Part 5 - Finale

PART V

 I

While the menopause symptoms had started, I wasn’t getting hot flushes as unpleasantly as menopausal women seem to. It was a prickly heat, just a sudden sweat – particularly a sweaty head – which would last a few minutes and then pass. So I was constantly taking jumpers on and off as the heat rose and fell. But I didn’t get facial flushes so all in all it probably wasn’t too bad.

The final session approached. I went for my last pre chemo blood test and the nurse hugged me, saying it was nice to see people get to the end. I was touched, particularly given that her job is doing pre-chemo bloods, so she must see this all the time. But still it cheered her. One lady who was post chemo complimented me on embracing the bald look, saying she had done exactly the same. By all accounts she had also taken control shaved her head and showed it off proudly. The ambassador movement could gain momentum!.

Even the consultant was excited about it being the final cycle and gave me strict instructions to stay out of hospital for the next 3 weeks. From now on the bloods and clinic appointments would move to 9 weekly rather than 3 weekly. This was progress. After that I would have annual mammograms for 10 years, then 2 yearly for 5 years and then onto normal screening.

And then the morning of the last session arrived. I was emotional. In October this day had seemed so far in the future, so unobtainable. Now here it was, and it had come round remarkably quickly.

I met again the lady I had sat next to on my last session. This was also her last cycle, but she still had to go through surgery. She also praised be for being brave enough to show my head and I was delighted to see that once on the ward, she removed her head scarf and sat there in the glory of her baldness, quite happily. The fight back was growing.

The final session was uneventful. I was still not taking the sickness pills, mainly to avoid the side effect of extra tiredness. This was partly because I wanted to be awake for the Style Yourself Confident session I had booked in straight after the chemo finished. There were 2 other breast cancer ladies in the group. One was about to start Herceptin and T on cycle 4, having completed 3 rounds of FEC. The other had just had her first FEC. We were all mastectomised and all of a similar age. We chatted for ages, delighted to meet other people in our age group. The lady who was half way through had an approach very like mine. She was still working. She had shaved her hair off and wandered around bald and proud. She had so far suffered considerably less than I had from side effects, and I had been pretty lucky. Her husband, on a military posting 4,000 miles away felt aggrieved that he had come back to visit her on false pretences as she was clearly perfectly ok.

We gave comfort to the lady who had just started – and she was amazed at our brazen bald headedness, and whether this was a problem to us at all. We both shrugged and said, we’re being treated for cancer. People can just deal with it. I feel the bald head ambassador unit growing in strength by the day.

In my experience, there were no issues. I went bald headed on the train commute to London. No one commented. No one looked. No one stared (or certainly not that I was aware of). But also, no one offered me a seat!

In the absence of sickness pills, I felt much more alert after the final cycle. Perhaps it was the psychological effect of knowing that it was over. After a couple of days there was a faint murmuring of itching starting and my thumbnail – which had lifted quite considerably – was clinging on by a thread. But I didn’t mind. This was the last time. I could almost enjoy the side effects as a final reminder of what I had seen off. I think the chemo knew this was its last chance to hurt me. While not as bad as Cycle 4, it was worse than the previous cycle. The days of being off colour lingered. This was its final hurrah, and it intended to make the most of it.

This did raise the query of when I could consider myself cured. As my cancer was so beautifully contained and had not given any indication of having spread, I viewed myself as cancer free after the mastectomy. So really, I only knowing had it for about 4 weeks. The chemotherapy was precautionary mopping up. But, just in case something unidentified had escaped, I suppose now I could call myself cured. But then of course the herceptin will go on until January 2015 to ensure my body deals appropriately with the HER2 protein in me.

Medically I need to live, without recurrence for 5 years to be formally signed off as cancer free. But statistics also talk about 15 year survival rates. This is rather subjective. At the age of 40 I fully expect to be alive in 15 years time. If I had got cancer at, say, 74, I would think 15 years was wishful thinking even if fully healthy.

All I could think about was that the worst was over. Just staying alive from now on was easy. My hair was starting to gently sprout and I wondered if I would miss the sight of my bald head. when we went out one weekend I told Steve that I could feel the wind in my hair. He looked at me and my bald head (with a smattering of small, wispy hairs) and laughed. My now sparse eyelashes and eyebrows had clung on just enough to keep my face looking like something I recognised.

In just over a week I will return to working from the office, permanently. In 5 weeks I will start a new job (yes you can have interviews and get a job offer while on chemo). And as I had been keeping up with work, keeping the routine going, this re-gaining my life wasn’t going to be a shock to the system. I wasn’t feeling the sudden loss of a cancer focused network and unfamiliar return to life before – knowing that it will never be like it was before. You cannot go through this and come out the other end unchanged. I am not the same person. I am better. I am more. I am alive.

II

I remember a story my father once told me. A man went to work. His train was hideously delayed. When he finally got in, his boss confronted him aggressively about an expensive mistake he’d made and he nearly got fired. Later that day his girlfriend dumped him. When he got home he spoke to his father about his terrible day. His father responded ‘my son, it will pass’. A few days later the son went into work. The sun was shining and trains were on time. On the journey he met a beautiful women and got her phone number. His boss offered him a promotion. That evening he went home and told his father about his amazing day. His father replied ‘my son, it will pass’. I have thought of this story many times over the past few months. And through the good times and bad, the ever present thought has been ‘it will pass’.

At no point during this ordeal has there been any point screaming at the sky and calling out ‘why me?’ The resounding answer can only be ‘why not?’

III

 One of the many cancer charities seems to regularly ask people to upload a follow-on statement to the prompt ‘oi, cancer…’. This tends to initiate cocky or aggressive responses, such as ‘oi cancer, I bet you’re afraid of the dark’ in reference to an upcoming moonwalk.

My response would be more muted – ‘oi, cancer. I respect you. I accept that I am mortal. I know that one day I must die, from something. But right now the music has stopped,  the lights are off and this tango is over’.