A surreal day at the cancer mothership

Double dating cancer style; silliness in the scanning room; flashbacks and friendship

My Sarah. Me. Sarah Li. Robin. March 2025, Bloomsbury, London

A huddle of lung cancernauts meet at a groovy restaurant near St Pancras station in London. The tables are full of sparkling lunch dates. Couples beam at one another, friends from the Midlands meet up to see a show after their falafel and organic white wine. We ten have a high table with stools. It feels special and fun and we order and natter about diagnoses, treatments and our stories. Some are new to this and shell shocked. Others of us have been around the cancer block. One of us, Sarah Li, tells the waiter that none of us can eat grapefruit. The waiter looks confused but takes the matter seriously and checks with the kitchen.

Later, as I am sorting the bill, she asks, are you all from the same family? No, I reply, why do you ask? Oh, just that none of you can eat grapefruit. Believe it or not, I say, we all have lung cancer and oddly grapefruit has a negative interaction with our drug. Isn’t that a crazy story for a jolly lunch? Wouldn’t it be wild if we were all ten from the same family? We laugh with her and I explain that the meet up is funded by a charity, EGFR Positive UK, who contribute to these events so we can offer each other mutual support and care. To help us feel less utterly alone.

Five minutes later, free teas and coffees arrive at our table. Such kindness, empathy and openness about cancer is heart lifting.

In the curious, dark world of cancer, remarkable gems sometimes glint in the rocks. One of my recent cancer jewels is Grapefruit Guard, Sarah Li. In fact, we are jewels to one another. A connection born as our minds, hearts, cells and creativity spark. A knowingness of one another’s trauma, an imagining of what is considered unimaginable. Words are unnecessary. We look at one another and we know. We share more than lung cancer. A sacred bond grows.

Our diaries are unsurprisingly full of medical appointments. Three-monthly blood tests and scans; six-monthly scans of the brain. Heart tests. Meetings with oncologists. These routine visits are far from mundane. Each one has the potential to change our lives forever. If the cancer is morphing or sets up camp in new parts of our bodies, visits escalate. The terror can be crippling. The gaps between each test are when we live most vividly, most freely. So, Sarah Li and I get overexcited when we realise our next brain scans are on the same day at our mothership, University College Hospital London. It feels like we’ve been invited to the same party.

We meet for an early double date cup of tea. Sarah’s partner Robin and her; my Sarah and me. We find this enormously funny. The cafe is a regular haunt for academics from the nearby university. Wooden tables. Intense conversations. Sarah Li and I are full of beans. How thrilling to have tea and giggle and chat like normal people. As if we don’t have lung cancer at all. It is possible we are mildly hysterical. My Sarah and Robin look on somewhat bemused as we become fizzier and fizzier and seem totally disinterested in going to our mutual appointments at the hospital. We continue to chat about creative projects as Robin quietly suggests Sarah Li might like to grab her coat and move in the vague direction of the hospital. She is still talking and laughing as he patiently guides her towards the door. Neither Sarah Li nor I want to go to the hospital at all, thank you very much. Hugs, good wishes, maybe see you later? Bye, love you!

My Sarah and I walk the short route we know so well. Past the building where my daughter was born 32 years ago. Past the bookshop where I often distract myself before appointments and buy children’s books for my granddaughter. We arrive at the Ear, Nose and Throat hospital where my brain scan is to take place. An unfamiliar building with fancy toilets and a decent cafe. Down we go to the scan department in the basement.

I am called into the room. I am as chatty with the nurse as if I’m at the hairdresser discussing holidays. A cannula needs inserting into a vein. A contrast dye will be added through this cannula to help highlight any dubious activity in my brain. I roll up my sleeve and the nurse proceeds to carefully find a vein on the delicate skin inside my elbow. He taps my arm firmly, repeatedly; he adds a tourniquet. He puts the needle in once, twice. But no blood appears. He apologies and tries my left arm. Then my right hand. Again, unsuccessful. We are both feeling flustered. I apologise on behalf of my veins. I seem to be growing blue and yellow bruises as we speak. I explain that this was often an issue when I was going through chemotherapy. I am beginning to feel anxious, panicked as flashes of what I endured reel behind my eyes. I am smiling still on the outside. I have built a robust, charming Mel for Medical Moments. Tears are pricking my eyes. He is apologising now. And his hands are shaking. We are a mutual emotional mess. Nurses work long hours and I imagine he has not yet had lunch.

I suggest I go back to the corridor, back to my Sarah and put my coat on and drink tea and warm up my body and we try again in 30 minutes. I explain that my friend Sarah Li is next and maybe they can do her scan first and try me again afterwards.

I go to my Sarah. Robin is there too so I keep my smile smiling and my Sarah gets me tea. She knows I am struggling and cuddles me and warms me up as her eyes widen at my bruised arms.

Back to the scanning room. Another nurse asks if she can try. She wonders if I would mind the delicate skin on the underside of my right wrist being used as we are running out of places. I had a traumatic experience during chemotherapy exactly there and I am not sure I can. She is kind and sweet and doesn’t want to hurt me. I am kind and sweet and don’t want to hurt her. So, we try the top of my hand again instead.

Again, no blood flows from my body to the cannula tube. I know I have blood in my veins and this has not happened to me for four years. What is going on? Irrationally, I begin to wonder if I have blood cancer. The two nurses decide to contact the team who do scan guided cannulisation. A relatively new procedure that will hopefully take place later today at the main hospital.

As I sit on the couch, Sarah Li appears having just had her brain scan. She is pale and dizzy looking. The nurse asks if I can hop off the chair as Sarah often faints when they take the cannula out. Yes, yes, of course! I smile at my friend and budge over. The nurse asks if Sarah would like Robin to come in. No, she says, it’s okay. Mel’s here. She can distract me and it won’t matter what she says because I won’t remember it.

They lie the chair flat for my beautiful friend Sarah and I crap on about who-knows-what. And suddenly her cannula is out and we are both laughing hysterically. We’ve lost any sense of how a patient behaves. We are laughing because I am traumatised that a cannula can’t be got in. She is traumatised that the cannula is coming out. And we laugh and laugh, our energy is sky high. We spin and bounce around the room with our joy and our relief that her scan is over and there is a solution hopefully for me. We laugh and say to the two nurses, who knew stage 4 lung cancer could be so much fun?

And suddenly, I realise I have never had this companionship, this sisterhood, this bonkersness in hospital. In five years, I have not had fun in hospital. And not one person in non-cancer land could know why we were so disturbed by the process or why we are now full of laughter and light and air and bubbles and silliness.

We link arms and giddily skip out of the room to our two co-pilots. They look on, amused. We are coats and scarves and arms and breathlessness and laughter and solidarity. We’re behaving like we’ve just seen a fabulous West End show.

My Sarah and I go for lunch while we wait for the next attempt. My laughter balloon deflates. We go to a favourite post-hospital lunch spot where the manager has a gorgeous grin. I once told him so and now we grin at each other every visit. Except this time, I am not grinning. I am sobbing. I cannot stop my tears, my sorrow. I am full of the freshly excavated memory of a terrible cancer ward day at my previous hospital. When I knew the chemotherapy line in my wrist was not in correctly. I knew. And nobody would listen. And I had no Sarah there to act as advocate. It was Covid days and staff were exhausted and traumatised too. And the next day, I was in the emergency ward as they suspected a drug leakage into my tissue. The needle was clearly not in correctly. And I was terrified.

The tears are unstoppable. I lower my cap over my eyes and I eat delicious food in between my sobs and my poor body doesn't know if it’s coming or going with the laughter, hysteria and tears. Release of trauma and pain I’ve been holding onto for years. Sorrow that Sarah Li and I have not in fact been to see Mamma Mia. That we have lung cancer. I am sad from my bruised arms to my soon-to-be scanned head, to my toes.

We buy cake to have later. I put on lipstick and we go to the main hospital. A technician has come after his shift to use the whizzy new technology. He finds a vein in seconds. I am only the second person he has used it on. He is pleased to have helped.

I left the house at half past nine this morning and return at six o’clock. I have had a double date. I have laughed and laughed and sobbed and sobbed. I nearly didn’t have a brain scan and then I did.

And I realise, I can do cancer more easily if I have a true cancer friend. And I do. And so does Sarah Li. We both have wonderful co-pilots. And we now also have fellow cancernauts. True buddies. The sharedness soothes and comforts as we navigate this strange oddysey. And it is everything.

About lung cancer in the United Kingdom

Lung cancer can affect any of us. Even those who have never smoked.

In 2022, 36,886 people were diagnosed with lung cancer.

Around 7000 are diagnosed with EGFR+ lung cancer each year. Oncogene-driven lung cancers - like ALK, EGFR, RET, ROS1, KRAS and others are often diagnosed in younger people who may have no detectable risk factors.

Results from a 2024 survey by the charity EGFR+ UK:

• 50% of those surveyed were under 60 at diagnosis

• 75% of patients are female

• 75% are diagnosed at stage 4

• 68% identify as ‘never smokers’.

EGFR Positive UK

Oncogene Cancer Research