Pinchy, punch, first of the month…

I’ve started 2012 by already ticking something off the bucket list: firing a shotgun. Not at DH, I hasten to add; we and the lovely friends we spent New Year’s Eve with fired into the air at midnight to celebrate the long-awaited end to That Bloody Year. It was brilliant! Definitely need to do a shooting day this year. And drive a tractor. And learn to play tennis. And take up fencing, or archery, or hockey. And write The Damned Novel, of course. ‘Such fun!’, as Miranda’s mother would say.

The last night of the year was great. Endless plates of yummy food, during a five hour game of poker. The four of us were at the table all night, with our guests Miss Taittinger and Mr Barolo. Eating, drinking, laughing. Perfick. Well, almost: it would have been great if our four children had actually, y’know, slept during their sleepover, but hey.

Today we took down our beautiful Christmas tree from the bay window where it has sat twinkling for three weeks in exactly the way I envisioned when we first set eyes on this house in July, and started the New Year proper, with the requisite resolutions to be healthier, eat better, exercise more, drink less, go to bed earlier. (We once got to 18 January without wine. I’ll let you know how we get on this year…).

There are two types of resolutions in my book: Habit Changers and Big Goals. My Big Goal you all know about (writing the novel rather than talking about it and going through the synopsis with everyone I meet). The Habit Changers involve the usual suspects, plus: investing in beautiful, matching, comfortable underwear (after my balancing surgery in 22 days, when my boobs will be the same size again, though rather less of a handful); playing more with the kiddies (I have rediscovered my love of Lego this Christmas, and also the searing, Hugh-Grant-style-sweariness-inducing pain of stepping on a rogue two-er stuck in the flokati…); being rather more high-maintenance in the eyebrow/bikini-line/manicure/pedicure department; learning a new joke every day; having a monthly date night with DH; doing more fun stuff with friends. And getting kittens. And maybe a light box to ameliorate the winter blues. And thanking the universe every night for all the wonderful things and people in my life, and the blessings of every day. And worrying much, much less about what other people think. And doing my affirmations every morning (currently: I love and accept myself just the way I am).

There is a theory, of course, that January is precisely the wrong time to be making any sort of lifestyle-changing pledges. It makes much more sense to continue to hunker down, eat comfort food, move slowly, and generally stay in semi-hibernation, and then as the first signs of spring start to emerge, match nature’s exuberant rebirth with our own new start. The number of people running around Guildford this morning was hilarious. Why not wait a few weeks to start blossoming?

I am so looking forward to this year. Today is such a lovely contrast to this time last year, when the side effects of my New Year’s Eve third chemo were beginning to kick in, and the good times seemed such a interminably long way in the future. But now the future is here, and I have a funny feeling in my tummy (and prickles in my eyes, actually) when I think about all the possibilities the year ahead holds.

And it has been quite a wonderful Christmas: for the first time, it was just the four of us on Christmas Day, in our own home. On Christmas Eve we went for a walk in the Surrey Hills with our fab friends Team H, then left a mince pie, carrot and a nice glass of Malbec for lucky Santa.

The kiddies with their offering for Father Christmas

We had a romantic bit of well-aged sirloin (insert your own joke here), and finished wrapping the waaay-too-many-but-what-the-hell presents for the smalls. In the morning, they jumped onto our bed to open their stockings and have some pretty serious cuddles. We had pain au chocolate for brekkie, then cracked open the prosecco and managed to string present opening out from 9.30am to 11.30, when we had a big American-style brunch (waffles, syrup, bacon, eggs, berries, mmmn…). In the afternoon, DH assembled various Playmobil and Sylvanian Families sets while I got on gradually with the roast, which we ate at 4.30pm. The kids were on great form, we all got on really well, all day. They were delightful company: aged five and three, they are now a real double act and huge fun, and just about old enough to play family games like Connect 4 and Guess Who? (and the ill-advised Doggy Doo, but we won’t talk about that). It was a perfect, relaxed, low-key, family Christmas, polished off with Downton Abbey and a nice bottle of red.

The letter Santa left this year

It sort of felt like the Christmas we grew up. For the first time, we weren’t the kids going home to our parents to be fed and watered and hand over the grandchildren. We were the grown-ups. I cooked Christmas dinner for my own family (rather well, I have to say, partly due to a great-quality bird and partly down to stress-free accompaniments from Mr Marks and Mr Spencer). Something shifted for me and DH this Christmas: I have another theory that growing up is not at all a gradual process, but goes in leaps, followed by periods where things don’t change very much. We both feel like we have had a couple of major leaps forward in the past year.

I have to be honest at this point and add that you still get growing pains in your late 30s. As DH has found, it can be hard to not slip into the traditional (sometimes disempowering) roles you’ve always played as a son or daughter when parents are around. I have also found this big leap forward challenging, especially finishing my caaancer treatment on December 1. I was elated at first, but then started feeling a bit weird about it all. I mentioned earlier in the year, between my surgery and radiotherapy, that it felt like ‘God put me down’, as my lovely health creation mentor Kit once said. And I’ve been feeling like that again, except much more acutely.

I couldn’t put my finger on it until I read an interview with my Breast Cancer Hero Jennifer Saunders in December. She ‘fessed up that, actually, there are many aspects of going through treatment that are enjoyable. Being absolutely the centre of everyone’s attention, being showered with love, the laughs and quality time you have with friends on chemo days: what’s not to like? And then suddenly it’s over, you’re fine (thank God), everyone’s relieved, you all celebrate and then… life moves on, for everyone. And the funny thing is, it’s actually a bit lonely and bewildering.

Having moaned about hospital appointments and invasive treatment for over a year, I now feel slightly lost without knowing I am being kept such a close eye on by my medical team. Things get back to normal (and you know how much I have been worshipping at the altar of normal all year) and yet…what is normal, now? I don’t want to, can’t, go back to things being exactly the same, because I wasn’t happy, or fulfilled, or myself. But neither do I know what the New Normal, for me, looks and feels like, quite. I have days where I am loving life, getting on with everyone, feeling good in my skin, and then other days where I feel utterly disjointed and confused, out of kilter, and completely misread situations. My communication skills desert me and conflict reigns, confusingly. I feel like someone’s disconnected the sat nav of my life, or I’m following the rules for a different board game to everyone else.

But I guess these things take time. It’s a big period of adjustment. As always, I’m probably in too much of a hurry. I just need to breathe, drop my shoulders, smile, and go with the flow a bit more. Be myself, and let everyone else be who they are. Now that’s what I call a good New Year’s Resolution. If I can hang onto this particular wagon for January, I might just form the best habits ever. That’s worth raising yet another glass of champagne to, I reckon. When I get over my dry few days, anyway. Happy Noo Year!

The first day of the rest of my life

So here we are. Today is officially the first day of the rest of my life. Because yesterday, gentle reader, I finished my cancer treatment. Yup, you heard right. I FINISHED MY CANCER TREATMENT! Whoop whoop!

I can’t quite believe it. No more intravenous drugs, no more radiation, no more hospital other than occasional check-ups with my consultant and the extra bit of surgery in January to give me two equal sized boobs. And five years of daily tamoxifen pills, of course, but that’s fine. And I have to look after my right arm and hand for the rest of my life, since there’s no lymphatic system there any more to deal with germs. (I’m on antibiotics at the moment after getting an infection in my arm for the first time since the surgery: the whole top of my arm went hot, and hard, and red, and swollen, and unbelievably painful. Cellulitis, apaz. Not nice. Taking ages to clear up. Must look after myself better in future, and stuff.)

It was an emotional day all round. I spent the morning alternating between grinning like a fool and sobbing, partly with relief and partly remembering how awful things were this time last year. You remember: my unexpected minibreak to a quarantined room at the Royal Surrey County Hospital when my immune system went awol after my first chemo. It was bitterly cold, snowing, school was closed, and I missed my daddy’s birthday supper in London. It was a particularly bleak week for DH and our families. At the time I was just hugely annoyed by the whole inconvenient episode. Looking back, I feel horror at how close I came to, er, dying from a common cold. I did not at all grasp the seriousness of the situation. Now I understand exactly how chemo can kill you.

The day started normally, leaving the house at 8am to do the nursery run and the school run. I had a busy morning and was late for my 12.30 appointment, because I wanted to get some Krispy Kremes for the nurses on the chemotherapy suite. As I bustled breathlessly up to reception, loaded with doughnuts, the receptionist smirked and looked at the waiting area, and there was DH, bless him, with a big smile and an even bigger poinsettia for me. It was so lovely to see him, and such a fab surprise that he would be with me for my final treatment, and to resign our membership of Cancer Club.

It all went remarkably smoothly. I’ve waited for two hours before now, but we had barely sat down when my name was called and I was taken into one of the little rooms with two comfy chairs and two drip stands. The sister got my canula in the back of my hand first time (it usually takes two or three attempts with my rubbish veins hiding away), and rigged me up to the Herceptin drip for half an hour. DH held my hand and was a bit tearful. It was very strange sitting there for my 17th Herceptin infusion thinking: ‘I never have to do this again. Gosh. Yay!’

We chatted away to the middle aged man in the chair next to me and his wife. It was his first chemo session for stomach cancer. He was as upbeat as I was during my first chemo, before I understood quite how hellish the side effects were. DH says I was holding court telling survivor’s tales from the trenches, but I don’t think I was that bad. (He was asking the nurse about wearing the cold cap to avoid hair loss, but I advised him not to bother as it was bloody cold, uncomfortable, made the treatment twice as long, and I still lost pretty much the equivalent of all the hair he had on his head.)

Then all of a sudden it was over and I was out of there. OUT OF THERE! With a huge spring in my step. On my way to our celebratory lunch at Burger King (DH didn’t have much time before a meeting, and we fancied something that was defiantly as far from  an anti-cancer diet as it’s possible to be) I made a couple of elated calls to my mummy and my sister. I felt all full of giggly bubbles, giddy as a kipper, light as a feather, a skip in my step (which got me some funny looks in the car park).

Oh, the feeling of freedom, and relief: I cannot describe to you how I felt. All the cliches in the book: on top of the world. On cloud nine. Really, really aware that my rebooted life starts right here, right now, that nothing can hold me back, and I have a duty to make the most of every day, to fulfill my potential, to follow my dreams, to be utterly, completely, joyfully, authentically myself.

And how did we celebrate, you ask? Well, in style, of course. By happy coincidence it was my darling Pops’ birthday yesterday, and he and mummy arrived bearing flowers and a bottle of Pol Roger (Ooh! Big fizzy treat!) which we drank as we got ready to go out. A lovely friend had offered to babysit (thanks honey!) so me and DH and my olds got a cab into Guildford and met my sister and my brother-in-law (whose birthday it si today – a triple celebration!) for rather good margaritas in the swanky new bar (and were joined briefly by our friends E&G, who were out celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary – a quadruple celebration!), and thence for a slap up Thai supper. Nom nom nom. Lots of toasts all evening. Lots of glasses raised. Lots of smiles. Because we were all together, unlike last year, and I am well, and I have well and truly f*cked caaancer. Hurrah, hurrah, and thrice hurrah.

So now we have reached the end of my cancer journey. The beginning of the best years of my life. This blog will revert to mostly mummy, parenting and school topics from now on (which may be a blessed relief, if you’re bored of the whole cancer thing. I’ve had cancer, yadda yadda yadda, time to get over myself). I’ll post relevant updates and let you know how the surgery goes. I might even treat you to some topless photos next time (now there’s a promise). Thanks for coming along for the ride, you’ve all been MARVELLOUS and I couldn’t have got through the past year without all the love and support I’ve had showered on me from loved ones and friends old and new, near and far.

I don’t know exactly what’s next. Big changes are afoot, in the way I work, in my actually getting on with writing the damned novel, in the way I am in the world. Today, the butterfly has emerged from the chrysalis, only a tiny bit hungover. My wings are still damp and new, but when they open, it’s going to be one hell of a display.

Ooh, I fancy a snuggle with these two!

And this is the happy ending, where the director pans out a shot of me and DH cuddling up on the sofa in the House That Cancer Bought with our gorgeous babies, smiling into their sweet smelling hair (well, Oatibix smelling hair, anyway). That’s all folks!

 

A bit of a trial

One of the most fortunate aspects of being diagnosed with breast cancer in October last year was being one of the last people in the UK to be eligible to take part in a trial of a new chemotherapy drug.

This was the sister drug to Herceptin, which is used in hormone-dependent (or HER2 positive) breast cancer to stop HER2 protein receptors on the surface of the cancer cells picking up too many ‘Grow, you buggers!’ signals. The new drug, codename pertuzumab, works alongside Herceptin to separate these same rogue receptors to reduce the strength of the signal they are receiving. It’s being developed by Roche, and I was on phase III of the trial. The earlier phases had shown excellent results in older women with metastatised (secondary) breast cancer, and this phase was to see whether the outlook was as good for younger women with advanced primary breast cancer, like me.

And, as you may recall, the results have proved to be amazing. All three tumours in my breast and lymph disappeared within a couple of arduous sessions, with the two hormone treatments followed with the traditional chemotherapy drugs carboplatin and docetaxel. So far, so good. High five me, high five Roche. The trial also meant I had my wonderful, dedicated research nurse Celia to look after me, co-ordinate all my treatments and appointments and scans and tests. Because when you’re on a trial, you see a lot more of your consultant, and have a lot more scans and other checks, than you would otherwise.

At the start of that long journey into the unknown, this was hugely reassuring. I kept being told that people on drugs trials generally do a lot better in terms of response and recovery than those who aren’t, and this is probably at least partly down to being so well looked after, and being kept a very close eye on. It’s practically like going private on the NHS. I feel very lucky and hugely privileged to have benefited from a drug that won’t hit the market for years and will almost certainly be as controversial as Herceptin was in terms of its cost to the NHS, and might not even get approved by NICE.

The Herceptin lasts a year, so keeps going (albeit with no side effects) for another six months after you’ve finished what everyone thinks of as the real chemo. And it’s bloody expensive: I have to call the pharmacy the day before my three-weekly appointments to confirm I am fit and well enough to have it because each little drip bag costs £1,500 (yup, you read right) and once made up to order for each patient, only has a shelf life of 24 hours. Once my 17 Herceptin cycles are over on 1 December (second to last one this Thursday!), that drug alone will have cost the NHS £25,500. And that’s not including the new drug, the other two chemo drugs, all the scans and tests, the medication to offset the side effects of the chemo, the surgery, the radiotherapy, five years of tamoxifen, or my unscheduled week in hospital after my first chemo when my immune system went awol.

So why I am bringing up the trial now, as I approach the end of the invasive aspects of the cancer treatment? Well, as well as all the general fabulousness of being on a trial, there are also significant downsides. You all know I’ve never defined myself as a ‘cancer sufferer’ or a ‘cancer victim’ or a ‘cancer survivor’. Some people find cancer is a springboard to getting really involved with the disease, fundraising and raising awareness and generally ensuring that their experience leads to some good. But, like Jennifer Saunders as interviewed in this week’s Sunday Times Style magazine, that’s not really something I’ve ever had any interest in. I did the Pink Ribbon Walk to raise loads of dosh for the admirable work of Breast Cancer Care, but to be honest, I’m more into taking cancer on the chin as a really important life lesson, and then moving onwards and upwards. For me, my cancer journey is coming to an end, fizzling out, and then it will be over, behind me, and I can just forget about it, while continuing to work on my physical, emotional and spritual health to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

But being on a drugs trial means that it’s very difficult to maintain that stance. There’s just so much hospital contact. And over the summer, after I finished my radiotherapy, I had started thinking that I might opt out of the trial at the end of this year, just to get my life back a bit quicker. I didn’t really want to be seeing my consultant every three weeks during the Herceptin and then every 12 weeks for the whole of next year.

As it is, I’ve had to rearrange almost every appointment to fit around the children and work, neither of which has been taken into account by anyone on my medical team at any time. There’s only so much logistics and childcare I want to arrange for an appointment that is essentially a box-ticking exercise for a pharma company rather than being of any further benefit for my health. My suggestion for the research teams who identify and recruit candidates for drugs trials is that they really need to make it work around people’s lives so they can easily stick with the regime, rather than making it so stressful and time-consuming.

I’ve had roughly double the normal number of MUGA radioactive heart scans as you would normally have, for instance, to the extent that one of the nuclear medicine team said he had flagged up that I was having far too many for a woman of my age and exceptionally good heart health (Herceptin can damage heart function; no-one’s really sure what the two drugs together do). The last straw for me was on one morning in September when I was due to have yet another MUGA.

The nuclear department was running late, as per; so late that I had to flag up that I needed to collect DS from nursery in an hour. The scan requires two injections, 40 minutes apart, and then the scan itself is about half an hour, plus sundry haning around, so they need to do the first injection about 1.5 hours before it’s finished. They shrugged it off, said they couldn’t speed anything up, and so I left. Well, stormed out ranting, tbh. I was furious. I’d taken the morning off work to have an unnecessary, invasive, radioactive procedure and no-one had any interest in making sure it happened even vaguely on time. I stomped up to Celia’s office and ‘downloaded’, and told her I was opting out of the trial and would certainly not be having any more MUGAs. She was really lovely, and quite upset on my behalf, and sorted everything out so the rest of my treatment would proceed as it would if I was not on a trial. They still need to keep an eye on my heart, but I can even have a quick, non-invasive echocardiogram instead.

I felt instant relief, even more so when at my next consultant appointment, I was told I didn’t have to see Dr Houston for another three months. And even more ‘caancer has been well and truly f*cked’ news was to come in mid October, when I had my one year mammogram, with some trepidation (I’ll have one a year for the next five years). It was extraordinary, tear-promptingly painful, especially as the scars on my right breast were squished, and I was told at the time I’d have to wait three weeks for the results, but the all clear came in the post two days later. Huge sigh of relief all round. Another milestone passed.

If you are ever in the double-edged sword of a position where you are given the chance to take part in a drugs trial, I would still wholeheartedly recommend it, especially if it’s phase II or III. This isn’t guinea pig stuff: it can really improve your outcomes. But don’t be afraid to do it on your terms. Don’t think you have to accept every appointment you are given, or every scan. Establish a good relationship with your research nurse and use them to arrange everything and make your life easier. When it stops feeling like it’s about you and your health, you are at liberty to opt out. Taking part in testing a new bit of science is usually a good thing, not only for the patients involved but people with the same condition in the future. But always remember: it’s your body, and your treatment, and it’s important that you always feel in control of that, especially when you’ve been blindsided by something as potentially power-leaching as a cancer diagnosis.

No cheese, please, Louise

I’ve been meaning to write this post for months. I was finally goaded into action by a bit of half-arsed ‘investigation’ into using food as medicine on Channel 4′s ‘The Food Hospital’ last night. After lots of basic, sensible stuff on how changing your diet can dramatically improve your health if you have diabetes, polycystic ovaries, high cholesterol or migraines, there was a five minute segment on a young woman who had breast cancer.

It had already spread to her spine. That’s not good news: with secondary cancer you can never officially be ‘cured’. So she had done her research and come across a hypothesis that replacing dairy with soya would have a huge impact on preventing hormone-dependent breast cancer (which accounts for around 50% of breast cancers: this is what I’ve had, and it’s more aggressive but there are more tools in the bag to tackle it at the moment.) I am very familiar with this theory, because the book it’s espoused in, Your Life In Your Hands, is practically my bible.

It was written by an earth scientist called Jane Plant, whose breast cancer kept coming back, tumours popping up all over the place. The fourth time, she was given months to live, and says she felt like giving up. But she didn’t. Instead, she used her scientific background to examine research papers from all over the world. She discovered that while in the UK, one in  ten (I think this is now one in eight) women will contract breast cancer, in China it’s more like one in 10,000. As she looked into this startling discrepancy, Jane Plant became convinced she had discovered the first causal link between diet and breast cancer.

Her story, and the book’s premise that the hormones in dairy produce can cause hormone-related cancers such as breast, ovarian and prostate - is compelling. After her last bout of cancer, she was given only months to live. Nearly 20 years later, she’s still alive and kicking, and the cancer is still in remission. Jane Plant suggests that the only living beings that need and can properly digest and process cow, goat or sheep milk are baby cows, goats and sheep. She intriguingly repositions dairy from ‘healthy and natural’ to ‘poisonous junk food’. There’s a bit of conspiracy theory involving two baddies – Big Pharma and the Global Dairy Industry – but I don’t have a massive problem with that.

The book so resonated with me when I read it just before my surgery in April (having being urged to read it by two different people on the same day – I’m a big one for following little signs from the universe like that), that I immediately cleared the fridge out of all dairy products.

This was A Big Deal because I’ve had a major love affair with cheese my whole life. In restaurants, I always went for the cheeseboard over a pudding. Cheddar, parmesan, brie and Boursin were staple foods in our house. Fondue? Nom nom nom. Not to mention milk, proper butter, premium yoghurts, custard, and ice-cream. I tried to buy organic – the non-organic dairy industry is as horrific as battery-farmed chickens – but otherwise had never thought twice about dairy other than the potential impact on my hips. Dairy’s good for you, right? And a great way of getting protein into children, yes? Well, perhaps not.

Cutting out dairy was easier than you might think. For me, the book opened my eyes to seeing my diet in a whole new way. It was a no-brainer: if there is even the slightest chance that Jane Plant is right, then why wouldn’t I switch from dairy to soy? We now have Alpro soya milk, yoghurt, and desserts instead of dairy, and dairy-free spread. I don’t exactly love tofu but I do use it. I drink miso soup. I snack on those lovely dried soya nuts and use soya beans (also known as edamame thanks to Wagamama). I love cooking and haven’t found avoiding dairy is even slightly tricky.

After a few months of being strict with everyone in the house, I am now confident enough that I can resist dairy to let the kids have the odd bit of grated cheese or Babybel, and DH to have butter and proper milk in his weekend coffee (soya milk is great in tea and on cereal but curdles revoltingly in homemade cwaffee. Not sure how the coffee shop chains manage it, but I do love my flat white with soya as a weekend treat). And I do have the occasional sliver of sheep’s cheese (Manchego, Pecorino, or Roquefort), since that seems less problematic, hormone-wise. But actually, much to my surprise, I just don’t really like the taste anymore. You know the thing that Chinese people say about Westerners, that we smell of rancid milk? That’s pretty much what all dairy smells and tastes like to me, now. All cow’s milk, no matter how fresh, just smells ‘off’. I don’t think the odd bit of dairy is going to hurt, but broadly speaking, it no longer has a role in my diet.

The kids are completely cool with the new regime. DS, in particular, has benefitted: I always suspected he was dairy intolerant because he was such a collicky baby, especially on my dairy-fuelled breast milk, and his nappies were ‘leave-the-room-retching’ vile. Since the switch, his tummy is absolutely fine, and nursery have been good enough to keep him off dairy as much as possible too.

So why did that Channel 4 show get my back up? The ‘nutritional experts’ briskly waved aside the young woman’s decision to swap dairy for soya as ‘controversial’ and said it was ‘up to her, but they haven’t found any evidence to support it’. Whoever ‘they’ are. The programme also then made some sweeping generalisations about avoiding all cancers, not just hormone-dependent breast cancer, including not drinking to excess, not smoking, and eating plenty of fresh fruit and veg.

Firstly, no causal link (ie x causes y) has ever been discovered apart from smoking and lung cancer. There is no definite link between smoking and any sort of breast cancer, although of course cigarettes do contain about a million carcinogens so it’s not a great idea. The evidence on alcohol is conflicting, and personally I think the benefits of relaxing with a glass of red after a stressful day outweigh any unproven risks, especially if we recognise the extent to which stress affects our immune system, which fights off the cancer cells we all have in our bodies. Plus wine is my only vice, so the nay-sayers can f*ck off.

Thirdly, cancer apparently loves sugar, and most fruit is very high in sugar. Fruit juice is practically all natural sugar with very little nutritional benefit. Yes, we get vitamins and fibre from fruit, but personally I aim for five portions of fresh, colourful veg and legumes or pulses a day, and avoid fruit (and, obviously, other sugary) apart from the occasional treat. I’m not alone – I’ve heard a few rumblings lately about the ‘five a day’ thing being flawed, because we really don’t need five portions of fruit a day, which is the easiest way of following this rule, especially for kids.

So there we are. I’ve fessed up. I don’t watch Martine McCutcheon in those Activia ads and think, ooh, I have to have a yoggy. I can’t say I don’t sometimes hanker over a very ripe, stinky brie ooching across a cheeseboard. But if you were in my position, I bet you’d give dairy a second thought.

The year I f*cked caancer!

Do you know what you were doing a year ago today? In precise detail? Do you know where you went, who you spoke to, what they said, the expression on their face, the sound of their voice, how you felt in every bit of your body, on October 13th 2010? I do, because it was the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And I know quite a few people, who I love very much, who know exactly what they were doing too. It’s not quite up there in the global consciousness in the same way as hearing that Elvis, Kennedy or Lady Di had gone to the great Celebrity Big Brother in the sky (plus I am not actually dead, unless I’m unknowingly in some weird M. Night Shyamalan movie and none of you have told me). But in my small universe, it’s a Big Day. (Here’s my first blog post on the subject).

Can you believe it? Where did those 12 months go? It seems like yesterday, and yet parts of the year have felt like time was standing still. I’ve been having quite bad flashbacks for the past few weeks as The Date approached. I’m sure the memories will fade over the years, but there’s something about it being exactly a year ago that has been making me feel nauseous and tense for a while. Then, in a nice bit of universal circularity, last Friday we finally moved in to our new gaff (of which adventures, more later), bang on a year after I reported the discovery of my lump to my GP.

DH went into work late this morning so he could do the nursery and school run with me, because that’s what we did a year ago together before I had The Mammogram, and also because he didn’t want me to be by myself this morning. And probably didn’t want to pretend it was a normal day for him, either. We didn’t do a sentimental flypast of the Jarvis Centre where I was diagnosed, though: cancer tourism’s not our thing.

When we got home after depositing the smalls at their respective places of play and learning, a massive bunch of gladioli was waiting for me, with a card from DH. I was very touched – they are beautiful, and he’s seriously not an ‘ordering flowers’ sort of guy, so it means a lot. Then my mummy arrived, ostensibly to help with the unpacking, but mostly just to be with me for a few hours. And then the postman bought a beautifully-written card from my sister that made us both cry quite a lot.

I remember some moments of that day in surround sound and Technicolor. Staring at the screen with the mammogram pictures of my breasts, and it being bleedin’ obvious that one of them had a very bright white mass in the middle. My blood running cold when the word ‘chemotherapy’ was mentioned. My tummy turning to liquid. DH and I sitting on our fabulous friends S&J’s sofa, in shock immediately after getting the news, all shakily raising cups of tea in a pledge to ‘f*ck caaancer’, which became Team Pinchy’s mantra. Having to tell my sister, and my mummy. Not being able to say the raw, powerful word ‘cancer’; telling everyone it ‘wasn’t good news’ instead.

Also: feeling, for that day and the five or six that followed, that I was in a calm bubble of golden light, like I was blessed (I do know this sounds bloody weird, and I sincerely hope you never have to experience the same circs, but that’s the only way I can describe it). Feeling with absolute certainty that I would get through it, and it would be the most important, life-changing event of my life. As it has proved to be. I really wouldn’t want to go through the past 12 months again, but I promise you, I wouldn’t not have gone through it. I’ve learned so much, and changed so much inside. This also probably sounds a bit odd, but lots of people who have been on a ‘cancer journey’ say the same.

Although please, my dearest family and friends, look after yourselves cos I sure as hell don’t want to go through what you’ve just been through: far easier, as I’ve said on many occasions, to Keep Buggering On when you’re the one going through The Thing. Far harder to be powerless as someone you love goes through it.

And the 12 months since: a blur of scans, chemotherapy, surgery, radiotherapy, consultant appointments. Endless giving of blood and receiving of intravenous, expensive, new, effective drugs. Having to tell DD that mummy’s booby had some bad stuff in it and I would need some strong medicine. The week of worry after my radioactive bone scan, which would have revealed if the cancer had already spread (in which case: no cure, just holding off the inevitable). Exploring a whole raft of alternative and complementary therapies. Cherishing the ‘normal, normal, normal’ days. The trauma of even partial hair loss (the new stuff on my crown and neck is about four inches long now, and dark and curly. I am hoping that at some point I will have long wavy red hair again rather than morphing into a pube head…) Choosing a wig. Erasing my beloved cheese and all other dairy produce after reading Jane Plant’s ‘Your Life in Your Hands’. The indescribably nightmarish quality of the Chemo Months: the sickness, the dead mouth, the constant nosebleeds, the exhaustion. Finally getting my critical illness cover payout so I could stop stressing about work during treatment (and just about afford our forever house). The impossibility of remaining demure as I whipped my top off to be groped by an endless succession of medical professionals. The bottomless love, support, generosity and general perking up from all directions. Letting that Chinese lantern go last New Year. Feeling responsible for so many tears. The bliss of our holiday in Spain. Doing the Pink Ribbon Walk and raising just short of three grand for Breast Cancer Care. The realisation that having two boobs of different sizes is not, after all, the end of the world (tho I am looking forward to my balancing surgery at the end of January).

Discovering interesting new body facts: my Franken-nipple actually functions; I no longer need deodorant under my right arm since 30 lymph nodes were removed; the weirdness of shaving an armpit with no nerve endings in it; you don’t just lose hair on your head during chemo; my nails have dips in them that correspond to each chemo session, and there’s still two dips (fragile, splitting) to go even though chemo finished in March.

Well, what a difference a year makes. I promised DH that day that I wasn’t going anywhere, and here I am. Very much alive and kicking, and enjoying a large glass of Fortnum’s champagne courtesy of my incredibly generous and thoughtful friend B. In an actual champagne flute, now my mummy has unpacked our glassware: we’ve been drinking pints of merlot out of squash tumblers like French peasants since the move last Friday.

You’ve all raised several glasses and cups with me over the past year, and here’s another toast. Please stand and raise your hot or cold beverage of choice: here’s to having f*cked caancer good and proper. Here’s to love (so much love), and faith, and hope. Here’s to my wonderful DH and our gorgeous children, our amazing family, and our fantastic friends (that’s you lot), without whom I simply could not have got through the past 12 months. Here’s to the next 12 months, and the next, and the next…

My house-shaped silver lining

Soooo, after a fun-packed birthday-loaded summer hols that came hot on the heels of 10 months of caaancer treatment, it’s time to take it easy for a while, don’t you think? Slip back into work, get the kids settled in Year 1 and pre-school, keep things quiet and calm and normal for a bit, yes? Er, no. The thing to do is, OBVIOUSLY, buy a derelict house.

We weren’t looking. Well, I wasn’t. Apparently DH was. He had casually mooted moving out of Guildford earlier in the year and I tried to love Camberley, really I did, but Guildford is home now. It’s where my two babies were born and where my best friend lives. It’s 20 minutes from my sister, and 20 minutes to London. I had a dream of exactly which area we would move to, at some point before secondary school applications in five years, but in reality couldn’t see how we could ever afford a bigger house two miles down the road, even with the extra bit of cash left over from the critical illness insurance that has supplemented my income all year.

And then at the end of July DH presented me with some property details. A four-bedroomed, late 30s detached house, in exactly the right place. And it was pricey, but much less so than other similar houses in the same suburb, thanks to needing what I think the trade would call ‘extensive modernisation’. It was empty, as the old lady who lived there had moved into a nursing home, and none of the 10 people who had viewed it in the three weeks it had been on the market had put in an offer, presumably baulking at the scale of the project for that sort of price tag. The agent had advised DH that we should just try putting in ‘a silly offer’. So we looked round, quietly fell in love with it, and did exactly that.

We made a pact that we would do this in a spirit of non-attachment. We knew what we could go up to, and we knew what we had to sell our house for, and if the process turned out to be smooth and easy, we decided that this crazy project was fate. If, on the other hand, it was all a bit strained and effortful, and the numbers started being stretched, we would walk away and start looking again next year after DS starts school and nursery fees would be freed up to contribute to a bigger mortgage.

DH put on his Super Negotiator red cape and went for it. Meanwhile, we put our house on the market, since the vendors weren’t going to accept anything until it was sold. We sold it within 24 hours, for exactly what we wanted for it, the day after my birthday. So far, so meant-to-be. Our parents came to have a poke round. Everyone started getting excited. Then, after a nail-biting day waiting for the agent to tell us the response to our final offer, which was still a cheeky 15% less than the asking price, DH called me with the news: WE GOT IT!!!!! I remember shrieking with joy. I couldn’t stop grinning. Now that’s what I call the best birthday pressie E.V.E.R.

Chez Pinchy, soon.

Our new home has blue shutters, and a 150ft overgrown garden you can get lost in, and a monkey puzzle tree in front that will look amazing decked in Christmas lights. It also needs an awful lot of work. It’s structurally sound, but that’s about it. But when I drive past (as I go out of my way to do almost every day, sometimes parking in the drive for a few minutes to say hello) I don’t just see a house with huge potential, or somewhere that will eventually be our dream forever house, or somewhere within walking distance of a really good secondary school.

As well as all of those things, I see my silver lining. Our family’s silver lining. The payoff for enduring the sort of year no-one should ever have to go through. We all need a fresh start. We need to draw a really tangible line under the past year (yes, it’s nearly a year: I was diagnosed on 13 October 2010). Embarking on this new adventure feels like exactly the right thing to do, for all of us. The house with the blue shutters has never seen me throwing up after chemo, for one thing.

 I’m under no illusion about the amount of work required, or how long it will take, or how exhausting and stressful it will be, or how much money it will cost. DH is more worried about all those things, because that’s his nature, but we are pretty much on the same page and ready to work as a team. He has the final say on technical and practical stuff, along with his dad (handily, a heating engineer with great trade contacts), and I get the final say on aesthetics. We’ve been reading books on 1930s style, and a vision is emerging of somewhere with a lot of black, white and grey, with splashes of colourful fabrics and dramatic wallpapers and fabrics, clean-lined furniture, and seriously luxe bathroom and shower room. (I have a theory that a bathroom with two basins is the secret of a happy marriage.) And, eventually, maybe, some sort of extension with a lot of glass.

We started packing books, files, and photo albums at the weekend, junking and recycling as we went. It’s impossible to pack a photo album or an unlabelled file without opening it, so there were a few unexpectedly emotional moments: absent friends, my dusty university dissertation (the poncily-titled ‘Literary Games in John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman and AS Byatt’s Possession’), dead cats (actually pictures of an alive cat, now deceased. Pictures of dead cats would be macabre).

DD is excited because she likes her new bedroom and is making noises about a chandelier, of all things (She’s five, FFS. Where does she get these ideas from?). DS is a little more reluctant, initially saying he ‘wasn’t coming’, but I think we may have won him round by demonstrating proximity to his favourite park, and reassurance that his Fireman Sam stuff and the Toy Story DVDs are coming too.

We’re due to exchange in the early part of next week, and our chain is aiming to complete a couple of weeks after that. Naturally, this will coincide with one of my big annual work deadlines, so that’ll be fun. But while I like the idea of a calm, quiet life in theory, and should probably slow down and take it easy for a bit, right now I’m kinda into having plenty of energy and being, well, alive. Plus, these days I have a policy of never doing anything with a ‘should’ attached. Carpe diem. Or in this case, carpe domus…

Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays…

DH and I committed something of a rookie error in our family planning. My birthday is in August, and so is our wedding anniversary. And then DD was born on the first of the month. I told DH not to touch me ever again in October or November, but lo and behold, DS arrived two years and three weeks after DD. Add a couple of summer-born nieces and a nephew born 12 days after DS into the mix (we know what our siblings were doing in the late autumn…) and we now have a crazy six week period where we have six family birthdays (three of which are in the same week) and an anniversary. Most of which come out of the same pay cheque. Gulp.

So the day after my radiotherapy finished at the end of July we were plunged into the balloons, candles, and cake of Party Central. That Saturday, we had a soft play party for one of DS’s nursery buddies in the morning, followed by my squidgy niece’s first birthday bash about half an hour away, and then over to our other beautiful niece’s fourth birthday (the usual rather splendid mini-festival by the Thames) at tea time. The kiddies were amazing, in great spirits all day (much of which they spent naked and splashing in paddling pools, in between eating vast quantities of sugar and bouncing), napping where they could and still singing along to James ‘Sounds Like’ Blunt in the car on the way home at 10pm. My sister made a very lovely and emotional toast to her baby girl and me, saying it was like a dream come true that the big bits of my treatment ending coincided with celebrating C’s big day. There may have been some happy tears, I couldn’t possibly comment.

The celebrating continued with our friends S&J on the Sunday, during which I took advantage of not being the designated driver and imbibed rather too much champagne and Barolo in the sunshine, resulting in the infamous Lobegate row between me and a rather more sober DH. The following day was my delicious DD’s fifth birthday – where on earth did that go? A half decade already! – and we dressed the garden with butterflies for a little tea party for her best friends. In another bit of classic Pinchy planning, after everyone had left at 6pm, we had to pack to leave for Disneyland Paris – the kiddies’ joint birthday treat – early the following morning.

Disney was everything it should be. We went to Florida on our honeymoon and I’ve always wanted to take my children. Paris is so close, and our three days at the Hotel New York, 10 minutes’ walk from the parks, were really magical. At just five and not-quite-three, they were the perfect age, in total awe of everything from Sleeping Beauty’s castle, to the Buzz Lightyear ride (DS is obsessed with Toy Story) and the It’s A Small World boat ride, which we had to go on twice (and still can’t get that slightly sinister theme music out of our head…).

We were all in one room, which worked better than I thought. We got up around 8, dug into our bag of snacks, hit the park for two hours, came back for the last breakfast setting for brunch at 11am, then went on more rides, had another snack, and then all ate out around 7pm. By the time we’d got back to the hotel and bathed after supper, we were all ready to crash. And, after queuing for an astonishing 90 minutes, we even got to meet the real ‘Rapunzel’, thus making DD’s birthday wish come true.

There were some downsides, of course. The trip was excruciatingly expensive before we even got there, and everything at Disney is crazily overpriced. The food is largely disgusting and£11 for a children’s portion of fried crap seemed to be the going rate. You would have thought a pint of cider was actually molten gold. The queues are quite long for smalls – a minimum of 20 minutes and often double that. And the service is hilariously French, to the point of the ‘cast’ of the parks appearing to be caricatures of French customer service personnel, they were so rude and generally unaccomodating and unhelpful. Perhaps it was all a giant post-modern self-referential joke. But I don’t think so. No-one said ‘have a nice day’, which was fine, obviously, but it was very much the opposite of what you might expect from one of Walt’s establishments.

 

A couple of days after our return, it was my turn for birthday pressies. I was spoiled rotten, it has to be said, including a gorgeous nude patent handbag from DH, stunning leather jacket (which Grazia would probably describe as ‘butter-soft’) from my sis, Pennyhill Park spa voucher from my mummy and Pops, a Mulberry heart key ring from S&J, and many other very thoughtful gifts. I am a very, very lucky girl. And of course, the best thing was not the undeniably lovely pressies, but the most fun night out with a really fab group of my amazing friends and family.

We met in All Bar One, all marvelling that we could not remember the last time we were in a bar as couples, then hit Jamie’s for an absolutely debauched dinner. I dimly remember eating my linguine, but after that, nada. I think there was some chat about tattoos, and I had limoncello for pudding (never a good sign). No memory of this, nor the other bar we apparently went to, where DH was asked to put his shirt back on after launching into one of his regular Freddie Mercury impressions. He did look after me, though, even giving the reluctant cabbie ‘the cancer chat’ to persuade him to take the wobbly 38 year old home. Oh the shame! Great fun, though. I was looking pretty good at the start of the evening (after a good haircut at Aveda booked as a surprise by DH as he said my hair was looking ‘a bit cancery’!!), but when I woke in the morning naked but for my silicone chicken fillet still stuck to the mini-boob, I felt rather less glam. Sadly, I do not seem to be ageing as elegantly as some of the excellent wine I’ve drunk this summer.

After a memorable barbecue a week later (which culminated in me chanelling Barbara Dickson for a scary version of I Know Him So Well. Pinchy may not be Polish for ‘nightingale’: our guests were actually trying to leave as I sang, ushering their children away from the crazy lady), we all had a bit of a break from Good Times last week. DD had a week in kids’ club, and I was back to the badlands of Cancer Central with a bump. I am back on the Tamoxifen after seeing Dr Houston, my oncology consultant. I had a very interesting kinesiology session with my amazing friend E before this, as I was clearly hugely intolerant of the drug. She did an energetic detox on me which appeared to suggest that it would now be absolutely fine for me to be back on the drug, and I would have no side effects, with the caveat that my body could not process the whole daily 20mg horse pill in one go, and I should split it, having 10mg in the morning and 10mg in the evening. I had read about many women doing this on the advice of their doctors anyway, and I have to say, so far, so good. No hot flushes, and I haven’t tried to kill anyone. Houston said if I felt murderous again, DH should call him (they are golf buddies now, don’t forget…). I said that would assume he wasn’t the subject of my hormonal rage.

Then last Thursday, it was the 12th of 17 Herceptin drips. It was raining and I was very down that day. I would quite happily never see that chemo suite again, you know. In my head I am so over this caaancer business, and everytime I have to spend a morning up at the hospital it feels very depressing. You never, ever get used to the needles, and sitting among people who are mostly much older, much more ill, and much less optimistic. I just don’t feel part of the cancer community at all, it’s not something that I feels defines me in any way, and I just want to get out of there as soon as possible every time. I cried for most of the day. My hand is still bruised from the damn canula, but luckily an evening out with E&G was in the diary, and some very good steak and Malbec sorted me out.

And finally, to the latest birthday this summer: my darling cheeky little DS was three on Monday. We had all the grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins, not to mention his fairy godfather (sorry JB, you know what I mean!) over for a lovely tea in the garden on Sunday, which again resulted in much naked shrieking (not from me, I hasten to add. Not this time, anyway). The house is now full of Fireman Sam and Toy Story stuff, including the brilliant ‘real’ Buzz Lightyear, who is strangely attractive for a bit of plastic. He’s got all the chat; I think I might be falling in love with him. Then DS started pre-school yesterday – just upstairs in his nursery, but a real change for him. He was a little star and I think he’ll settle in fine.

So all in all, a busy, busy summer thus far. And I haven’t told you about the house we bought while all this was going on…

It’s over! YAY! And a few words from my daddy…

Well, I did it. A whole four weeks of daily radiotherapy is finished! At 11am I walked out of the St Luke’s Cancer Centre after the last of my 20 zappings, feeling rather odd. The last of the three big chunks of treatment – chemo, surgery and radio ga ga – is over.

I don't have to do this EVER AGAIN!

I don’t think it’ll hit me for some time that life doesn’t revolve around treatment anymore, that it’s not all about cancer now. Me and DH celebrated by taking the kids with us for pink fizz and amazingly good slabs of grass-fed beef at the new Argentinian steakhouse in town. (I didn’t get my small children drunk, obvs. They had juice and burgers.)

It’s not completely over, of course. I had the eleventh of 17 herceptin drips yesterday, and will continue to have those every three weeks until 1 December. And in three weeks I’ll probably be going back on the tamoxifen for five years (and hopefully I won’t feel like I’m going to kill someone this time).

And there’s the small matter of the breast reduction op to even the old knockers up, which will be Novemberish. But all the really big stuff, the actual hardcore caaancer fucking, is pretty much done and dusted. Go me! Whoop whoop!

Ouch. I just whooped too hard and bashed the boob. It’s sore, you know. After 15 whole breast radiotherapy treatments and five targeted boosters where the tumours were, The Tit In Question is pretty red and uncomfortable. The skin hasn’t broken, yet, although the radiation will continue working for another week or so and it’ll get worse before it starts healing. It’s like very bad sunburn, really. Or like I’ve dipped that most tender bit of me in a vat of hot oil.

The New Nipple looks particularly odd. It’s dark, swollen, shiny (WTF?) and looks a bit depressed. As would you if you’d been battered by radiation for days on end, I suppose. Still, it should all settle down and perk up (literally, I hope) in the next few weeks. I’m using calendula lotion and Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream on it, which helps enormously (this is not an NHS recommendation, you won’t be surprised to hear, but it was developed for burns before becoming a beauty must-have, and is my Top Tip for dealing with your tits being zapped).

Anyway, I’m sure plenty of champers will be imbibed this weekend, not just to celebrate the end of the bad things, but also my beautiful nieces’ first and fourth birthdays, and my darling daughter’s fifth. So I will get to see all of my family, and most of my friends, over the next few days, and I’m sure there will be plenty of tears, hugs and toasts all round.

There’s other stuff afoot, too: I bought my first ever laptop, a shiny red Dell number, and have started writing The Novel. I don’t hang about, you know. I’ve got a great idea (I think. I hope)  although I’m starting to realise I’ve set myself quite a tricky task with the premise of the story. I was inspired to just get on with writing the damn thing by Stephen King’s On Writing, quite the most brilliant, clever, funny, true book on creating popular fiction, which you must read if you have ever even considered writing a novel. And me and DH have a little house project bubbling away on the back burner, which I will tell you about another time.

I’ve just picked up an email. My wonderful Pops, whose birthday we will be celebrating on the very day of my last herceptin treatment, has written down his own thoughts about what it’s been like for him since I was diagnosed last October, to join my mummy’s guest post. It made me cry, of course, and I thought you’d like to see it:

‘What it’s been like being Pops.

I’m sorry it’s taken so long. It’s not easy you know, writing – not for me, anyway. Takes ages to start, just like my old banger. My old banger and I have a lot in common; it regularly suffers from a flat battery and I suffer from a flat brain. It could be a state of abalienation. Just from time to time both of us need fustigating. Also the worry is does anyone give a shit what you have to say anyway.

Shocking does not describe it. It can’t. That unspeakably awful word CANCER. The word no one wants to hear. Not if it concerns you. But my beautiful darling daughter had to.
Stressed out about your job? Stressed out about your car? Stressed out about your neighbours? Stressed out about your kids? Well, I can’t take you seriously. Welcome to the world of cancer (and you will need the courage to meet it).

MajMaj had the courage to meet it. Her indomitable spirit, her cheerfulness, a cheerfulness that took me by surprise sometimes. I had to remind myself that she was suffering from cancer. But then that is our daughter.

The initial thought is, of course, why? Why my daughter. It’s not fair, she’s got two lovely children and a loving husband and she’s so young. It’s just not fair. But since when has life always been fair? I don’t want to say what my lovely wife has already covered and anyway she describes it better than I ever could.

When I first heard the news my first thought was that I just wished I could swap places. I could not bear to think of my darling daughter having to go through the months of treatment.

At times like these MajMaj needed a lot of support from family and friends and she is lucky to have so many wonderful friends. I know some of them and apologies for not knowing all of your names (but you know who you are). My special thanks would have to go to J and S, MajMaj’s truly dear friends. I wish I had friends like that. So a huge thanks to you all for your support. At times like these people’s kindness restores one’s faith in human nature.

And now it is almost over. Maja will be alright.’

My darling Pops is right, of course. I am truly blessed with an amazing family and bloody fantastic friends. Thank you all for holding my hand during this arduous process of giving cancer the finger. And now, if you don’t mind, some champagne is demanding my attention. Na zdrowie!

The end of the first school year

Today is the end of term. The last day of DD’s first year at school. I know time speeds up as you get older, but this is ridiculous: it seems like a matter of weeks since I left her at the door of her reception classroom for her first full day and then cried all the way back to the car. Mind you, there was the slight inconvenience of the Big C: when I was diagnosed in October we’d barely got into the rhythm of being a schoolgirl and a school mum, and the months since have been a whirlwind of scans and new shoes, chemo and uniform, surgery and learning to read, packed lunches and radiotherapy.

All of which could have had a disastrous effect on such a sensitive soul (DD and me both, ha!) but we got her first report yesterday and I could have died of pride reading it. In the face of all that upheaval and worry (and being the youngest in the school), my extraordinary daughter has done astonishingly well by anyone’s standards. I knew she was a bright cookie and a very lovely small human, but it’s very good to know that her teachers can see everything I see in her.

All I wanted was for her to make friends, enjoy herself, love reading, and have fun, and she’s done that in spades while being ‘A PLEASURE TO TEACH’. Fab. Her teachers have been fantastically supportive all year, dishing out cuddles and, literally and metaphorically, holding DD’s hand as she took her first steps on the school journey. I’ve sent DD in this morning with some very well deserved thank you pressies.

The long-serving, warm, lovely head teacher is retiring today, too, and she will be missed. She knows the name of every child in the primary school, is always ready with a cuddle and praise, and is one of those teachers who you know genuinely loves children. So next school year will be interesting in lots of ways: my treatment will be over by Christmas, there will be a new head teacher in January, and we will be filling in school application forms for my licious DS, unbelievably. He’s not even three until the last week of August, so he’ll be starting when he is four and a week, bless his skinny little knees.

He’s settling into pre-school at his nursery beautifully, though, and will be fine. I’ve always thought that having babies in August or September is particularly tricky: the young ones just seem too little to start school, and September babies often seem bored and more than ready by the time they are finally allowed to start (not to mention that extra year of pre-school fees).

We’ve got plenty of fun lined up this summer: DD’s social diary is already looking pretty packed, including a couple of mummy days out while DS is on his full nursery days. I’ve always taken a day off to see the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy, and last year took DD with me for the first time. She adored it, so we’re going again this year together (and then to ‘a little Italian place for carbonara’ as she always requests in London, bless her mini-cosmopolitan soul). And we’ve got tickets to see Kate’s wedding dress at Buck Palace, hurrah!

What DD doesn’t quite know yet is that the summer hols festivities won’t actually start for me until next Friday, when I finally finish The Month of Radio Ga Ga. Next week she’s having quite a few playdates when I’ll be at the hospital for a stupid week of five rads, two consultant appointment, one heart scan and one herceptin drip. Pfft. DD knows none of this. She doesn’t need to. As far as she’s concerned my bad booby is better, because it is. Still, we will be celebrating next Friday night: DD’s asked if we can all go out for a curry, en famille.

In other news, hot off the press (and this will possibly be TMI if you are a bloke), MY PERIODS HAVE RETURNED!! This may not seem like something to celebrate, but there was a general suspicion in medical quarters that the ‘chemopause’ – your lady bits basically going into hibernation for the duration of the treatment – may have turned into full-on menopause. And I’m not even 38 yet, so that did feel too young. I didn’t want any more children anyway, but there is something about that choice being taken away from you that is deeply upsetting. But no! Two weeks ago I felt a familiar twinge in my ovaries, and exactly 14 days later, the mother of all menstruations arrived. I actually think it’s been eight months’ worth all at once: it’s like a particularly grisly scene from the Sopranos every morning, and for the first three days it felt like wolves were ripping out my womb. But I am so bloody pleased that my body is working again, I don’t care. DH was quite emotional when I told him: the idea of having a menopausal wife evidently wasn’t high on his ‘must have’ list this year, on top of everything else.

I was feeling a bit down yesterday, probably because after the novelty of being fertile again wore off, I remembered how tedious periods are, but I have perked up considerably today, not least because I am finally officially a size 12 again and am rocking my new  black skinny jeans. Yay! (Thank you W for introducing me to Tim Ferriss and his Four Hour Body regime – I’ll do a post on this soon).

Today, the sun is shining for the first time in weeks, and after this morning’s session I will be three quarters of the way through the radiotherapy. Whoop! This last big chunk of caaancer-f*cking is almost over!

Butterflies and books

I had a vision last week. No, not Rebekah Brooks’ face appearing in a slice of toast, sadly. It happened during a Health Kinesiology session with my wonderful friend E, who is training to be a practitioner. I’m one of her guinea pigs, which is more than fine with me – I’ve used HK on and off for many years and she’s already one of the best, most intuitive practitioners I’ve worked with.

Kinesiology is one of those complementary therapies that divides people. There’s absolutely no scientific evidence that it works. It’s properly holistic: either you ‘get’ the premise that your body has infinite wisdom and a skilled practitioner can interpret its weaknesses, blocks, and imbalances, and then help to resolve physical, emotional and spiritual issues, or you don’t. I’m very into all branches of ‘energy medicine’, which includes acupuncture, so HK has been, for me, a crucial aspect of my treatment since the day of my breast cancer diagnosis. It helps that E knows me extremely well, and sometimes one of the ‘things’ that comes up, that my body and soul is urgently requesting, is as simple as a big belly laugh or a massive squeezy hug.

Anyway, after balancing all my energy points last week, the ‘thing’ that came up, bizarrely, (an HK session is frequently an open-minded adventure into the unknown, even if you think you know what you’re there for) was the apparently random word ‘ridding’. E held various points on my head, while I had to focus on the word ‘ridding’ and let the context of what it meant just sort of come to me.

I concentrated on ridding. Ridding ridding ridding. The first thing that came to mind, obviously, was being rid of f*cking caancer. Then ridding myself of cancer treatment. Focusing on these two things, I felt hot tears streaming down my cheeks as I felt very deeply all over again the full horror of having cancer and going through all the treatment. Then, after a few minutes, something weird happened. The tears stopped. In my head there was a pause, a moment of immense, bottomless calm. And then I had the vision.

It was me, or rather, The New Me. Pinchy, version two point zero. Like a butterfly stepping out of its chrysalis, I saw myself, in technicolour, striding forward, with cancer and its treatment fully behind me in the monochrome distance. I had a huge smile on my face. My hair was long, red and glossy again. I walked tall, my head high (I was also very slim, wearing tight white jeans and looked a bit like Elle McPherson on the school run, but hey, it’s MY VISION, OK?).

Pinchy on the school run. Liderally in my dreams.

It wasn’t just cancer behind me – it was all the old aspects of myself that no longer serve me: anxiety, depression, fear, that extra stone of weight, anger, lack, guilt, a desperate need for love and approval - all the crap stuff that has been my own personal albatross around my neck almost since I was a child.

And what was I moving forward to? Quite spontaneously, in the vision it was utterly normal, and inevitable, that I was a successful novelist. I am cringing slightly writing this, because it sounds a bit arrogant. Also, my loved ones have listened to me saying for practically decades that what I have always really, really wanted to do is write fiction, and then watched me do precisely bugger all about it. Writing novels – good, intelligent, funny, best-selling, award-winning ones, naturally – is what I have always thought of as simultaneously my purpose on this planet, and waaaay too scary to even start. I have a couple of dusty first chapters tucked away, but I’ve never embarked on a serious attempt to crack out my first literary baby. I’ve always been too scared. But there’s something about cancer that makes you laugh in the face of the things you once feared. Because the really scary thing happened, and I got through it.

So that simple, slightly clunky word, ‘ridding’, was exactly right. Focusing on it and watching the subsequent slideshow in my head was an intense experience. After the session had ended, I felt quite drained, but full of quiet, nameless purpose. I didn’t really go into detail with E, or DH, or anyone else about what I had seen. I didn’t analyse it. I needed to let my subconscious chew it over for a few days. Then this week, during a coaching session with the pretty darn brilliant Amanda Alexander, I spilled the beans. As always, Amanda’s sessions are a ‘safe’ place to articulate things you haven’t really said, to yourself or anyone else, and then suddenly you’ve taken the first step from turning a dream into reality. Started to put some flesh on those bones. Telling her about my vision brought it more fully to life. It was extraordinary, like I’d actually seen the future.

Even more interestingly (to me, anyway, I am well aware there are fewer things duller than hearing other people’s dreams, but bear with me), I don’t feel any sense of rush or urgency to get started. I know what I need to do right now, now I’ve put this picture out into the universe, is to just wait patiently until the right idea for my first novel comes to me. I have a sense that writing it will be effortless, like channelling the story, rather than grinding it out. I’ve never suffered from writer’s block, professionally, but I do tend to end up sailing quite close to deadlines because I’m waiting for my muse to land on my shoulder. I say it jokingly, but that’s exactly what happens. When the time is right to write, and my head is in the right space, the writing just happens, in perfect flow, with no force required.

In the meantime, I could read a few more books about the novel form, get stuck into Julia Cameron’s ‘Artist’s Way’ again (stream-of-consciousness writing every morning, as an exercise in disciplined creativity), and maybe find myself some sort of mentor in this area. But there’s plenty of time.

So now I’ve said it, out loud. I really am going to write a novel, quite soon. And you can hold me to that. Let’s just get the remaining 11 radio ga ga sessions out of the way first.

*Thanks so much to everyone who has voted for me in the Loved By Parents Blogger of the Year awards! The deadline for votes is now 5 August, so if you haven’t done so yet, please please please go to the website and put a tick next to Pinchypants. I thank you, my lovely comrades.