A Christmas tale: in sickness and in health

Inspired by re-reading Claire Keegan's miracle of a novella 'Small Things Like These'

Hello friends,

With heartfelt thanks to the 338 people who have subscribed since I started writing about living with lung cancer in June. Cancer can be lonely. I feel such connection and gratitude when I see a new subscriber, a like or a comment on my posts. Thank you for reading my ramblings.

So, as it is nearly Christmas, I had a play with writing a story. It’s probably not finished but it was fun to create. Any resemblance to living persons is intentional.

I wish each of you moments of joy, peace and fun this week.

May your bodies be as healthy as they are able, may your spirits be strong.

With love,

Mel

A Christmas tale: in sickness and in health

The woman slouches on the sofa, covered in two blankets. It is the winter solstice and five days before the great longed-for Christmas day. She looks over at the Christmas tree decorated by her wife. Five hours of oh-so-patient, careful twining and winding of six sets of lights. Merry bunches of eucalyptus and bright red berries tied with green velvet bows hang from the opened double doors and from above the mantelpiece mirror. Multi-coloured lights threaded through a houseplant that usually conjure the joys of childhood Christmases catch her eye. The sparkle is, however, in the room only.

The woman has a nasty winter bug. In the cancer upside-down world she inhabits, it is stage 4 flu, a terminal cold. She feels undone by the nausea, the aches, the debilitation. She is resentful, angry, tearful. This is worse than cancer, she decides. My racing heart is probably a reaction to the wonder drug I take to suppress my tiny tumours. I will most likely have a heart attack before the end of the next episode of Wolf Hall. She wonders if her immune system is so compromised that she will die of this advanced influenza.

Her wife, we will call her Sarah as that is her name, is a kind, patient matron. She knows her dear, sick person wants to dash around their home sprinkling magic, baking and readying for the festive day. She knows she cannot bear to be a patient. And she is worried that her love is not wearing her gold, glittery headband. An annual December feature.

The woman knows she lacks perspective on her lack of perspective. She remembers it is unhelpfully exactly four years since her annihilating, pandemic chemotherapy.

She pictures herself being dropped off on the spookily quiet side street next to the hospital. The person who had a career, who was go, go, go, who smiled and laughed, who had friends and family stands on the pavement with Sarah. They both watch the understudy self as she departs the woman’s body and with shoulders down, wipes away her tears, adjusts her mask and enters the revolving door to hell. The woman still does not understand the understudy. How did she learn the lines? She cannot bring the two selves together. The understudy is not her. She does not even look like me, she thinks. She is so very sad. Broken. Alone. Terrified. And she is always wearing tracksuit bottoms.

Through the revolving door she meets the distressing arrival ritual; the hand sanitiser and a security guard to make sure patients use it. Even now, the woman has deja-whiff regularly. Times when she is elastic banded back to the dark hospital days. The antiseptic alcohol smell marked the end of herself. If Sarah had been there, she thinks, I would have buried my nose in her neck. But she wasn't. She wasn’t there. My nose had nowhere to turn.

One miserable day, two years later, the consultant finds a fresh constellation of tiny nodules in both lungs and the woman knows she has to find a new hospital. She hasn’t seen his face without a mask, hasn't seen him smile. Staff are on their knees. Both she and Sarah avoid this beautiful part of London now. Too much pain in the bricks. Too many tears and terrifying trips. Too many times when Sarah stood outside the castle walls in the cold, praying her wife was okay. Not knowing how long until she could hold her. How much pain the carers, the loved ones of us cancery folk endure, the woman sighs.

So for Cancer 2; the Recurrence, they relocate to a different London hospital. Remarkably, the cancer centre is built on the site of the old maternity wards. The very street, the very redbrick building where the woman’s first precious baby was born 32 years ago. Surely, she hopes, a good omen.

She attends each appointment as a person, not a patient, with her trusted, loving soulmate powerfully at her side. They are informed now and wise. They know the game. The woman is no longer a broken, sick, shocked shell of a human. No longer in crisis. After all, the nodules are UFOs; unidentified floating objects thinks the woman. They are too small to biopsy. So, every six months, they meet the remarkable Professor of Thoracic Medicine to review the state of affairs. To find out how the slow-growing, micro astral beings in her lungs are behaving.

Over the months, she and Sarah develop hospital rituals. They wear their smartest clothes, make-up even. They smile, ask questions. The woman uses her superpower, charming persistence. She is now a professional in the business of illness and has two favourite questions. What would you recommend if I were your wife, your sister, your mother? What might I have access to if money were no object?

Thankfully, the professor in charge of her care is the creme de la creme. He shows himself to be a compassionate, experienced expert. The woman appreciates his lack of ego. Sarah and I are fortunate, she often thinks, he is clear, thorough and honest. And he smiles. After two years of visits, the radiologist in the team agrees to biopsy the largest nodule. It is still tiny, only 7mm. It’s risky, she explains to the couple, we might not get a successful sample. If they do and cancer is confirmed, the woman can start the daily medication that will reduce the tumours. They may even disappear completely. For a while.

The woman weeps in the arms of her wife. The wife weeps in the arms of the woman. And they both realise they have been living in a half-place. They had both been imagining that maybe she doesn’t have cancer at all. The woman trembles at the thought of a medical procedure, of lying on a hospital bed, of being done to. She remembers the loneliness, the horror, the hell of hospital during the pandemic.

I am ready to do this, she tells Sarah. I am ready to know.

Over the days and weeks before the procedure, the two discuss all the scenarios. They talk about the horror of the past and how this is a new hospital, a new situation, a new experience. How Sarah will be at her side.

And the day comes. The consultant radiologist’s name is Asia. She sits opposite them with kind, attentive eyes, with clear words to describe what will happen to the woman. She gives the gift of time, none of her words are rushed. The two women listen and ask questions. They know there is a risk of the lung collapsing, of an air leak in the balloon that is the lung. And they trust that Doctor Asia knows exactly what to do. The woman realises she feels a deep sense of faith in her. The kindness and clarity have created a triangle of trust that invisibly connects these three women. The woman is not weeping. The wife leaks a few tears and kisses the woman goodbye.

And into the scanning room she goes. She lies on her front and all is stillness. In and out of the machine she slides as the doctor slowly, so slowly releases tiny amounts of anaesthesia into the skin, the muscle, the nerves, the lung wall and deeper and deeper she goes with the needle to locate the tiny astral being.

How deep too the woman digs and wondrously what reserves of strength she finds within. Like most women she knows what it means to endure. And although she is quite sure she has never reached a point of meditative peace, she finds now a mantra. Over and over, silently, slowly with utter stillness she repeats to herself; I am strong, I am courageous, I am in safe hands. Sixty minutes of accepting what is beyond her control.

At one stage, she finds herself smiling. She smiles to herself with the knowledge that her body is indeed remarkable. That this moment is almost verging on the spiritual.

And the woman realises she and the doctor are in concert. They are dancing together. Each equally important to the success of the event. The woman giving the doctor exactly the right conditions to carry out her work. The doctor giving the woman her skill, her steady hands, her patience. She feels a feminine intelligence and intuition fill the harsh, clinical room.

After the procedure, sore and exhausted the woman shakes and is cold to her bones and tells the doctor, I was in a meditative state. And the consultant says, yes, I could tell and it showed great strength of character. The woman feels proud of herself, of her body. She knows it came from fear. And she found a way to grab the fear and settle it, soothe it. Afterwards, she tells Sarah, I went to a place of survival, of silence, stillness, safety.

And the woman thinks back to this moment, as she lies on the sofa during the winter solstice with flu. Each thing, each experience passes. And soon it will be Christmas. And we may not have homemade mince pies, the gravy may not include my famous broth. I may need to let people help me. My wife and family may need to let me tell them what to do. But we will laugh, we will delight in my little granddaughter, we will be merry. We will celebrate our love.

For I am strong. I am courageous. I am in safe hands.

Note: With credit to the poet Michael Rosen for coining the phrase ‘deja-whiff’ in the poem ‘Every Now and Then’ from his collection ‘The Advantages of Nearly Dying’.

Cancer research

Please champion cancer research. One in two of us will be diagnosed in our lifetimes. Researchers create drugs and vaccines that give us longer, lovelier lives.

More about lung cancer research here:

Oncogene Cancer Research

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Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation