The Build Up

You can’t imagine how it’s going to feel, but you’re pretty sure it’s awful. After all, you own a TV and you’ve seen grainy pictures of bald women in close up on the front page of tabloid newspapers at the garage. Everybody you know is related to/knows/met/heard about someone who had a terrible time of it. Their hair never came back the same - “it’s curly and

ginger now, used to be straight and black. I mean it might not happen to you, but…”. The hint is always there, it might not but it might, and how awful that would be. I heard stories like this for weeks, and wanly I tried to explain that those things were rare, that there were more possible side effects than grains of sand on the beach. That’s how it felt at least. I’m not being critical, because deep down, folk are trying to help, they’re trying to relate to you and trying their best. 

You wait for it, and it seems to take forever to arrive, you’re recovering and this waiting is for good reason, but I know for me, that it felt interminable then. I was a spring, coiled and waiting for the fight, I wanted to get on with it. Gradually my hair got shorter as I headed towards that first session when I knew (the oncologist told me so) that it would fall out. I entertained myself with different colours and cuts, things which I wouldn’t have got away with in my usual classroom workplace, but which were ok now in the “anything goes if it’s what you need to do” world of cancer treatment. Despite the distractions, I wanted to know more. Having all that time isn’t helpful because it gives you the chance to be tempted into the waiting room of Dr Google. Just don’t. Please. 

People are keen to talk about food. That’s a safe, yet helpful topic - right? “I know a great recipe that my Nanna ate for every meal for 10000 weeks while she had chemo. She loved it, because it was bland and she didn’t need to chew it much.” Truly inspirational. I mean come on, look at me, I work hard to maintain this physique, you don’t look like this without eating a lot of cake. I love food, I didn’t want that joy taking away too. Expect to hear a lot about the wonder food which is frozen pineapple. Now, I admit it is tasty, and helpful when your mouth is sore; but once you know about it, well, you know. What will you eat? You mustn’t lose weight. Let me tell you, if you follow the Michelle Holding “I’ll do exactly as I wish and gorge myself on sympathy cake” method, you definitely won’t starve. Put on weight that’s a little tricky to shift, yes maybe, but not starve. I didn’t know that then and I listened to all the advice, about eating organic only, buying and trying the best you can, eating whatever you want, eating anything in moderation. I ended up spinning round, unsure with where to go. My spring was wound and coiled that little bit tighter. 

Everyone was very keen for me to be careful. I’m still not entirely sure what that means, but I thought I should mention it. 

The waiting continued, there were appointments to go to, but my thirst for knowledge about what chemotherapy was going to be like wasn’t sated. I learnt that for me, there were to be six sessions, three with one kind of chemotherapy and three of another. They would work broadly in similar ways but they would, of course, have different possible side effects. I was somewhat relaxed about this, and my oncologist asked me why I seemed so calm. I explained about understanding about the intravenous nature, of attending my Mum’s sessions five years earlier and feeling relatively well educated about the whole thing. I mean, I already knew about frozen pineapple…She was keen to explain that the field of cancer research is so wonderfully busy, that the drugs that I had would be bette and more targeted than those that my mum had endured the time before. This was a mixed blessing, my calm came from thinking that I knew how this was going to happen, but if it would be different, but less bad, surely that was a good thing? I decided that it was, as the spring didn’t have much coil left. 

The oncologist was keen for me to stay active, the advice being that the more gently active that you can be, the better you will deal with the treatment. If you can attend work, you should, I was advised. If you feel like you can go into work, and then when you get there, you only feel able to staple papers together, that’s what you should do. If you feel you need to go home early, your employer should let you. I listened and nodded. Finally the important question - what do you do for work? I’m a secondary school teacher. You can’t go there - too germy was the verdict. I was to stay gently active in other ways, so more music, more socialising. No “proper” work. I carried on waiting.

God bless germy children!