2020: We don't know what to do with myself

Covid, long covid, a 'mass', tests, a cancer diagnosis on the telephone

Locked down in early April: I work with a team to create films to help families teach children to read at home; I run meetings on zoom and write copy for the website at 2 am; I plant seeds with Sarah.

One day, my voice becomes hoarse and I am weary; we decide I probably have the virus. We watch desperate images on the news of patients lying in tilted hospital beds, on their stomachs. And one afternoon, whilst listening to birdsong, to the non-noise of planes, to ambulance sirens every 30 then 15 minutes, I collapse in our bedroom. My body seems to be sinking, draining, reducing to essential operative mode only and perhaps will stop functioning. I call to Sarah. She calls 999.

Within ten minutes, two hazmat suits with paramedics inside appear. In our actual bedroom. I am reminded in my detached and terrified mind of the film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Slumped on my chair; vital signs are all in the normal range. I feel decidedly outside my normal range. They record ‘coronavirus’ on the form and suggest vitamin C, rest and water. I take vitamin C, rest as much as a productive person who is the director of a company feels they can and drink water when Sarah reminds or nags me.

After ten days or so, I seem to have recovered. Abnormal service resumes.

By the beginning of July, long covid is mentioned in the press; for some people covid is taking its sweet time to pass. My body feels unfamiliar. All is not well. There is a hazy return to the draining feeling. Internal processes that have served me effortlessly and magically for 52 years, are failing. Is it my nervous system? Are the normal messages not getting from the brain to the organs? Why am I chilled in my bones on a summer’s day? Why can I not regulate my breathing? Weariness, tiredness are not adequate descriptions. One day, Sarah and I go for a walk with a picnic and I stop to sleep under a tree after twenty minutes. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, I feel like this is a slow, quiet death.

My GP responds with surprising speed in this, the national health service’s otherworldly, disaster movie crisis. I am sent for a blood test and a chest x-ray; my first of many solo visits to hospital. He calls me the same day. The blood tests are normal. There is a mass on my left lung. I am sitting on the doorstep where so many of us spent so much time during 2020; chatting, clapping, bashing saucepans. I dare to ask; could it be cancer? Yes, yes it could. Yes, it could be cancer.

And suddenly in the middle of our beautiful garden, there is a landslide, a sinkhole. The world as we know it has tipped down to the dark murk beneath. The love-in-a-mists, the sweet peas, cranesbill and herbs all twist and dance around the deep, devastating cancer crater. Sarah and I peer in, horrified.

Surely this ‘mass’ is related to covid 19? I am a non-smoker. I am a vegetarian for god’s sake. I genuinely drink one or two units of alcohol a week. Don’t be ridiculous. According to many doctors that we speak to in the months ahead, in all likelihood my recurring and worsening symptoms are covid’s unwelcome friend, ‘long’. My wee tumour is unlikely to have caused this severity of response. If it wasn’t for covid, we may not have found the tumour. In a perverse turn of events, covid may have saved my life.

I stop working. I stop gardening. Sarah and I decamp to the seaside in Kent to stay at a friend’s diddy dwelling right on the beach. We load up the car with yoga mats and blocks, powdered green juice (who knew this was a thing?), supplements, blankets for chilly Mel. One day, drive to hospital for another scan; the next, play a board game and make like we are thinking of this, only this. I probably sob and weep. So, possibly, does Sarah. I really can’t recall.

We just don’t know what to do with myself.

At times, we are genuinely playful. We learn the names of all the Shakespeare plays from A to Z and send a video to our dear friend Nick of us doing so, as we sit on the beach laughing, giggling and encouraging each other to remember another play beginning with ‘M’. All’s Well Most Certainly Does Not Appear to End Well. I can’t walk 100 metres down the beach but I can swim. When the tide is in, we wade out and oh how it soothes, holds and alleviates the feeling of not-ness that I have.

We wait for news. My medical history is taken over the phone whilst I look at the grey sea. The sea is my friend; a steady, calm witness. I have not seen a single doctor in person. The phone rings when we are back in London. We are told that yes, yes in fact I have a three centimetre malign tumour in my left lung. I will need surgery soon. Can I do the seventh of September? As casual as a dinner invite. I ask if perhaps we could do the eighth. After all, the seventh is my birthday. And, whilst this whole experience is surely not actually happening to me at all, I would like to be with my family and eat cake on that day.

About lung cancer

Anyone can develop lung cancer. Men and women, young and old, smokers and non-smokers. Be aware of lung cancer signs and symptoms. It is the most common cause of cancer death for men and women.

An early lung cancer diagnosis can make a big difference.

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