Moodswings to the max

Bridget’s picture of Hockney’s Arrival of Spring

Yo. Hello y’all. It’s been a while since I last blogged, a few weeks after my breast balancing op. Loads has happened in the meantime: DH and I hosted ‘Polish Easter’ for the first time, which was rather special; we took the kids to London on DH’s birthday, including brunch at the Wolseley, the Hockney exhibition, and the London Eye; work flooded in; I submitted the first 5,000 words of my novel to a Good Housekeepingcompetition; we found out that DS will be joining DD at her school (of which more another time); and after some stiff negotiation by my amazing DH, a group of neighbours yesterday finally all signed up with a small developer to sell the bottoms of our gardens.

The birthday boy on the London Eye with our two herberts.

All of which has happened under clouds real (sodding rain) and metaphorical. It’s the tamoxifen, you see. A rather unpleasant side effect has crept up on me over the past couple of months. Not hot flushes and night sweats, as I had the first time I tried the drug a year ago, but a severe and at times fairly debilitating state of permanent PMT, combined with waves of deep fatigue. Mood swings, to the max.

Well, it is a rather powerful hormone-fiddling drug, designed to stop my particular sort of pesky cancer cells taking hold in either breast again. Apparently this is common: about six months after starting the meds, a raft of side effects tend to kick in, hang around for about six months, and then settle down for the rest of the five years it is prescribed for.

I am so up and down it’s not funny, for anyone, least of all DH and my precious kiddies, who are constantly on tenterhooks to see what mood I’ll be in. They scan my face anxiously: are there signs of softness, affection, a smile, playfulness, understanding, patience? Or are they about to feel the Wrath of Mummy for the smallest misdemeanour? I notice there is often a silent pause after a spillage or similar, as the children hold their breath, frozen, waiting to see whether the eye of the hurricane will pass by and come to nothing, or they are going to get caught up in its distressing and noisy disturbance.

No-one in this house knows whether, on the spilling of a drink (which happens daily with a 3yo and a 5yo) I am going to say ‘never mind’ and just wipe it up, or whether I’m going to go completely ballistic and shouty and throwy, and turn a small accident into a major ‘state of the family’ incident.

And that includes me. Because it genuinely feels like I am not fully in control, most of the time. Not an excuse, I know. But I am as surprised as everyone else about the speed and force of my disproportionate anger. It’s usually confined to those I live with (don’t we always hurt the ones we love the most?), but there have been a few occasions where I have flown into a rage at other family members and friends, and they have been shocked, not recognising the roaring harpie who has replaced me. After an angry episode, I feel drained, and sad, and terribly guilty, and wish I could turn back time and react differently.

Other times I feel so exhausted and low that I just want to go to bed, in the middle of the day, and I can’t seem to get my thoughts straight. I cry silent, prolonged tears about nothing in particular. My brain won’t work properly. I find making plans difficult, and I stutter and mix words up when I read stories out loud. Sometimes I resort to absolute crap for the kids’ tea because I cannot muster up the energy to make anything healthy, and have the inevitable battle of wills about what they will and won’t eat.

I have little tolerance for excessive noise. I am irritable, unresponsive, and disengaged, some of the time. My joints ache. My hands and feet tingle and fizz. Life is un-fun. DS tells me every night he doesn’t like me when I shout, but he knows I still love him even when he’s naughty. This breaks my heart.

I am also starting to realise that tamoxifen and alcohol are not best mates. A couple of glasses of red are fine, but put white wine, and especially fizz, into the mix and I get drunk teenagerly quickly. While everyone else at the party might have a slight fuzzy head the day after, I am panicking because I have a huge gap in my memory of the evening and have to check with everyone whether I need to apologise for anything. Blackouts are not conducive to mental equilibrium. So I don’t really look forward to going out any more, because I can’t relax and enjoy myself like I used to.

And then other times I am completely fine and feeling like the best of myself: calm, cheerful, full of energy, funny, creative, clever, organised, and capable. This happens most when I am at work, writing and editing silently at my desk overlooking our monkey puzzle tree, focused and in a flow that takes me very much out of my own body and far away from the torturous maelstrom. Then I have peace, and clarity. The sunshine helps enormously, and goodness knows we haven’t had much of that lately.

In some ways, this is tougher than going through chemo. It’s doubly hard because as far as I, and everyone else, is concerned, the whole caaancer thing is over, and I’m well. Quite rightly, everyone moves on with their lives. But I am reminded frequently that it is not over, not by a long way, and sometimes it feels a bit of a lonely struggle after so much love and support for so long.

I have another four and a half years on tamoxifen. I am hoping things will settle down at some point soon. The only solution my consultant mooted, last summer when I took a break from my first attempt at taking the drug, was to also take anti-depressants – SSRIs – to even me out. I’ve been on anti-depressants a couple of times in the past and although they work beautifully, I’m just not keen on taking medication to combat the side effects of medication. It seems like the start of a vicious circle. And you do rather lose yourself on SSRIs. Comfortably numb. Don’t want to go there again, really.

The other options are to investigate the complementary routes: kinesiology to try and reduce my reactions to the drug and keep my energy balances; herbs and supplements to take the edge of the extremeness of the mood swings. Plus fresh air, deep breathing, exercise, healthy foods, soothing teas, reading, meditation, laughter: anything that increases my background sense of wellbeing.

So. I have blogged this one out. Time to get back to client deadlines while keeping an eye out for any blue sky peeking through the clouds and the drizzle. And wait to see what mood I will be in when my babies get home from school and pre-school today. I hope I will smile at them and make them feel safe and loved, rather than fearful and confused. But I just don’t know.

Being balanced

New month, new season, new haircut, new tits. I am finally balanced! (Physically. Not emotionally or mentally, obviously).

It was quite a dramatic event, in the end, for a bog standard breast reduction to match my big ol’ Good Boob to the littler One Which No Longer Has Any Caaancer In. I went into hospital on the Friday at 7.30am, having not eaten or drank anything since midnight. Said goodbye to DH and the kiddies. An hour later I was told I was third on my surgeon Tracey Irvine’s list so I wouldn’t be having the op till the afternoon and could have some breakfast. Hung around on short stay unit all day, then was finally prepped for theatre at about 4pm. Shaking ‘like a shitting dog’, as DH would say in his usual delicate way, as the anaesthetist put canula in. I thought happy thoughts about my babies. Then sleep.

I woke up in the recovery room, had all four shots of morphine, wheeled back to the short stay unit at about 9pm, high as a kite. DH came and brought me sarnies. Famished. Slept. Woke up on Saturday morning feeling fine. The drain had very little blood in it, which is good. I had brekkie while I waited for the docs to come and sign me off to go home. Then half an hour later, it all started to go wrong. I noticed that I was bleeding. A lot. All down my back and sides. The drain was filling up rapidly. The nurse padded my dressings a bit more. And then I realised that the left breast was getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and harder. In the space of two hours, it had expanded into my armpit and up to my collar bone. I looked like Lolo Ferrari, but only on one side. (I’m reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the smalls at the moment, and it has just struck me that this sounds rather like what happened to Violet Beauregarde, except without the excessive gum chewing).

Lolo Ferrari: me after the first op, but only on one side...

The doc arrived to check out what the hell was going on with my pneumatic breast. It was bad news. A bloody big haematoma – a pool of blood, basically – that would have to be drained under another general anaesthetic, that day. No one’s fault; just sheer bad luck. Happens to about one in 100, apaz. Easy to fix, no effect on finished result. Still, I didn’t find that very reassuring at the time. I was losing a lot of blood, and combined with the shock of things feeling very wrong, I started to black out. Blood pressure went through floor – it normally struggles to get above 100/60 anyway, and it plummeted to something like 70/50. Oxygen. Fluid drip. Lots of doctors and nurses fiddling with me. Tears.

And panic. Because do you know what I was thinking? In my irrational state, I was thinking: ‘Oh shit. I haven’t got away with this after all. This is the general anaesthetic I’m not going to wake up from. And I haven’t even got any life insurance!’ I was in a state of extreme, stomach-curdling fear. I genuinely thought I was going to die, of the only non-cancer related procedure of the past 16 months. Blackly funny. But you can’t be that scared for that long. Sooner or later, you calm down, and by the time the freak circus act of me and my Amazing Inflating Breasticle were taken up to the ward at lunchtime (since it was clearly not going to be a Short Stay after all) I was just feeling irritated. My blood pressure had stablised so I was no longer an emergency, so I kept slipping further and further down the surgery list, and didn’t go in till about 5.30pm. It was really snowing outside and DH and my mummy kept me updated with piccies and reports of the children’s sledging adventures. Tracey came in to do the Groundhog Day op herself, bless her, and was most apologetic about inadvertantly giving me a bigger rather than a smaller boob.

I did wake up. Evidently. By the time I’d had all the available morphine (gotta love that stuff) it was very late and I was hungry, and DH was waiting for me on the ward, with my own pillow and my bear and some food. Massive relief. Silly girl, being scared of a little anaesthetic. Didn’t get much sleep as the poor elderly woman in the opposite bed was very confused and yelled (literally) for the nurses all night long. When Sunday morning rolled around, I cautiously examined myself. I was not bleeding. The drain looked fine. My breast looked sort of the right size. And by teatime I was home, giving my babies right-sided cuddles and enjoying a roastie prepared by my amazing mummy.

I don’t know how they drain a haemotoma, but I do know that the entire left side of my body was black and blue. I looked like I had been selectively beaten up. Big doses of arnica (200cc) got rid of the bruising within a few days. And the second op may have turned out to be a blessing in disguise, too, because draining the excess fluid away helped the scars dry out and heal incredibly quickly. When I had the Mission Critical op on my right breast last Easter (nearly a year ago, can you believe it?!), it took weeks and weeks to heal, with dressing changes required every couple of days. This time only one dressing change was required, and two weeks later I took them off completely. Amazeballs.

So here we are nearly a month later. Spring has sprung, the sun is streaming through my office window. I sit here at my desk in the house with the blue shutters, looking out at my monkey puzzle tree. I wouldn’t change one single thing about my life, you know, apart from maybe being able to spend my days writing fiction instead of copywriting. And I finally have two tits of the same size. They are a bit smaller than I’m used to (still too sore to get measured/wear underwires, so I don’t know what size yet), and very scarred, plus the nipple on the left one hasn’t settled in quite yet – it looks a bit like Tracey gave my five-and-a-half-year-old daughter some scissors and asked her to cut it out and sew it back on – but they look alright, and they match. I am symmetical once more.

And I am learning to love my new shape, after all my resistance. It is what it is. As the very wise Byron Katie has remarked, arguing against reality is as pointless as trying to teach a cat to bark. You may fight, and resist, and rail against, and wish fervently, and hope, and resent, and feel angry or upset or jealous, and try to control everything and everyone, but in the end, people and things are how they are. We only suffer if our thoughts are out of kilter with reality. Acceptance is far from passive, I am learning. It’s not about just sitting back and letting things happen to you. It takes enormous effort every day, for me to accept how my body is and what has happened over the past 16 months since I was diagnosed, and be at peace with it all.

I’m still a bit resistant to some things, though. That my hair is taking so sodding long to grow back, for one thing. And that I can’t work out what happened at the end of Sherlock. HOW DID HE DO THAT??

The final piece of the jigsaw

So I only have three days left, including today, of having an impressive cleavage. At 7.30am on Friday morning I will be checking into the short stay unit at the Royal Surrey County Hospital for my state-funded boob job, to reduce the size of my left breast so it matches the now cancer-free, smaller but much more pert right breast.

After it all heals up, I reckon I’ll be down to about a C-cup from a DD – happily, bigger than I expected before the initial op last Easter (yeah, it was that long ago!). I won’t need to be tucking my silicone chicken fillet into bras to fill out the cup any more. I will be able to spend all the lovely Rigby & Peller and Figleaves vouchers that generous friends and rellies have been giving me, on pretty bras (much more choice for smaller sizes, I gather). Given the ‘tits like a 19-year-old’ state of the right one, I may even be able to get away with not wearing a bra in the summer (though I do feel that once a lady is past a certain age, going for the ‘smuggling Tictacs’ look under a Hollister t-shirt is possibly just a bit sad). Another plus: I won’t have to hoik my post-breast-feeding puppies into undergarments any longer. And I’ll be able to wear polo-necks!! What’s not to like?!

'Chesty LaRue? Hooty McBoob? Busty St Clair?'

Well, I’ll tell you what’s not to like. There is a massive psychological difference between staring down at mummy boobs that grace one’s tummy when unscaffolded and thinking: ‘Gosh, I would love to have a few grand to get these chaps lifted and possibly reduced! I’d feel so much younger and clothes would fit better and I’d feel more confident and sexy if I had a boob job!’; and the procedure being forced upon you, in two far-apart stages, because the cells in one of your tits went a bit mental and threatened all sorts of nastiness if they weren’t cut down to size. The decision was out of my hands.

I really liked having big boobs, saggy or otherwise. I liked having an impressive cleavage. So did DH. He’s a tit-man through and through, and was particularly fond of the soft bits at the side, so he’s got some adjusting to do as well. I liked wearing low-cut tops and dresses. I’ve always been quite happy for all and sundry to be thinking ‘Woah, look at the top bollocks on that!’. Plus breast-feeding my two babies is one of the proudest achievements of my life, and every stretch mark and scar is a reminder that I have done some things right as a mummy.

So while I can intellectually process the ‘positive’ aspect of my balancing surgery on Friday, forgive me if I’m not really feeling it. I never wanted my body to be a different shape entirely, and I never wanted a cosmetic boob job. A bit more toned, a few pounds lighter, less prone to dry skin, sure. But being resculpted entirely against my will? That’s a bitter pill to swallow.

I’m sure I’ll get used to it – I’m sort of used to having one small boob and one big one, nine months after that first mission-critical op, and I never thought I’d get used to being lopsided. And it’s a short, simple op and the recovery will be quicker, and there’s no lymph involvement this time. And it’s being done by the same brilliant surgeon, Tracey Irvine, after we sorted out a slight hiccup whereby the date I’d had in my head for the op since September – 23rd January – didn’t get transferred to her 2012 diary and there was a certain amount of date juggling before we came up with 3rd Feb. That – Titgate – was very hard to deal with because I’d been psyching myself up for this op for months.

And now the real date is here and I’m finding it harder than I thought. I need to pull myself together. It’s only a standard breast reduction, FFS, what am worried about? It’s the final piece in the cancer treatment jigsaw. After this, apart from 4.5 more years of Tamoxifen, it’s over, right? Cancer journey completed; job done, well done Pinch, time to get on with the rest of your life.

The thing is, though, it’s starting to dawn on me that this won’t ever be over. My body will be a different shape forever. I will always have heavily scarred breasts. And I have finally realised that I will always have to take care of my right arm and try to avoid cuts, burns, bites, excema, cracked skin. After the rather nasty cellulitis/lymphoedema incident which had me on antibiotics for a month before Christmas, I now have a snazzy graduated compression bandage which runs from my knuckles to my armpit. I have to wear this if I’m going to be working on the computer for a long time (ie, doing my job four days a week), driving for any length of time, ironing, lifting, housework, exercise. Forever. It looks a bit like I’m a dummy in a shop window when I wear it, because it’s flesh-coloured. It’s quite tight and tricky to get on, like wearing support tights.

I don’t have any strong feelings about it, to be honest – it’s quite reassuring that there are things I can do to hopefully stop me getting cellulitis again, because that was so grim. I don’t think a gentle nudge that I have to look after myself is necessarily a bad thing, really. But it is a constant reminder, nevertheless.

And then something else happened a couple of weeks ago that added a new dimension to the realisation that once you’ve had caaancer, life is always going to be different in so many ways, some which are actually good lessons or blessings, and others which aren’t. That new dimension was fear.

I haven’t felt fear since the day I was diagnosed. At the risk of sounding like Simon Cowell, I genuinely mean that. Not one twinge. I always knew I’d be fine. And then me and DH watched the eagerly anticipated first episode of the new series of Restoration Man (the one where Gorgeous George the architect sees a couple through some crazy water mill restoration project). The couple in question had been able to embark on their mad scheme after a critical illness cover payout after she got ovarian cancer. That was a few years ago, she was fine, silver linings all the way, we cheered, such a strong echo of our own experience. Then about half way through, the whole thing turned into a nightmare. The cancer had come back. Secondary cancer is incurable. She became more and more frail. George and her husband were in tears. So was DH. Then she…well, she died, and never got to see their dream project completed. Eeeeeek. Awful.

I must admit that was the first time I’d fully appreciated how fearful DH still is of my health, and possibly why he’s never really felt he can properly ‘celebrate’ me ‘getting better’. It was also the first time I’d felt any sort of fear. It crept on me like a chilly shadow: ’What if it does happen again? And what if, then, I’m not so lucky?’.

But I can’t think like that – I have had such good, thorough, belt-and-braces treatment. Plus I’m never going to be as stressed and lacking in sleep as I was for a couple of years in the run-up to my diagnosis. And I’m taking control of my diet, and doing my yoga, and all the esoteric non-medical stuff I believe in. All I can do – and all DH and my family and friends can do – is trust that things are exactly as they should be, right now, and all is well in my world.

It’s weird that for me all the stuff about the long term and my own mortality has only started sneaking in since I finished my treatment. It’s probably why I’m a bit up and down at the moment. I spent over a year with my head down, buggering on through it all, and only now do I get flashbacks that make me really shiver, and give me some insight into how everyone else might have been feeling.

I think the main lesson is the obvious, and hardest, one: that we only get this day once, and so it needs to be good. Whether that means it’s productive, or fun, or lucrative, or problem-solving, or organised, or thought-provoking, or relaxing, I want to go to sleep every night thinking, yes, I made the most of that day. Whatever the size of my bloomin’ tits. Bye-bye Chesty La Rue, it was nice knowin’ ya. There’s a new pair of chesticles in town.

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…