My (entirely hypothetical, obvs) funeral arrangements

Day 18 
General status update 

Hair: Somewhat dishevelled due to Fear Of Brushing, but very, very shiny Maybe it’s the after-effect of all those radioactive dyes they injected me with; must check to see if it also glows in the dark.  

Nausea demon: Has finally sat down and discussed his issues, which are essentially that it is completely unfair of me to keep slagging him off in public when he is only DOING HIS JOB. If he does his job effectively, and I feel utterly vile, then it shows that the chemo is working, so why am I shooting the messenger?  

Chemo Muse: She agrees with the Nausea Demon, and points out that like him, she is ONLY HERE TO HELP, so could I possibly stop knocking her out with Lorazepam, and preventing her from doing her job effectively? Pfft – once again, I am accused of having a Bad Attitude. I am failing Cancer 101. Even the Chemo Demons hate me.

Sleep, lack of: I’m writing this at 1.22 am, and desperately trying to resist the temptation of taking another one of Satan’s Little Helpers so that I can go to sleep (n.b. this refers to the first draft of this blog post, which was started last night). 

Skin: It hurts. In some very odd places. Don’t like this AT ALL. 

Other physical side effects too gross to mention: One, so far.

Anxiety level (1-10): how many worries can one person have? Shouldn’t there be some kind of a limit? 

State of mind: Dark and snarly – you really wouldn’t want to go inside there. 

News from North Yorkshire: there is some, but it’s so Very Special, it deserves a blog post all of its own. Watch this space.
 

 I went back to the hospital this afternoon, to have my PICC line flushed; this must be done every week to ensure that it stays clear for taking blood, and pumping in the remaining five doses of chemo. I sat down in the waiting room of Clinic 8, along with just a scattering of other chemo patients (the hospital is much quieter over the holiday period), and started reading my book, but it became difficult to concentrate a few minutes later when warfare broke out inside the cheerily-named ‘Blood Room’; we all sat transfixed as what sounded like at least 3 unseen nurses began a prolonged ding-dong battle at high volume. Annoyingly, the voices being so high-pitched and the fast and furious torrent of words so difficult to follow, the only thing I could make out clearly was the sentence ‘You are A PROFESSIONAL!’ repeated several times. This went on for so long that eventually I tuned it out and started thinking about other things, primarily my funeral arrangements.
 

I went to school with a girl who had her entire wedding planned out, from the bridesmaids’ dresses, to the colour of the flowers, to the menu for the nuptial feast, by the age of 14. We lost touch after leaving school, so I never got to know whether she achieved the wedding of her dreams, or ended up having to make alternative arrangements – I like to think it was the former. 

I, on the other hand, as a life-long lover of ancient, mossy graveyards, (particularly those with extravagant funerary monuments incorporating weeping angels),

 

 and as one who did a special paper at university on the Latin inscriptions on Roman tombstones (no, really I did – it was such an obscure subject that the only relevant text-book, which I still have somewhere, was in French), have always been more partial to planning my funeral, and suitably over the top grave décor: I’ve been fantasising about having a really outrageous tomb since I was a teenager. 

 

Some of life’s rites of passage can take place more than once, but funerals are unique events: you can only have one of them, unlike weddings, of which you can have as many as you like, given easy access to divorce, money enough and time. Not to mention energy. But your funeral will only happen the once, and you are unlikely to have the opportunity to redecorate your final resting-place, once installed; it is therefore incumbent upon the person who desires a good send-off, in the style which they would prefer, to plan ahead accordingly. 
 

I am not a big fan of the actor Nicholas Cage, but was most impressed recently to hear that he has had the good sense to purchase for himself, decades ahead of the probable time of his demise, this tomb, in one of the many strange and wonderful graveyards of New Orleans:
 

 

My own ideal tomb, like that of Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, Roman senator and governor of Asia (105-107 AD), would be a sarcophagus incorporated within a fine, stone-built memorial library; in his case, the library was at Ephesus, and has weathered well over the years -

 

 

although if we are going to be realistic, the Fo Library-Mausoleum is unlikely to be built unless I win the Euro millions lottery on a maximum rollover day. But, hey, a girl can still dream…

My preferred choice of funeral may also be a bit tricky to accomplish. R and I both come from Viking stock (or so we like to think), our respective families having originated in the north-east of England (which was pretty much over-run by Vikings back in the Dark Ages), and in each case having many family members with red-gold hair. It is hardly surprising, then, that I have always been drawn to the notion of the Viking funeral, going out, quite literally, in a blaze of glory:

 

 

I’ve always thought the Lady of Shalott’s final journey down the river would have been enlivened considerably, had Sir Lancelot only had the gumption to set her boat on fire.  

Unfortunately, current health and safety regulations mean that this particular method of corpse disposal is likely to result in unfortunate legal consequences for those left behind, although one of the many delightful Fo brothers-in-law, Nick, has bravely offered to give me a hand with such plans if funeral arrangements should become necessary. He emailed me as follows: 

Hello Caroline,  

Very sorry to hear of your cancer, but glad to see you are positive and taking it on! With reference to your idea of a Viking funeral, I wonder if we could make use of the mighty river Derwent, which flows at the bottom of our garden. I have a Pedalo type boat, and although I know having a picture of a squirrel on the bow doesn’t compare to the fierce dragon of a Viking ship, I'm sure we could get your Uncle Brian [an artist] to scary it up a bit! 
 

The Derwent flows into the river Ouse and then out to the North Sea which the Vikings did use to invade these parts. Plus, if you became a Hindu you would be covered either way. Of course we would have to be careful of the wind as we wouldn't want to set fire to anyone's garden shed as you sailed past!

 

Love, Nick

 

That is the kind of family support one really needs at a time like this; this post is dedicated to you, Nick! 
 

But do not be frightened, gentle readers, and do not be dismayed, by all this talk of funeral arrangements – I do not expect to have to put any of these plans into action in the very near future. If the cancer does come back and kill me, it is unlikely to be for some time: my oncologist assures me that with the barrage of treatments he is inflicting on me, post-surgery – 18 weeks of  chemotherapy, then 3 weeks of  radiotherapy, then 5 years of the hormonal drug Tamoxifen, which destroys oestrogen -  my prognosis for disease-free survival in 5 years’ time is about 90-91%; put another way, I have only a 1 in 10 chance of the cancer coming back within the next five years.  

On the other hand, at my particular age, with no family history of the disease, I only had a 1 in 25 chance of getting breast cancer in the first place…

And just to cheer you up even further, after extensive research I have been able to establish that this is quite definitely the best Hamster Viking Funeral video on YouTube...