Tag: blogger

Publish hide and apologise

…there was mention of MOTH holding the clippers still and me just twirling round in the chair.

Well, hi there. It’s been a while, I know. I’m going to start with two apologies: firstly, to everyone who sent me such lovely messages after my last blog. I am sorry I haven’t responded individually but I think I may have gone a little early on talking about things and ended up heading into a low mood for a while. I also have this dreadful affliction whereby I am a writer, who wants to produce things that people read, but am also, intensely, an introvert and am terrified of attention. This means, every time I press publish I effectively run and hide under a duvet for a while. (Currently, this is actually true.)

The second apology I want to make is to those to who I promised I wouldn’t talk too much about my cancer. I think I am going to go back on this. Sorry. Why? Because, as mentioned briefly in my previous blog, this is actually happening to me, I can’t ignore it and it would seem disingenuous to write about my life and not include it. But, also, because I have had so many lovely people say that they do find it helpful and insightful.

I will, however, keep some of the more ‘intense’ details for a later piece of writing. I am considering a book. Quite frankly, this is my second time doing this so I may as well try and do something useful with it. I am keeping a diary of my more, raw and immediate thoughts and feelings, and to give a sneak peek, I have just written this:

It occurred to me yesterday, when I was at the hospital getting bloods done and looking around at the others there, that one of the reasons I hate the bald/turban etc look is that it makes us cancer patients look entirely homogenous. Especially as when our eyesight gets bad we have our glasses on too and due to the intense bloating, we all resort to comfortable clothes And now, with masks as well, there is even less of us to see as individual people. We end up as pink, shiny, bespectacled, baggy sameness. Eugh! I had hoped to style my way through it this time, but I am heading the inevitable way. 

From this, you may well deduce that yes, it is the time of the hair disappearance. It has been more gradual this time but there has been significantly enough sloshing around the shower to make me realise – it was time! MOTH obliged with the hair clippers. I did cry. Of course I did. It took three years to grow my hair back to how I felt I wanted it. But, after the tears and with some Dave Brubeck playing we buzzed me down. As I was sitting on the office swivel chair dragged into the bathroom and with a towel draped round my neck, there was mention of MOTH holding the clippers still and me just twirling round in the chair. We didn’t do this but at least we had reached joking point.

So, to give a brief update. yesterday, I had number three of twelve weekly chemotherapies. It is a different treatment plan to last time so I am still getting used to how I am reacting. It is not fun. I am not having fun, but fun was not expected. But I have at least managed to get back to my positive mindset which eluded me for a while longer this time. So don’t worry, my blogs won’t be downbeat.

I am excitedly awaiting the delivery of some oversized loungewear today to accommodate the ballooning which happens as a by-product of some of the drugs. I have already purchased a cape-style coat (those close to me know how much I love a cape in all forms, I’m thinking I need a full on cloak next), however this was for practical reasons. I have had a picc line put into my arm as my veins are still too damaged from my last round of chemotherapies to have a cannula inserted on a weekly basis. (If you are squeamish, don’t look up picc lines. If you want gory details, do ask me 😉 ) But, I found that the bulk of the picc line and its dressings wouldn’t fit into the sleeves of any of my normal coats and with the weather now decidedly cold – I needed something. So a cape coat it was. It is yet another of the many, many extra things you don’t know you’ll need to think about when having cancer treatment, that clothing plays a larger part than you would imagine: hats, accommodating coats, baggy clothes (for when you can no longer do your trousers up), scarves, gloves to hold hand heaters in place before cannulation, eyebrow drawing on kits (we may need another full blog about me learning how to do make-up!), picc line covers, picc line shower covers… it’s an expensive business this cancer, add in parking and petrol for every appointment and, well, it’s best not to think about it.

But, regardless of all this I feel lucky. Lucky because I have MOTH the loveliest most supportive man on earth. I have an incredible family and the best of friends. I have you lovely lot, the cats of course and I am lucky because the NHS are simply more marvellous than I have words to express. I have also increased my cape collection.

Have you tried turning her off and on again. Again.

It would appear that the attempt to restore me to factory settings, three years ago, didn’t work and the genetic malware I inherited, although largely cleaned up, managed to leave a trace of virus behind. I honestly don’t know why I’m using a tech analogy, I am terrible with technology, but you get the gist, or if you don’t, it is this: I have cancer again. 

It is the same as before, just in a different place, ergo breast cancer but currently residing in my lymph nodes. I found out three days ago – it has not been a fun week! 

MOTH and I tried to think of an analogy for this on our way home from the hospital on the afternoon of getting the results after being asked by a couple of people, how it could be breast cancer, but not in breast tissue. Halfway home in the dark and as the rain started to fall, MOTH came up with this: 

Last time I had a digestive biscuit (breast cancer) and dropped crumbs all over the place. Most of these crumbs (cells) got hoovered up (by chemo and surgery) but there was one of those annoying tiny, crumbs you can barely see and that you just don’t know about until it gets inside your top and really starts to scratch, left. Once the hoover (chemo) had stopped, this crumb that had previously travelled undetected to my lymph nodes could go about its business. Here it did not become a chocolate chip cookie (a different type of cancer) but another digestive biscuit – just in a different place.

I blogged before about having cancer primarily because I wanted to reassure people that I was still the same and that it was okay to talk to me and be in contact just as normal and that to shy away from people with cancer because it is hard to know what to say or how to act, merely compounds the difficult time they are going through.

With the dreadful year we have all had and are still having with this blinking pandemic, I was in two minds whether to talk about all this or whether it was just too much for people to take, on top of everything else. To this end, and it being the age we are in, I put out a light twitter poll with the options being:

Yes, shoot the breeze about it, it is useful or

Fingers in ears, I don’t want to hear about it. 

The outcome was everyone bar one, said go for it. But it got me considering for a few days. I couldn’t stop thinking about that one person who emphatically said no; but this is the conclusion I have come to:

I completely understand not wanting to hear anything more about negative subjects – completely and wholly and if they want to put their fingers in their ears I say do, do what you need to. But the thing is this: I don’t have that luxury. I simply cannot decide to put my fingers in my ears and ignore it. ‘Okay then’, some might say, ‘but just because you have to acknowledge it, does it mean you have to write about it?’ ‘Good point’, I may counter and yet, ‘yes.’ For this simple reason; when I write, it is about things in my life that I have done, thought about, discovered, learned and experienced and although technically it is possible to continue to do so without mentioning cancer, it would be rather disingenuous. This is going to be a huge part of my life for many months and to write blithely without mentioning the elephant* in the room, would feel wrong somehow. *I always think elephants get a bad wrap with this phrase.

So then perhaps a compromise, as it is I don’t want to be Cancer Jenny I will just be Jenny who happens to have cancer for a while. So, apart from this piece, my blogs will not be about cancer, but in the usual format of all the things I mentioned above which will just happen to be experienced by me as I go through cancer treatment and therefore, the odd mention here and there is bound to come up.

Instead, this time, I am going to keep a detailed diary of the C word and one that is perhaps truer than the cancer-light chat I put out last time and who knows, maybe at a later date there will be a more full piece of writing to read or ignore as you please.

For those who wish to know, I see the oncologist next week to find out when treatment will start. It will be chemotherapy, surgery and radiotherapy. I am more than bloody furious and sad that it has taken three years to grow my hair back to how I like it and now I will lose it again.

I am okay. Well, I have cancer – but you know what I mean. 

So that is my one and only cancer-dedicated blog this time. As it will be part of my life for a while though, it will appear in my writing on occasion, but not as the main character. If you can’t face reading about it, that is completely fine but please try to remember that by ignoring such things, you are ignoring the person having to go through them because they can’t separate themselves from it.

Everyone take care of yourself and be kind to others. It’s weird out there, but we’ll all get through.