The Monster in Emma - Tackling the Tumour With Humour

1
A SPANNER IN THE WORKS

“If you hadn’t have rolled around in the grass with your loved one, then you wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

AN ODD FEELING

I loved being a pug owner. I was greeted by a waggy, curly tail and lots of licks on my return from work and we both enjoyed nothing more than a bundle and a roll in the garden.

We would play “hide the toy in the socks” and “yank the sheep toy” and similar such made up games.

On one such occasion in October 2017, I was lying on the garden grass playing with my dog, and it felt like my bra underwire was digging into me. The advantages of having a garden that was not overlooked meant that I could fling my bra off and resume the playing. So I did. The pain didn’t go away, and I could feel hardness. Not quite a lump, but more of a thickening of the skin and it bothered me all evening. I had never felt this before, and it worried me.

I visited the doctor a couple of days later, and he wasn’t happy with what he felt, although he did reassure me that eight out of every ten lumps or bumps turn out to be nothing more than cysts. I didn’t have a lump, or a bead or a “moveable marble” as mentioned in all the breast self-checking awareness adverts. It hurt to press and felt like a long strip of hardness. The doctor said he would refer me to the breast clinic.

“Did you not notice the discolouration?” said the nurse in mid-blue at the Breast Care Unit.

The appointment had come through within a couple of days. Not really, I thought. I’d been in the sun a lot over the summer, and there were various tan lines visible.

“What about the dimpling here?” she said prodding underneath. “Surely you noticed this in the mirror?” Mirror? There was no time spent looking at myself in any mirror, let alone looking for discolouration or dimpling! I did check my breasts regularly in the shower, but only for lumps.

Usually, the routine at home was to shower and dash back into the bedroom stark naked to save taking the wet towel back to the bathroom. ”The landing streak,” I call it in our house. More often than not, the heating wasn’t on, so it was pretty chilly. There was no time spent peering at breasts in a mirror.

The nurse in mid-blue looked straight at me and said they were going to do both a mammogram and an ultrasound that afternoon and that in her professional opinion, she was, or rather I was, looking at breast cancer.

THE MAMMOGRAM

It was an odd feeling sitting there in the Breast Care Clinic. I had gone on my own. The nurses and receptionists were all friendly; there were posters and thank you cards pinned to the walls and business cards you could take. There were adverts for support groups and leaflets about where to get the best wigs too. It was all a bit overwhelming.

Had I got cancer?

I fiddled with my fingers. Oh my goodness, my nails were yellow! How come I hadn’t noticed? Was this a sign of cancer? The worry of my nails passed the short time spent waiting and thankfully as my name was called, I realised I had peeled a large orange earlier.

Contrary to popular belief a mammogram isn’t a form of sexting; it wasn’t sending topless pictures via social media! At 48 I was too young to have been summoned for my well-woman check, so this was my first experience of this machine. I had heard a lot about it, and I was intrigued as to how it all worked. In Europe, women over 40 are offered a mammogram. In England, it is the age of 50.

I am very sure, however, that the inventor of the mammogram was male. You are supposed to put your breast on a platform which then turns into a vice – trapping your breast between two heavy metal plates and then you are supposed to hold very still.

Well, I put one of my breasts on the platform. There was a very unladylike slap sound as if a piece of meat had been thrown onto the counter. I did wonder then how those women less well endowed coped. How could they lay their wares on the slab?

All was well until the cold vice-like machine closed its jaws onto me. I honestly thought I would pop or burst or end up with a pancake. “Stay very still,” said the radiographer in white.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

I tried to gauge the look of the lady in white. Did she look worried? Had she seen something on the screen? I was given my clothes and told not to redress but to nip to the room across the corridor. She was not allowed to reveal any information.

You will read from now on that I recount tales from the past whenever I mention a keyword or subject. At times the tales may seem a bit random, but they make sense to me in this order and have occurred to me as I’ve reached certain points on my journey. I promise I will not leave anyone lingering about what has happened to me – and this journey will have a beginning, middle and an end that will give this book a structure. So please bear with me as I venture back into my childhood and teenage years and then through my university years into adulthood.

The reason for this is that my cancer diagnosis has put everything into perspective. I’m beginning to know now what is important and what isn’t. My real friends are starting to rally round and time spent with my family is precious.

It’s also all about living for the future and not dwelling on the past.

When you think that there may not be a future, you learn to value it more. You want it so badly, and the only thing you can do is live every day as though it was your last. It does sound like one big cliché, but it’s true. It makes so much sense.

I’m a historian. I love the past, but I know that I can never go back (of course, I’m not Dr Who!) but it’s nice to think back on stories and tales as they have made me who I am today. I have perhaps learnt from my mistakes or not as the case may be.

Remembering the past has helped me realise what I value the most. Sometimes I look too hard for the story to be funny and it’s hard to recreate the time place and atmosphere for someone who wasn’t there, but I’ve tried my best, and I hope you can imagine me talking or playing the role that I do.

I wanted to share these memories as a record of my life for my children and my friends- my legacy, perhaps a primary source for the future, except I am careful not to mention politics or name names in this book where possible.

THE CORRIDOR

As a teenager, many a secondary school trip involved dodging the teachers on patrol of the corridors at night-time and running across the corridors into each other’s rooms. Each year group had a different bedtime, and the challenge was to defy it as much as possible. On one music trip, we smuggled one of the older boys into our girls’ room because he was a good singer and we wanted him to sing to us. He was quite a willing ‘kidnappee’, but every time there were room inspections we had to find a different place to hide him! It seemed unfair that the year above could stay up half an hour longer, (similarly the older sibling has a later bedtime).

The ‘Corridor’ also seemed to be an excellent analogy for this book of my cancer journey. There is an obvious direction and way forward, but lots of doors or tangents on the way to open and to find out what went on in that room or on that occasion. Some doors remain firmly shut, bolted and locked, never to be opened and for only me to know what is in that room.

Some doors are just pushed shut and can be opened with a key or a link, and some are left ajar to step in and briefly have a look. The last few doors have the sign ‘Do not disturb’ on but can always be opened later when the time is right.

THE ULTRASOUND

I was shown to a bed of familiar blue paper towel by a nurse in mid-blue and told to lie on the slab.

I was amazed – yet pleasantly surprised by the hot gel being squirted on me. The last time I had an ultrasound and had gel on me, I was around 30 weeks pregnant and bursting for a wee, having drunk a bath full of water. The gel on that occasion and all other previous occasions were most memorably cold. That feeling of bursting at the seams was so uncomfortable, and yet while you were at your fullest, a nurse would press down on your bladder, and you were supposed to remain calm and still. It was an uncomfortable experience.

PROBABLY, MOST LIKELY

A nurse in navy came into the room to do the ultrasound and after some sliding around with the probe, said it was 90% likely that I had cancer. The 10% margin of error was for a possible infection that would show up in the same manner, and the only way of finding out was to do a biopsy then and there on breast tissue and the lymph nodes.

I was remarkably calm, or so I thought. There were no tears. It was all a bit surreal. There was a whole rainbow of nurses in the room including a new one in sea-green. I hadn’t gone with a friend, and a part of me wished a friend was now right there with me.

I wiped the slime off me and began lacing up my boots. I hadn’t apologised for the two odd socks that I had shown, and as I covered my Kermit the Frog sock with my boot, it was I who felt like a bit of a Muppet.

THE WAIT

I had to wait a week for the results.

Although only a week, the days passed so slowly. In this day and age of instant gratification, I was guilty of not being able to wait for long. Everything is geared around to make life simpler and quicker. There are apps available to ease the burden of waiting; food delivery, paying bills and even dating. I think I was used to getting things straight...