Narrative Nipples and Extruding Expanders (this could get messy!)

How to Kill a Living Thing

Neglect it
Criticise it to its face
Say how it kills the light
Traps all the rubbish
Bores you with its green

Continually
Harden your heart
Then
Cut it down close
To the root as possible

Forget it
For a week or a month
Return with an axe
Split it with one blow
Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open.

              Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh.




I really like that poem, especially the last two lines. I understand what the poet is trying to say, like picking at a scab that is almost healed over. Not that I am healed yet, still a long way to go but you sometimes can't help but poke.

Three chemo sessions down, three to go. As my Dad keeps saying, you're half way there, at the top now, its all down hill from here, except that's not what it feels like. Yes, getting to the third session feels like a gigantic climbing spree, laden with bags of cement and wading through mud to get to the top of an almost impossible peak and now that I'm at the top, I somehow think that the next three sessions, the down hill bit, should be easier. But they will not be any easier, they will, each in its own right be as difficult as if never before experienced, when you find yourself reverting back to crawling on your hands and knees, an invertebrate all over again.

I think its the feeling of being cheated. The chemo, in three week cycles, the first week is like hell, a slow puking, constantly painful torture, the next week is hazy and sleepy and tired but less torturous, you feel by the end of the second week almost like your old self again. The third week you find yourself offering to cook dinner, go for a walk, embrace a physical activity and you practically skip down the street, feeling, apart from the shine off your bald head, like a normal person. Then, right when you're feeling on top of things, right when you feel like your proverbial mountain has been climbed and claimed, you get stuck...stuck with a big fat juicy needle full of crap and you revert right back to start all over again.

I felt a bit broken the last session, like I couldn't go on, not that you have a choice because life does that annoying habit, continues on, and like the poet, it returns with an axe and there are many stones stuck in the wound keeping it open but you have to keep going, going, going, till you reach the top and start descending. Eventually, you will get to rest and it will be over and you will look back and wonder how you did it.

Today I thought...I am so over this cancer business. I'm so over having no hair, so over puking, so over feeling tired all the time, I am so TOTALLY OVER this s**t! I want my hair to grow back and to start feeling energetic again, to be able to go for a run or a bike ride, spend a whole day awake and not have to go for a nap in the middle of a day like a terrible two year old! Mentally, I might be over this shiznit but unfortunately physically and medically I am not even near the end yet.  And so I ate three muffins. Not at the same time....throughout the space of a couple of hours. They were home made and healthy and they did make me feel a little better.

Also, narrative nipple, well not in the plural, in the singular, is brilliant. www.narrativenipple.com - not that I am biased but its a great space for people to express themselves and listen to other people and to get it all off their chest, regardless of the size, shape or symmetry of that chest.

Speaking of which, my boob is misbehaving badly. My expander, with a life of its own, doesn't like its new home and in a moment of low white blood cells has decided that it wants to move....to move out...Now, naturally I'm not having any of that sort of business, so I have chastised it with horse tranquillizer antibiotics in the hopes that it will change its mind and decide to stay......watch this space for future potential unwanted surgery....oh the joys...never a dull moment!

I am Woman, hear me Roar (Squeak!)

Sitting in chairs last week, waiting for my chemo, the only bald (female) person in the room and a smiley woman in her mid forties comes over.  She has dark grey hair, short and a little spiky, funky in a way, with retro sixties glasses perched resolutely on her nose.
She kneels down beside my chair and I can practically hear all ears hone in on our conversation. This is a very polite waiting area, no body is having a full blown conversation, all conversations are clipped, hushed tones if its something private, soft tones if your talking about the weather to your companion in an effort to make the time pass. Everyone seems sombre and delicately respectful of whispers.
I notice the ladies across from me stop their hushed conversation and a gentleman two spaces away turns his head from his newspaper, clearly, not much scandal happens in the chemo waiting room, so all ears are on us.
'You and I have the best hair cuts in the room', she says, smiling proudly down at me (I could of course argue the point with her in a very convincing manner but I just smile weakly, unsure). 'Well done,' she continues and rubs my arm in an over familiar manner, seemingly congratulating me on being bald.  I can feel my face begin to get hot. She goes back to her seat and sits down and flashes me a two thumbs up. I cringe internally. As if it wasn't bad enough that I felt like the whole room was staring at me, now they actually are. I burrow my head back in to the useless magazine I was reading and I curse chemo for the hundredth time.

Later, some time later, I am tryng to chose something nice to wear for a coffee date with a friend who I hadn't seen in a while. I wanted to deflect from the fact that I don't have any hair, so I chose a bright red and white jumper, stripy, nautical....very fashionable. I put it on and look in the mirror. Ughhhh, my boobs don't match, one is big, one is small, they are also levelly uneven, one slightly up a bit, one slightly down a bit. I open my drawer and pull out the bolder holder that I bought for post surgery, it is plain and ugly and almost utilitarian. I sigh and think of all the lovely bras I have in my wardrobe. But this thing, which I hold in my hand, well, it does exactly what it says on the tin, it holds everything in place. So, awkwardly I put it on, having great difficulty in doing up the back of it, as my post surgery reach is not the best. Several struggling seconds later I am dressed, kinda.
I look in the mirror, red and white striped jumper, nautical....very fashionable,  and my hat, which I need to keep my head warm, it woolly and has a big bobbly bit on top...I look like Where's Wally! ughhhhhhhhh........help....I need a post cancer diagnosis, chemo treatment makeover.....I cant fathom what could be done to make me look any better. At least I still have my eye brows for this session, I suppose you have to always find something to be thankful for.

I eye my massive collection of shoes....like all women, I have certain weaknesses, not many mind you...but when I have a weakness, I have it bad and shoes and I love each other, they call out to me sometimes when I'm walking down the street from the shop windows, saying...'Take me home, nice lady, I need a new home.' To which of course I can't resist. So, looking at that pile of high heels, I feel distaste. I couldn't be bothered with heels, who needs discomfort on top of already feeling uncomfortable, head is cold or itchy, boob is sore or misbehaving, chemo is making you feel nauseous or tired; the last thing you want to do is put on a pair of friggen high heels...least of all because you cant fit into any of your blasted clothes cause your either skinny as or bloated like a whale, so can never find anything nice to wear anyway. I give up and opt for a pair of jeans, which hang around my ass like those rappers you see on tv and I feel about seventy, giving out about the youth of today! I chose a pair of converse, flat, ugly, scruffy but ohhhh so comfortable shoes.

Later, in the cafe, after coffee and cake I start to fidget. I think my friend thinks I might have cooties, I excuse myself and go to the bathroom. Bolder holder is cutting off circulation to certain body parts and is beginning to dig an unsightly rim of red into my skin. Off...Off...DAmN contraption! I wriggle out of the blasted thing in the bathroom of the coffee shop....ahhhhhhhh, instant relief, only I never brought my handbag with me...so now I have bolder hold in my hand and no where to put it....I stuff it into the waste band of my jeans and hope that I make it back to our table in three easy strides without it floppen out onto the floor of the cafe.....MORTO!
I make it and quietly put it in to my handbag, whispering to my friend. She howls with laughter and causes everyone to turn around and stare at our table, as if things weren't bad enough. I glow beetroot red and we leave the cafe, me with sheepish abandon.

PICC line and would not travel, so here I was in the middle of my bedroom, grunting as if I was moving a piano up six flights of stairs solo, my supposed trusty vest top half wrapped around my head, my arms flung up in mock surrender and there is a knock on the door....Oh.....you have got to be kidding me. I had a mental image of me falling over, unable to get out of the vice grip of the vest top, alone in my bedroom, undiscovered for days on end...bit dramatic I know! Another knock on the door....oh for flip sake. I tugged and I pulled and I shuffled till I got one side undone and then awkwardly got out of the top, flung on a hoody and limped downstairs, expecting the boiler man. I opened the door and there was no body there....after all that effort!

So now, I've no hair, I have lost the will to live when it comes to wearing bras, I have abandoned the high heels, co-ordinating accessories for non existent outfits seems pointless, I feel about as feminine as a yorkie bar. I've not had a period in months, I have started reading literature on early menopause and I wonder is pickling my beetroot a good idea so early on in the year.....arghhhhh, I feel a million years old and completely disconnected from everything.

This is part of what happens on the cancer journey, you are stripped of all the things that you associate with being feminine. The prospect of being able to reproduce, the things which define you as a women in society...breasts, hair, heels, sexiness. Its all gone and is replaced, for me, with dressings over wounds, comfort over style, warmth over fashion, practicality over frivolity, survival over sexy. I'm still female, I'm still a woman but feel removed from it all, outside the conventions. As I sit on the couch watching reruns of Americas next top model I get a bit cross with society and how it has boxed us all, whether we like it or not, in to neat categories and I almost feel glad that I have no hair, glad that in a crowd peoples gaze drifts over me, discounting me, as insignificant, unworthy of notice, I feel glad...Almost.....almost.