile musing sadly on MamaFo’s long ago, purposeful suggestion that it would really be very helpful for everyone if one of her daughters could manage to marry a plumber.

Much to our surprise the stopcock is located, and the water turned off, within about 15 minutes, and the men stride back in exultant at this proof of their manly skills in aquatic crisis-handling; we are then able to resume the planned birthday festivities, the next stage of which is going out to dinner at a recently opened temple of molecular gastronomy in York, called ‘The Blind Swine’, a place now so popular that BigSisFo had to book 3 months ahead to get this table on a Saturday night.

How to describe this restaurant-slash-cocktail bar which combines the steaming frozen nitrogen flourishes of Heston Blumenthal with a screaming Heavy Metal soundtrack and a chef and brigade de cuisine with more tattoos between them than a convention of Hell’s Angels?

BigSisFo sits down, takes in the scene around her and pronounces: ‘Oh. My. God. It’s Hogwart’s meets Spinal Tap on ACID.’

We look at the drinks menu, which includes a short and learned dissertation on gin, and find cocktails that are named with lines from the book ‘American Psycho’ and have lists of ingredients that stretch credulity:

‘Brandy, hay syrup, port, quail’s egg’.

We decide against that one.

My sister goes for the ‘I like to dissect girls – did you know I’m utterly insane?’ cocktail, which consists of a relatively subdued combination of gin, cranberry, lime, Cointreau and orange bitters.

In a spirit of adventure I opt for the ‘Ziggy Sorreldust’: gin, sorrel juice, apple, lemon, Parma violets and protein lime. Somewhat to my surprise, this turns out to be one of the most divine things I have ever tasted.

I say so, foolishly.

BigSisFo immediately grabs and tastes my drink, whines because it is better than hers, and tries to steal it, whilst I calculate how many hundreds of times similar scenes have been played out during our decades of sisterly co-existence, sibling rivalry, and occasional all-out warfare. R, an only child, looks on, bemused.

The food, and its service, is surreal.

There is no choice about what to eat – the chef, who only cooks three nights a week, and then for a maximum of four tables and 20 people, offers a tasting menu of 8 courses, accompanied by cocktails devised to complement the exquisite morsels of food. You can order wine or beer as well if you wish, but it doesn’t seem appropriate to mess with the chef’s Grand Plan, particularly as whoever devises the cocktails is clearly some kind of crazed genius.

                               photo from the Blind Swine website

There was a time in my life when I regularly went to cutting-edge restaurants, but in those days they didn’t involve spectacular feats with clouds of steaming frozen nitrogen; this is cooking as performance art or religious ritual, each course cooked in full view of the diners and set ceremoniously before you by the rock’n’roll chef and his body art-adorned  acolytes.

The first plate put in front of us contains a thimbleful of carrot sorbet, surrounded by carrot crisps; over this is poured hot carrot soup from an alchemist’s glass flask, billowing clouds of steam.

It is all about the carrots, obvs.

It is essence of carrot, 3 different ways.

It is delicious.

The accompanying cocktail is some kind of mojito, with rum, elderflower syrup and frozen shredded cucumber, which tastes an awful lot better than it sounds.

BigSisFo gazes across the room at the tattooed, muscled arms of the chef and wonders aloud whether he works out.

  Photograph © Mark Ivkovic

‘I expect he does an awful lot of chopping’ I say.

My sister, who after champagne and a couple of industrial strength cocktails is approaching a state which might be described as fairly well-oiled (although nowhere yet near completely rat-arsed) observes that the chef, who sports a startlingly blonde 70s glam-rock hair style, looks like a tattooed all-in-wrestler in a woman’s wig.

Feeling that this is a trifle unkind I point out, truthfully, that he also has the face of a Botticelli angel.

R, our musical expert, argues that the chef looks more like the guitarist Mick Ronson, of David Bowie fame, than anything one might find in Renaissance art,

but adds that his closest doppelgänger has to be Dougal, of the Magic Roundabout.

 

The MC’s expression on hearing this exchange of views is pained beyond belief.

 ‘You do realise this guy used to cook at NOMA?’ he asks, with the sad but resigned air of a man fated to be surrounded by culinary imbeciles at moments of exquisite gastronomic intensity

 

 For those who do not follow such matters, NOMA is a now legendary Danish restaurant regarded as the second best restaurant in the world - after the late lamented El Bulli - by devotees of its intensely seasonal and often foraged food, where each plateful represents its own tiny ecosystem, and hay is often mentioned, although I’ve never been entirely clear in which precise context .

The rest of us, duly chastised,  shut up and apply ourselves with due reverence to the second course, which pays homage to the Spirit of Beetroot in the form of a playful melange of roast beetroot, beetroot puree, millet and pine nuts, decorated with a light dusting of vanilla snow.

It is at this moment that BigSisFo’s phone rings, and it becomes apparent that the as-yet-unidentified person on the other end of it is very upset indeed.

As we commence the third course - pea sorbet with a sliver of Iberico ham, aged for 15 years (the ham not the sorbet) with smoking hot pea and ham soup poured over the top, accompanied by Pain de Campagne with whipped black garlic butter – my sister says things like ‘He did WHAT?’ and ‘Oh my God, that is appalling behaviour’ and ‘I’d like to string that little bastard up by his BALLS’.

This conversation goes on for some time, and we are drinking our next cocktails – Sorrel Sours, AWESOME – and digging into veal sweetbreads with black garlic puree and what is possibly a poppadum made of dried white cabbage, by the time she finally rings off and explains to the rest of us what is amiss.

It transpires that a young female friend is undergoing an acute emotional crisis in  Texas, involving a travelling musician who has turned out to be a devil with the ladies as well as his bull fiddle. We all sit aghast as BigSisFo relates this tale of woe, and I reflect that it as well for the Good Ol’ Texas Boy in question that the Atlantic currently lies between him and my big sister.

Happily the next cocktail -  the ‘Chipotle Swinereiser’ a confection of rum, lemon, chipotle bitters, and blond beer with an orange twist  - arrives in the nick of time to take the edge off her ire, followed swiftly by more food: a king scallop atop a slice of boudin noir, resting on a tiny pillow of cauliflower puree and a slick of curry oil. The food has been getting better and better with every course, and this is just perfect.

It is perhaps unfortunate that the MC chooses this moment to observe that anyone who chooses to enter into a relationship with a young, good-looking male musician who spends most of his year on the road touring must surely be aware of the unlikelihood of such a union turning out to be of a monogamous and enduring nature.

BigSisFo turns on him, eyes flashing:

‘WHAT’ she hisses - she hisses magnificently, my sister, like a female cobra on steroids- ‘do you mean by that? Are you suggesting that this is in some way HER fault?’

I will draw a veil over the ensuing conversational carnage, and the response to my own suggestion that being done wrong by a bull fiddle player in Texas must surely count as a splendidly authentic blues experience, even if your name does happen to be Xanthe.

No, let us move swiftly on, as we do in the restaurant, to the next course: hanger steak topped with gremolata, accompanied by herbed gnocchi. My notes have become rather illegible and a little bit sticky by this point, but I think it may well have been accompanied by a cocktail, name unrecorded, composed of Chartreuse, Cointreau, gin and lemon juice.

Next, a playful take on egg on fried bread: a tiny piece of French toast, with a round white slice of Jerusalem artichoke topped with a little yellow dollop of lemon curd,  served with raspberry ketchup. This course is presented without cutlery, and we all end up licking raspberry ketchup off our fingers.

Just as I’m thinking that this was a delightful finale to the meal, the insanely delicious Beurre Noisette Ice Cream on a bed of yogurt cake scattered with shards of cinder toffee arrives, followed shortly afterwards by the final round of cocktails: espresso martinis made of God-knows-what, drunk with a straw poked through a hole in the layer of cling-film covering the glasses to trap in a layer of smoke.

I think.

One of the lesser-tattooed wait-persons has assured us, earlier in the evening, that the strength of the cocktails accompanying the meal is only half that of those on the bar menu; it is, nevertheless, a sign of the stamina of the Fo women and their consorts that as this extraordinary meal draws to a close we are all still sitting more or less upright in our seats and capable of conversation, of a sort.

It’s a very good thing that none of us is driving home, though.

The taxi takes us home safely though the snowy lanes of north Yorkshire, and Hank’s excited barking greets us as we slither and slide over the frozen snowy gravel towards the back door. On entering the kitchen we find Hank in his customary place on his special fake-fur blanket next to the Aga.

As I walk towards him Hank gets up, tail wagging, with some kind of large purple rag clenched between his huge, slavering jaws. 

Seconds later I recognise the shredded purple rag as what used to be my cardigan, left carelessly slung over one of the kitchen chairs when we went out earlier; as this realisation dawns I hear, as from a great distance,  the sound of my friend Danielle (aka @Pochyemu), whose American passport was eaten by my dog Freddie in Ayvalik three years ago, laughing and laughing and laughing…

 

They seek him here, they seek him there: The North Yorkshire Rat Apocalypse Revisited

Day 36:  

General status update 

Hair: 36 days into chemo and I haven’t yet lost any hair – whichever way you look at it, it’s AMAZING. A big thank-you to the Paxman Cold Cap Company – even if it all falls out tomorrow , you’ve made the first 5 weeks of the Chemo Nightmare a hell of a lot easier to bear. I’ve even forgiven you for making the damn thing that particularly lurid shade of neon Day-Glo PINK. 

Nausea demon: Very subdued. I’ve only had to take one lot of meds so far today, and have discontinued the third anti-emetic, Ondansetron, for the time being. He’s keeping himself busy with his OU work and his romantic adventures. So happy not to be seeing very much of him at the moment. 

Chemo Muse: She’s struggling to make herself heard in the face of the fatigue – her voice is still strong, but the chemo is making me so tired now that I can’t achieve the Stakhanovite work rate I exhibited during the giddy steroid madness of the first cycle of FEC. She’s very much looking forward to the early days of FEC3, in 9 days’ time, when I will once again be hopped up to the gills on Dexamethasone and raring to go. She did suggest, tentatively, that maybe I could ask Stan the oncologist for a bigger, longer dose of steroids next time – then we could really have some fun. I said I would think about it.

 

Chemo Brian: He’s found my not-yet-attempted ‘knit your own nativity scene’ kit by the side of the sofa, and has decided to have a go. He learnt how to knit AND weave on a commune in Vermont at some point in the 70s, apparently. Not quite sure how good he’s going to be at following the pattern, but he’s totally engrossed, and says he is perfectly capable of knitting and watching Wallace and Gromit videos at the same time. To each his own. 

Fatigue/weakness: no change – no longer quite so debilitating, but my batteries are very, very flat.  

Sleep, lack of: n/a 

Anxiety level (1-10): Sitting here watching the snow falling is very soothing. 

State of mind: It’s snowing! I love the snow! Especially as I don’t have to go anywhere just now, and can sit and look at it out of the window.

News from North Yorkshire: worrying – see below.

My sister calls, and I share with her the exciting news that today has been yet another day when I have NOT woken up with hair shed all over the pillow. We muse together on how the wondrous Cold Cap might have been invented, but after my horrifying research last week into the origins of chemotherapy, I decide not to trouble Google with that particular topic just yet.

 

It has been a while since we discussed my sister's rat problem and, mindful of the fact that if all goes well R and I will be spending the coming weekend up in north Yorkshire chez BigSisFo, I ask her if the rat thing is now completely over.

‘Ah’ says my sister, ‘funny you should mention that…’

A week ago, the MC came down to breakfast ashen-faced.

‘There were noises, last night – noises coming from the attic.’

BigSisFo was deeply engrossed in the Killer Sudoku and, initially, not overly concerned.

‘It’s an old house, darling, there are always noises.’

‘No, DARLING, the rats are back, and last night they were stomping about on the attic floor above my bedroom ceiling.’

Do not, gentle reader, worry yourself as to the reason why BigSisFo and the MC do not share sleeping quarters – it is no way a reflection on the state of their relationship (although Hank is in therapy, obvs). When you have a house big enough for your own Red Room of Pain  with so many huge bedrooms, it makes sense to confine snoring to the privacy of one’s own private domain.  I’m not saying which of them snores, but it’s not Hank.

My sister looked up, not overly thrilled to be interrupted at the very moment  the Way In to the Killer Sudoku had just manifested itself in her brain.

‘It’s probably bats, not rats. Really, I have a nose for them now – if there were any rats in this house I could smell them. You’re just being neurotic’

‘You’re good at smelling dead rats, not live ones. I’m telling you THERE ARE RATS IN THE ATTIC. I spent half of last night listening to them. Stomping. Above my ceiling. Something needs to be done immediately’.

My sister sighed. The MC gets to take clients to London’s finest restaurants on a regular basis; rat-management in north Yorkshire is her bailiwick.

‘Sweetheart, the rats were underneath the floorboards on the ground floor, and they are now ALL DEAD and disposed of.  I counted the corpses out, by the side of the Pest Control man. The rats are OVER. And even if there were any more rats, how on earth could they have got up into the attic?’

‘Haven’t you ever heard the expression ‘like a rat up a drainpipe’? It exists FOR A REASON’.

‘Oh, for goodness sake… how could a rat climb up inside thirty feet of smooth plastic drainpipe? They’ve only got tiny little legs and arms, and there’s nothing for them to dig their claws into. They’d have to spread out their arms and legs and inch their way up like a mountaineer inside one of those rock chimneys. Unless you’re suggesting they’re using actual crampons.’

‘They could have climbed up the outside of the house, on the wisteria.’

BigSisFo paused at this, struck by the horrifying image of the Mutant Ninja Super Rats of north Yorkshire, swarming up her wisteria. It didn’t bear thinking about. She gave in. 

‘OK, I’ll call the council and get the Pest Control bloke out again.’

 ‘No, that’ll take too long. I don’t want to wait a week this time. Get  someone private in.’

My sister giggled at this point, unable to help herself.  ‘Ratbusters?’

The MC failed to see the funny side. ‘Whoever. Whoever will come today’.

 The Ratbuster, like the council Pest Control man before him, was a bluff north Yorkshireman deeply versed in the ways of rodents both great and small. His on the spot diagnosis was: ‘ Can’t tell at this stage if it’s mice or rats. We’ll know after we look at t’traps. Rats have to eat t’ cardboard to get at t’ food inside, mice are small enough to get in t’ little hole’.

The bad news for BigSisFo was that it is perfectly possible, and not uncommon, for rats to find their way into an attic. She was so appalled she forgot to ask how the rats got up there.

Worse, the Ratbuster has clients with a rat in the attic so hard to get rid of that he has recently visited them for the fourteenth time. Their attic floor has been covered in traps with poisoned food, and pieces of cardboard covered in some kind of superglue designed to stick to rats’ feet, thus rendering them immobile, but to no avail. The clients have even installed video-cameras up in the attic, and now have extensive footage of their rat deftly evading every obstacle put in front of him in what is now, effectively, a large poisoned assault course for rats.

‘He’s a nimble little bugger, I’ll give him that’ the Ratbuster concluded, before laying more traps outside BigSisFo’s house and leaving, with a promise to return this coming Friday to check the state of the attic and make a full diagnosis of the nature of  its new residents, whether rats, mice or ….. could it be the ghosts of the dead rats from under the floorboards, come back from the grave to torment the MC in revenge for their grisly end? 

At this stage, I don’t think we should rule anything out.

 

 

This song is a very special dedication to BigSisFo and The MC, who endure my merciless mocking with the greatest good humour, and still keep inviting me to stay… can’t wait to see you guys, and of course Hank and his Humongous Balls, at the weekend xxx

 

 

Follow the yellow brick road…

Day 34:  

General status update 

Hair: Am only allowed to wash it once a week during chemo/cold cap, and today was The Day. This is terrifying, as every week I think it’s going to The Week when my hair starts coming out in clumps. It didn’t. It looks beyond terrible, as I’m not allowed to use a hair dryer, but no more hair than normal came out. Thank you, cold cap, for as long as it lasts – ALL my chemo buddies who haven’t used it have already lost all their hair. 

Nausea demon: Was so quiet this morning that I felt almost normal, which was – odd. So odd, in fact, that I began to suspect that he had taken himself off on a weekend mini-break (perhaps to Bilbao: he keeps saying he wants to go and see the Guggenheim - he is a HUGE fan of  Frank Gehry - before he returns to the infernal regions) with his mysterious new amour. However he began to make his presence felt towards lunch-time, so it seems not.  

We’ve generally designated Saturday as everyone’s day off, and the Chemo Muse and Chemo Brian are playing scrabble together. This is painful to witness: the Chemo Muse is, obviously, a Ninja Scrabble Player and as for Chemo Brian, many of whose brain cells were obliterated with high class pharmaceuticals of a quite astonishing variety during his glory days in the late 60s / 70s – well, it might be better if they switched to Ludo. Current score 423 – 62, and I think she’s about to finish using all 7 letters across 2 triple word scores, and incorporating the ‘Q’ he has already put down. Brutal. 

Fatigue/weakness: Not as bad as it was earlier in the week, but in general FEC 2 has been much, much worse in this respect than FEC 1.

Sleep, lack of: n/a

Anxiety level (1-10): It’s still 10 days until FEC3, but its shadow is already looming surprisingly large. You think FEC2 was bad? FEC3 is the really, really bad one. Everyone tells me so. 

State of mind: Trying to be mindful, live in the moment, not ruin now by thinking forward about what is going to happen then. Success limited.

 

 

 

I woke up this morning feeling almost normal, which felt distinctly odd after 10 days of fairly consistent extreme awfulness since the administration of FEC2 a week ago on Wednesday. Today there has been a blissful sense of freedom from the sharper jabs inflicted by the pitchforks of the Chemo Demons – just low-level nausea, and feeling very tired, which is now a constant. But it’s perfectly bearable, and not unlike a mild hangover: and that’s as good as it gets on chemo - for me, at least.

There is 10 days ahead, now, all being well – i.e. as long I as remain free from any kind of infection – during which I can go out a bit, and do rather  more, and generally regroup before FEC3, which will happen a week on Wednesday, January 23^rd. I know already that FEC3 is usually very bad indeed, and considerably more unpleasant than FEC2, which was quite egregiously unpleasant itself – my oncologist told me so, and so have other women who have already experienced it. So I’m going to try to pack as much of a good time into the next 10 days as I can, do things I can remember in 2 weeks’ time when the Nausea Demon is riding his surf-board triumphantly on the vast waves of sickness cresting and breaking over me, again, and again, while the Chemo Nano-Rats swarm furiously in my stomach, biting and scratching viciously as they try to eat their way out from the inside, and I lie on the floor curled up in a foetal position, weeping and muttering that I just want to die, PLEASE let me die, that death really would be preferable to this.

I did that at one point during this chemo cycle, and the one before that, and the odds are I’ll be doing exactly the same thing next time. Being able to predict exactly how bad you are going to be feeling two weeks from now is really a very strange phenomenon.

So, tomorrow, all being well, R and I are going to pop along to the V&A, which is not far away, and see their much-praised ‘Hollywood Costume’ exhibition; I do love a nice frock.

This will be my first proper outing, far too many hospital visits apart, since going to see The Hobbit, during the ‘good week’ of FEC1 just after Christmas – I am beyond excited. Next weekend, just before FEC3, we have even grander plans – the icy weather, the trains and my bodily state permitting - a quick trip up to north Yorkshire to see BigSisFo, the MC and Hank the demented Hungarian Visla (and his humongous balls, obvs). But that seems a very long way away and rather ambitious, in my new, rather limited world:  for now, a trip down the Yellow Brick Road to South Kensington tomorrow glitters in front of me like the most precious and desirable of baubles. 

They’ve got the Ruby Slippers, you know – the ACTUAL Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz.

 

 

 

p.s To all those who posted comments on the ' Walk On By' post on Wednesday, please have a look at my response in the comments column.

There's a (happy) place in the sun....

Day 21 

General status update

Hair: The suspense is killing both me and Hair. Am tempted just to shave it all off, so I can stop waiting for it to start falling like autumn leaves. Hair, unsurprisingly, not overly impressed by this idea and determined to fend off the ravages of FEC 2 in the spirit of the Siege of Leningrad. Have nasty feeling that particular event ended up with everyone eating rats. And worse. Still, I could get Big Sis Fo to send some down from north Yorkshire, where there are plenty going spare.

Nausea demon: Pumped. There’s no other word for it. B*ST*RD.

Chemo Muse: Off out having her hair highlighted so she can look her best for Chemo Cycle 2. Of course her hair isn’t going to be falling out, is it? B*TCH.

Sleep, lack of: Pill last night, so no pill tonight. Oh Morpheus, gentle deity, please take me in your arms  tonight - PLEASE.

Anxiety level (1-10): The rapid, high-pitched whine of anxiety in my head has broken through the sound barrier, exited the Earth’s atmosphere, and is now heading towards Mars.

State of mind: No longer incubating escape plans, as I still was 3 weeks ago before FEC 1. Now resigned to being totally FECKED, in 6 instalments.

News from North Yorkshire: Hank keeps backing up into corners whenever the MC approaches. That is now one very nervous dog.

 

The second cycle of chemo - when the next dose of powerful toxins will be pumped into my bloodstream and, perhaps, bring about the rapid loss of my hair - will begin on Wednesday, and I seem to be becoming more than a little tense. Tomorrow morning I will be off to the hospital to see my oncologist again, to discuss how the first cycle went, decide whether the various meds to deal with the side effects need to be adjusted and, most importantly, go through the pre-chemo blood test, carried out to check that your now-compromised immune system has recovered sufficiently after the last dose of chemo for you to survive the next one.  

If the platelet count in your blood is too low, then they won’t let you have any more chemo until it has recovered sufficiently – otherwise the next dose might result in you becoming very seriously ill, or even dying. In order for the chemo drugs to be strong enough to kill off the reproducing cancer cells (chemo kills cells which are reproducing, mostly), they also have to be strong enough to kill the healthily reproducing blood cells which keep the immune system working. If too many are killed, the patient is at very high risk from any infection, however small, especially during days 7-10 of each chemo cycle, when the chemo has had time to do its work, and your immune system is at weakest, and has yet to start fighting back.  

A couple of my on-line friends have been re-hospitalised with infections already, and so I am being insanely vigilant about staying away from crowded places and public transport, washing my hands constantly, and insisting that anyone who enters the flat washes theirs before doing anything else - which can come across as quite rude, unfortunately. It’s hard to get across politely to a dear friend that you don’t want to hug them until they’ve washed their hands, but we live on the fourth floor, and visitors must touch the brass door handles to open and close the (old-fashioned, manual) lift doors, handles that are touched by hundreds of people each day; at the moment some of those hands may well be infected with the highly contagious Norovirus, currently laying waste to the London population, which can live for six months on hard surfaces… and the Norovirus would, at best , put me in an isolation ward for a couple of weeks. At best.  

I seem to have got through the first cycle of FEC relatively unscathed, apart from the constant nausea, sleeplessness and hyperactivity, the dry and sore skin and greatly magnified sense of smell; unlike some of my virtual chemo buddies, I have not yet  experienced any hair loss, mouth ulcers, thrush, cystitis, constipation, diarrhoea, indigestion, sore eyes, black nails, major fatigue or life-threatening infections.

It’s early days yet, of course, and not every patient gets ALL of these side effects. I know it will get worse, but it’s not clear yet if the side effects I already have will get worse, or if additional ones will start appearing – maybe it could be both. I’m most anxious about my hair – it’s been so good this cycle, after having the cold cap, just sitting there quietly on my head, and not falling out. Over the next few weeks, however, after FEC 2, it will almost certainly begin to fall out – if I’m lucky, and the cold cap continues to work, it will just start gradually becoming thinner; if I’m unlucky, the whole lot will go, quite fast.

Fingers crossed eh?

In the mean-time, am working on reducing the anxiety in 2 ways: first, obvs, through the use of weapons-grade pharmaceuticals and second, by doing a runner to my Happy Place in my head, even if I can’t do it in reality. I don’t know why I kept threatening to run away to Goa, in the early stages of denial, anger and rebellion after my diagnosis, because the Camel Barn and its environs, not Goa, is my Happy Place, and evoking and concentrating on images of Ayvalik can always calm me down and make me forget, at least for a little while, the many unpleasant things that are happening to me.

A couple of years ago I kept an on-line photographic diary for a while, on which I put  photos from my long walks in the hills around Ayvalik. I'm not much of a photographer, as will be evident, but I spent nearly 4 years pointing and clicking with my mobile phone at every beautiful view, and it is a place that abounds in beautiful views, both natural and architectural.

 

Below are three entries from that diary, about Ayvalik sunsets; the accompanying images are some of those I use to absent myself, temporarily, to my Happy Place in the sun when the unrelenting barrage of nastiness from this cancer and chemo business is just All Too F***ing Much…

 

  

Friday 23 April 2010: Another Ayvalik sunset...

 

 

'Coming back home again after 3 weeks travelling in south-eastern Turkey has made me look at both Ayvalik, and my house, with renewed appreciation. 

I took my dog up the hill early yesterday evening for his walk in the pine woods, and was welcomed back by a truly spectacular sunset over the Aegean. It reminded me how very lucky I am to have such extraordinary natural beauty there to enjoy freely every day, only a few minutes’ walk up the hill from my house in the town.'

 

Friday 30 April 2010: Why I can't leave Ayvalik...

 

The view, the light, the sense of calm that fills me every day when I walk up into the pine woods and look out over the Aegean. Even though I've photographed it a hundred times before, and posted it on here several times already, I can never get enough of this view.

 Wednesday 26 May 2010: Reaching new heights

 

‘Over the last few weeks I have been going on longer and longer walks every evening with my dog Freddie, gradually exploring and mentally mapping all the different tracks (they're fire roads, I think) that run through the pine woods on the hills behind & beyond Ayvalik. This is a labour of love: these woods, and these walks, are quite beautiful and I want to get to know them thoroughly both for my own benefit, & so I can show them to visitors. Very few people, other than beekeepers, ever go there - as a nation, Turks are not keen on recreational walking - so usually Freddie & I have miles of woods entirely to ourselves. 

Today was the longest and most beautiful walk yet. We were out for nearly 4 hours, and climbed to the highest point in the hills, from where there is a quite breath-taking view over the Ayvalik archipelago & across the Aegean to Lesbos. Freddie & I were very tired when we got to the top of the hill, so we sat in the grass to rest, & breathed in the scent of the pines & wild lavender as we watched the sun start to set over the Aegean..’

 

When times are bad, and I’m feeling sad, Ayvalik is my (happy) place in the sun.

Take it away, Stevie!

 

Do NOT try this at home – ever

Day 20: Intermezzo - a canine interlude

General status update

Hair: Frozen in terror in anticipation of Wednesday

Nausea demon: Doing one-armed press-ups to get himself in peak condition for the renewed nausea offensive after FEC 2. There’s a trick to it, apparently: he learned it from an old con he was tormenting in Wormwood Scrubs a few years back.

Chemo Muse: Getting very excited, and hoping to be able to dictate at least 10,000 words to me while I’m hopped up on steroids from Wednesday – Saturday. My main worry here is getting repetitive strain injury from all the typing.

Sleep, lack of: I don’t give a monkey’s if Lorazepam is addictive, I’m taking one tonight – don’t forget they are for anxiety as well as sleeplessness. Double whammy.

Anxiety level (1-10): 3 days until the next dose of poison – what do you think?

State of mind: better than Hank’s, for sure (see below). 

News from North Yorkshire: read on 

No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog – not by me, anyway. The following account is a reconstruction of the events in question put together from conversations with some of the less-traumatised participants and witnesses.

 

Boxing Day chez Big Sis Fo and the MC in rural north Yorkshire is always a very quiet day: after the enormous effort that goes into producing the Christmas Feast, and enjoying to the full the extraordinary array of wines that accompany it, the MC and Big Sis Fo (who functions as his sous-chef ) retire early, and sleep long; it is a House Rule for those guests who have stayed overnight that they should not expect their hosts to surface much before mid-day on Boxing Day, and should make their own breakfast.

Thus, earlier this week on Boxing Day morning, Big Sis Fo stumbled downstairs in her dressing gown at about 11 a.m., and headed towards the kitchen in search of some strong coffee. 

As she walked into the kitchen, yawning, she saw something which made her blink, for a moment quite unable to comprehend what she was seeing. She stood stock-still on the threshold trying to make sense of the tableau before her: the room had three occupants, namely Hank, the huge and demented Hungarian Visla, the MC, and Nick, another Fo brother-in-law who, as regular readers may recall, has bravely offered to assist in the implementation of my Viking funeral (now scheduled to be held on the River Derwent, which flows past the end of his back garden and thence into the North Sea, via the River Ouse), in defiance of any adverse legal consequences that may follow.

On Hank’s large, daft face there was an expression of extreme anguish, and he rolled his eyes at Big Sis Fo in mute, desperate appeal, as well he might, because Nick was holding Hank’s head, with the jaw firmly clamped shut, while at the other end the MC, clad in a cowboy-patterned Cath Kidston oil-cloth apron accessorised with a pair of bright yellow rubber Marigolds, had his fore-finger inserted into Hank’s rectum and was wiggling it about inside, as if trying to find something. Beside him, on the kitchen table, stood a large tub of Vaseline.

Big Sis Fo, not one to mince her words, especially when she comes across her partner in life apparently sodomising the dog, with company, barked: ‘What in HOLY HELL is going on here?’

Nick looked up, panic-stricken ‘It's not what it looks like...'

The MC, unperturbed, and without ceasing his digital exploration of Hank’s inner recesses, said: ‘Darling, you know Hank has to have his anal glands stimulated from time to time to get all the fluid out.'

 ‘I know perfectly well  it needs to be done’ said my sister, through gritted teeth. ‘But it needs to done by the vet. In his surgery. Properly. Wearing surgical gloves. Not IN MY KITCHEN by an enthusiastic amateur wearing bloody MARIGOLDS.’ 

‘But it’s Boxing Day’ said the MC. ‘Last time we had to take Hank to the vet on a Bank Holiday it cost nearly a hundred quid.’ 

‘That’ said my sister, somewhat tersely ‘is BESIDE THE F***ING POINT’ (she says this a lot, as you may have noticed). 

‘But his tail was down, and he was looking really uncomfortable. His bum is so sore he can hardly sit down.’ 

My sister lost her patience: ‘If I were a dog, I would infinitely prefer to endure a little discomfort, rather than have you f***ing around in my arse. LEAVE HANK ALONE. And throw those Marigolds away, please. NOW.’  

A few minutes later Big Sis Fo, now armed with strong coffee and beginning to revive, looked into the Boot Room, where the traumatised Hank was lying on his dog-bed, being consoled by Nick, while the MC was off phoning the vet. 

 

 

Nick was talking softly to Hank, unaware that he was being overheard.

‘It’s been a funny kind of start to Boxing Day for you, Hankie Boy, hasn’t it - buggered by the MC already, and it’s not even 12 o’clock yet?’

 

 

 

If there's anything I can do, anything at all..

Day 16: A whole new concept in charity fund-raising emerges

General status update

Hair: it’s day 15 of the first chemo cycle, and by now people’s hair has usually begun to fall out. Mine hasn’t, so we can reasonably assume that the cold cap is working; so far, anyway. The key thing is whether it will last past FEC 2 and 3.

Nausea demon: Still operating, albeit at a reduced level, but also being rather off with me, and I don’t have the foggiest idea why.

Chemo Muse: Fuming at being temporarily disabled by the dose of Lorazepam last night. Now seems to be girding herself up for the Next Big Push.

Sleep, lack of: Sleep deficit reduced by last night’s sedative-induced deep slumber. Grogginess today entirely worth it.

Anxiety level (1-10) Ratcheting up again – the next dose of chemo is in just over a week’s time, and then this manic merry-go-round will start all over again.

State of mind: Languid – it’s one of those post-Lorazepam days..

News from North Yorkshire: the beetroot macaroons were a complete disaster, and there has been a Very Unfortunate Incident involving a 5 kilo ham; the MC is unconsolable.

 

Long, long ago, when the world was young and so was I, and there were 9 months to fill before going to university after taking the Oxbridge entrance exams, post-A levels, in what was then called ‘3rd Year Sixth’, I raised money to fund my proposed travels, in what was genuinely a ‘gap’ year, by working in the canteen at the local hospital.

This was a pig of a job: much of it was spent behind the scenes cleaning out industrial-sized cooking vats which had contained stew, or mashed potato, not a very pleasant task. But it taught me an awful lot: what it is like to stand on your feet all day, and come home too physically tired to do anything but lie down; what it is like to work at a job you hate, just for the money it will bring you, and the useful things that money will do; and what it is like to be regarded, just because you’re wearing a catering overall and hat and standing behind a counter making toast for busy doctors and medical students, as Not Very Bright, because who would be doing a job like that if they weren’t really, quite, you know, thick?

 

In the end, I didn’t do any gap-year travelling, but the money I earned was useful, and the experience gained was invaluable; I have never forgotten that, having gone to university at a time when the fees were paid by the tax-payers, my very privileged education at Oxford was partly funded by the taxes of people who never got the chance to go to university, and did jobs they hated, because they had no other choice.

In those days, students who wanted to go off travelling, in gap years or university vacations, always got jobs to fund themselves, whether in factories, bars, hospitals, shops or working on building sites. It was what you did. I was recently appalled to discover that the Zeitgeist has changed, and that many young people regard it as perfectly acceptable TO ASK OTHER PEOPLE TO PAY FOR THEIR FUN. I was alerted to this when a friend mentioned that she had bought some rather expensive tickets for a fund-raising concert organised by one of her daughter’s school-friends, Chloe, but that it was ‘all for a terribly good cause’.

‘How enterprising of her’ I said. ‘Which charity is she raising money for?’

‘Oh, she wants to go to Ecuador in her gap year.’

‘And do what?’

‘I think it might be counting butterflies, something like that – you know, it’s one of those voluntary work things, but you have to pay about a thousand pounds to go and do it for a month. It’s a fabulous place apparently, a national park, on the coast, amazing scenery, and she’ll be able to go snorkelling, and whale-watching.’

Well, well, lucky old Chloe, I thought. She gets together with her mates and plays her flute for a couple of hours, and then gets given enough of other people’s hard earned money to enable her to go and have a lovely holiday in Ecuador for a month, saving the butterflies and going snorkelling.

Call me old-fashioned, but there seemed to me to be something fundamentally wrong with this,  given that the ‘good cause’ that the money was being raised for wasn’t a charity – it was for Chloe, a highly privileged, expensively educated girl, who would now have some ‘voluntary work’ to put on her CV, and be able to hold her own when she finally got to university and started engaging in competitive ‘gap yah’ storytelling

in the Union bar. I rather doubt unskilled 18 year olds make much difference to the butterflies of Ecuador in a 4 week stint – by the time they learn enough to do anything useful, it’s time to return to Notting Hill, or go on to Phuket and develop their drug-taking skills further.

I’ve just looked on the internet to make sure that I heard right, and am not making this up, and it gets worse; there are several sites dedicated to telling teenagers planning gap years how to get other people to pay for their fun abroad, because ‘working… can be difficult’, as is helpfully explained in the paragraph below from a site called gapyear.com:

“Working long hours to save for your travels can be difficult, but there are other ways to club together the pennies for a gap year. Fundraising for your gap year is the art of getting loved ones and strangers alike to part with their cash to fund your travels or voluntary work”

Yes, working can be difficult, my children: that’s why it called work, but generally, it’s how you get money in life to do the things you want, so why not consider it as an option, eh? 

Funding gap years for teenagers with an extraordinary sense of entitlement is one thing, and real charity fund-raising is another, but I think it’s fair to say that a lot of people ask you to sponsor them, albeit for very good causes, for things they’d quite like to do anyway, whether it’s going for a 3k run dressed as Santa

trekking along the Inca Trail in the Andes…

 

Or racing to the South Pole on cross-country skis, dragging sleds.
 

 

All good stuff, for very worth-while causes: tasks which are challenging to do, and also fun, and give people a sense of achievement and accomplishment. 

I’ve got an even better idea, though, which occurred to me just the other day: why not get sponsorship for doing something you DON’T want to do, but have to do anyway? For something that no one in their right minds would ever do voluntarily unless - well, unless their life were at stake.

 

Like, for instance, my chemotherapy treatment.

 

 

SPONSOR MY CHEMO!

 I have, accordingly, set up a fundraising page on Virgin Money Giving, asking people to sponsor me to do something I really don't want to do: something I have always feared, something that is making me feel Very Bad Indeed, and that will more than likely not do me any good, anyway -

Chemo will help only 7 or 8 women out of a hundred who are my age, and have my particular type of tumour characteristics.  For the remaining 92/3 it will make no difference whatsoever, but unfortunately the current state of medical knowledge has no way of differentiating those who will benefit from those who won’t, so EVERYONE has to do it (you can refuse, of course, but not many do). I will never know whether the chemo has been of any benefit to me or not, unless the cancer returns (which would be a fairly clear indication that it hadn’t). If it doesn’t return, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the chemo worked: it might never have been going to return anyway, or might have been prevented from so doing by the other treatments I will be having later, i.e. 3 weeks of radiotherapy, and then 5 years of taking the drug Tamoxifen. There is no way of knowing.  

However, I have no real choice but to do it - the alternative treatments on offer, which I will talk about another time, are worse in terms of possible long term side effects.

So, I'm asking people to sponsor my 100 days (approx.) of chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer.

 Any money raised will go directly to The Haven, an extraordinary charity which provides, free of charge, a wide range of support and therapies to improve the wellbeing of women (and men) with, and beyond, breast cancer. Their specialist nurses and experts in nutrition, exercise, emotional support and complementary therapies provide individualised, in-depth programmes to help with the physical and emotional side effects of breast cancer treatment. The Haven receives no funding from the Government; it survives solely on charitable donations.
 

The London branch of the Haven is close to where I live, and since I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the beginning of September 2012 they have helped me more than I can say, for which I am hugely grateful. I will write about my experiences of the Haven later on in this blog, but if you’d like to know more about them now you can find it on their website at

http://www.thehaven.org.uk/

 

I have no choice but to endure chemotherapy, and whatever unpleasant physical and mental side effects it brings, without knowing whether it is actually doing me any good; it would be an enormous morale booster, however, to know that by raising some sponsorship money whilst doing it I could give something back to the Haven and, by so doing, help people who are diagnosed with breast cancer in the future. 

1 in 8 women in the UK will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some time in their lives, usually in the later years; one of those people will almost certainly be someone close to you or, if you're unlucky like me, might even be you.

When you tell people that you have cancer, they all say the same thing: ‘Please let me know if there is anything I can do..’.

Usually, there isn’t.  

But in this case, there is: making a donation to The Haven, via my fundraising page (and telling other people to read the blog – the more readers, and potential donors, the better). Then even if my chemo does turn out to be a waste of time, it will still have achieved something useful.

I know times are hard for a lot of people now, but if you enjoy reading the blog, and have got a few quid you can spare, please drop by my fund-raising page on Virgin Money Giving, and make a donation, however small.  

Believe me, if it hadn’t been for the psychological help the Haven has given me since I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I probably wouldn’t even be doing the chemo, or writing the blog: I’d have run away to Goa long since and would be sitting under a palm tree right now eating mangoes, and continuing to pretend that this simply was not happening to me, and that if I ignored it long enough, then it would just go away of its own accord.

Like cancer does…

Not.

 

My fundraising page address:
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/ChemoNights