Post Script - Recovery

Post Script - Recovery

I

(The above photographs are property of Brighton based artist, Jamie McCartney)

Regrowth is a funny thing. My eyelashes were growing in fits and starts – clumps of eyelashes at certain points along my eyelid, and large gaps in others. They had also forgotten which direction to grow in, and were an unruly huddle of tiny hairs, regularly tangling top and bottom eyelashes together.

My eyebrows had decided to start on the action, but again, grew haphazardly out of my face and some had to be pulled out purely on the basis of the direction they insisted on growing.

Despite having wanted my body to re-grow hair, the process had also taken me by surprise. I often got out of the shower and then, as I dried my legs, realised that I had completely forgotten to shave. If anything, I seemed to be hairier than before. Perhaps I had just forgotten. It had been 6 month since I last needed to shave. Or perhaps it was partly due to the reduced oestrogen levels from the chemo induce menopause. 

Having lost all 10 finger nails, they had now grown back to a point where it looked as though I had a serious nail biting problem. This was an improvement on the less pleasant empty nail bed look which I had been sporting, and which had bothered me. On the tube I held onto the poles in a way which hid my nails as I was embarrassed and ashamed of how they looked. I didn’t mind being bald. I didn’t mind having only one breast. It’s funny the things that bother us.

In fairness, I never had a completely empty nail bed. My body had been helpfully trying to grow new nails. However, the new nail was sprouting underneath the existing one, thereby pushing the existing one off. So when it came off, there was a couple of millimetres of new nail already well under way. What this process meant was that, before the old nail came off, it was curiously bulgy in the middle of my nail, where the new one was underneath. When they came off, this overlap area didn’t come away. Therefore, as the new nails grew, the minute they started to get to a length which might be useful, the edges split and crumbled. I could see the distinct line on them of where the old nail overlap area ended and the entirely new one began. It just seemed to take a long time for it to grow through. And it’s amazing how much you need nails. Newly added to my increasing list of things you take for granted when you have finger nails was removing splinters from your fingers.

With horror, I saw that the nail on one of my big toes had lifted. 3 months after chemo had finished. This seemed cruel and I hoped it wasn’t a sign that I would lose all my toes nails as well.

For Father’s Day we went round to my in laws. I’m not entirely sure how the conversation started, but my mother in law announced that some survey had found that half of all sports bras were useless. I put my hand over my absent left breast and said that I entirely agreed. I would even go so far as to say that half of all bras were useless.

I was becoming conscious that this time last year I had discovered the lump. The process of diagnosis had taken two or three weeks, and while Steve and I had been well aware of the news that was to come, I don’t recall the date on which I was told that I had cancer. Nor do I want to. I am happy in the knowledge that it was last year. I don’t want there to be anniversaries.

II

 

The continuing cycle of appointments went on. 3 weekly Herceptin injections, 9 weekly blood tests and consultant appointments, 3 monthly heart scan. It would soon be time for the first of my annual mammograms. On the plus side, this would now only take half the time.

 

My third heart scan had been a resounding success. With prompt efficiency she listened, looked and measured and announced my score of 73. Apparently the second one had dipped a bit – not enough to cause concern – but now I was scoring better than I did on the first one I had had. Perhaps my heart was building in strength now that I was back at the gym. Anyway, it was good news, and there was probably only one more scan due.

As I sat in the oncology day unit waiting room for another Herceptin injection I started to feel like a fraud.  I had hair again. It was short but certainly not anything which would make a member of the public think that anything was (or had recently) been wrong with me. I could feel myself getting emotional, watching the endless cycle of patients going in to be hooked up to their poison drips, the nerve jangling beep beep of the machines as they finished emptying their demon cure into people’s veins, the looks of hope and resignation on their faces. They had new pictures in the waiting room which seemed to tell a story. I’m not sure if they had been deliberately selected or if this was accidental. One was a painting of a girl on a skeleton bob, hurtling down an ice chute. Like the slightly out of control, downhill slide of a cancer patient. The other was a silhouette of a mountain against a deep blue sky, with a silhouetted figure standing on top, their arms raised about their head in a silent, proud cheer of achievement. Like when a cancer patient finishes treatment, and is well again.

I had been feeling low for a while and couldn’t explain it. Work held no interest – perhaps no job would. Maybe getting this illness had adjusted my priorities to such an extent that the pointlessness of work was hideously exposed. The pointless of almost everything. I struggled to seem cheerful but the crushing futility of it all was a heavy load, and it sapped the energy from me. Maybe it was the sudden lack of a focus point. There was no longer a disease to fight, a treatment to face up to and deal with.

In the demystifying chemo session we had before all this began the nurses warned that it could take 6 to 9 months before you got back to your old self. Maybe this was what they meant. I had been out of chemo for 5.5 months. So perhaps this was all completely normal.

My hair was getting thicker. Not much longer, but certainly thicker. Although when people saw me they would say that my hair was growing. Undoubtedly it was, but from where I stood – right underneath it – it didn’t feel like it was getting longer. But it was starting to curl. On top of my head this was causing the onset of a thick bouffant look, and behind my ears it was forming into waves, and sticking out a bit. Who would have known that hair so short had the capacity to become so disorganised and chaotic. I was still undecided about what length to settle on. I intended to keep it short, but longer than this. Unless the curl worsened.

Quite by chance we found out that Jamie McCartney, the artist who had done the body casts of me shown earlier in this blog, was now doing a new project to raise funds for breast cancer, whereby he used a document scanner to take pictures of women with and without bras, and used these images to make posters. Poignantly the posters referenced the number of boob or bras, and then stated 1 in 8 (as in 1 in 8 women get breast cancer). His posters are at the start of this section along with two of the images he took of me. Naturally I contacted him to update him with my news and ask if he wanted to add a picture of me, and my 7.5 inch scar, to show what it was all about. Delighted with the offer, a date was arranged, and off we trundled to his studio.

His new premises were underneath a laundrette so there was a constant sound of rushing water through a large pipe running down the back of the studio. He got out the document scanner and warned me not to lean on it too much as it was only designed to take the weight of a piece of paper. We did a number of shots – one with a bra and prosthetic, one with a bra a no prosthetic and one without a bra showing the full glory of my scar. The two bra ones told a tale – he flicked between them to show the full (prosthetic) cup and then the crumpled empty cup in the next image.

Once he has enough images to put his next poster together, some of those pictures will be included.

 

III

I woke up one morning with terrible abdominal pains. The next day they were sharper, more localised, and I realised that it felt like ovulation. Previously I had been aware of when I ovulated. And that sensation was back. After 7 months, there was a suggestion that my body was resuming all functions.

Whilst in some respects this was not totally welcome, I hoped it would signal the end to menopausal hot flushes and the continuing pain and discomfort of sex. I wasn’t keen on having to go through the menopausal stuff all over again in 10 years, and hoped that I would still not get a red face – just the sudden dripping sweat over my body. Although in recent weeks I had also been getting itchy hands and arms during the hot flushes.

At around that time my mood suddenly lifted. It wasn’t gradual. It happened in an instant. I recognised the person who had returned, and in that moment I realised how long she had been gone. Finally, I was back.