Remission sounds like you’re just waiting for it to come back. I only say I’m in remission if I’m milking someone for sympathy, hehehe. But, technically, my cancer is in remission. I’m in remission. In 19 months, if nothing changes, I’ll be officially cured.
One of my oncologists, a spunky young Vietnamese-Australian, accidentally used the word ‘cured’ a few months ago. I’d asked him what he liked about the job and he’d replied that it was great to be in a research-intense area that was in constant development and change (‘not like gynaecology’, he said). He told me he liked dealing with ‘people who are cured like you’. Cured. I froze when he used that word. I felt clear and still, like a TV that’s been staticky for ages and is suddenly fixed.
I knew that his more experienced superiors would never have made such a slip. Because until five years have passed I’m only in remission. At half a decade ‘cured’ kicks in. Five years is the magic marker: five years cancer-free gives me the same statistical chance of another cancer happening as anyone else my age. The first two years post-diagnosis are the most dangerous for recurrence. But some women find a growth in lungs or liver three, or four, or four and a half years after their breast cancer has been treated.
This was taken mid-chemo, about August of 2006, before I lost my eyebrows and eyelashes.
Richard and I were on the Marrickville 423 bus last night coming home from a quick eggplant curry at Kammadhenu. A couple of real oldies were in the front seat. He had pure-white neatly trimmed hair and was terribly bent over and slow. She was tiny and spry with hands twisted into arthritic forms hard as branches. As they struggled down the stairs of the bus & turned stiffly to thank the young driver I whispered to Richard
‘I want to get that old’.
‘You will’ he said ‘with your genes’.
And I nearly said ‘but what about with my cancer?’ but I didn’t.
My genes are pretty good: my Nannas are both still alive with all their marbles, one is 89 the other is 90. My mother, in her 60s, is in just about perfect health. Perhaps the cancer was a blip — caused by plastic containers or diesel fumes or a virus or just bad luck — in an otherwise blessedly healthy body.
Anyway, enough blah blah, on to the purpose of this post: ten things I love/hate about my cancer.
1. I love that it helped me cull half a dozen of what my Nanna would call ‘fairweather friends’. Bye bye fuckers, you know who you are.
2. I hate that the tamoxifen makes me grow uterine polyps that have to be scraped out every 18 months or so, although I love the general anaesthetics, especially the pre-ops. One anaesthetist, a big rich-sounding white South African, said as he injected me ‘This will feel like a glass of white wine on a Summer’s day in the South of France’. It was true.
3. I love that the tamoxifen is wondrously blocking that pesky oestrogen from feeding more cancer.
4. I hate the panic that sets in — like I’ve swallowed concrete — whenever I think I feel a new lump, get breathless, lose weight (without trying to) or have a pain in the small of my back.
5. I love that my true women friends came to the party while I was having treatment. Sitting for hours with me in the Royal Prince Alfred chemo ward (Deborah & Tracy you stars); buying brandy and holding my hair out of the way while I was vomiting (Zoe); madly offering to pay for limos to and from the chemo treatments (Lesley you treasure), and flying from London just to Be With (Julia).
6. I love/hate that some people are a bit scared of me now.
7. I hate that I’ve lost my sense of being invulnerable — I’m now permanently aware that life is a series of suspensions of disbelief around the fact that we’ll all be dead rather soon.
8. I love that occasionally I forget about point seven, above, and experience a glorious feeling of lightness.
9. I hate that this might happen to my daughter. This point was very hard to write. It’s actually the unmentionable.
10. I love that I’m still here because none of the alternatives, from oblivion to golden angels, are really my cup of tea.
