Rebel Rebel

Things I'm supposed to do when I'm on chemo:

1. Stay away from potential sources of infection, like crowded areas, snotty children, sick people.
2. Get lots of rest.
3. Take gentle exercise.
4. Keep a "fatigue diary".
5. Soak my fingers in diluted vinegar three times per day.
6. Rinse my mouth out with superconcentrated salty water after every meal.
7. Slather myself in a specific brand of oat-based moisturiser (still haven't taken the time to confirm my suspicion that this product is made by the same BigPharma company that makes the drug that causes the skin trouble in the first place).
8. Take multiple prophylactic medications in case I get any of a long list of icky side effects.
9. Use my own private bathroom to ensure my carcinogenic toxic waste is kept away from the healthy people in my house.

What I have been doing while on chemo:

1. Working. In a GP practice. In winter. No sick or snotty people there then.
2. Travelling on public transport to go to a Franks gig in central London. Infection risk on par with a trip to Sierra Leone.
3. Going to the Ice Kingdom in Hyde Park where it's -8 degrees. Without appropriate Arctic Survival suit.
4. Going to the school Christmas pageant(s). Again, hardly any snotty children there. 
5. Planning the Christmas dinner for 16 people.
6. Giving my new Fitbit plenty of stair-counts.
7. Completely failing to follow the sensible advice about caring for my skin and mouth before they crack/erupt/ulcerate. And then giving out when they do.
8. Stacking up my cupboard with multiple unused medications in a manner which would horrify any Poisons Centre employee.
9. Being lucky to get to use the bathroom without the presence of at last one child, two teddies and a toy train. 

If only I had the time to fill in the fatigue diary....I bet it would tell me I'm wrecked ;-)

Two Faced

For all my talk about fighting the stigma, and speaking out, and not being afraid to admit to being ill, I have been hiding myself behind a pseudonym. It's not a very clever one, since it's my married name. But I've persisted with it in the hospital because I feel it gives me a cloak of invisibility. 
No one will know it's me. 

But really, it's just a way of pretending that what is happening is actually happening to someone else. 

Mrs Sarah Chambers is a mummy, she washes clothes and makes lunches and stands at school gates. She signs the homework (though the squiggle is entirely unidentifiable as letters, not to mind an actual name). She organises the play dates. She pays the milkman. It's her name on the dry-cleaning docket.

Dr Sarah Fitzgibbon is busy, a teeny bit aloof at first, but then holds the hands of the widower or smiles broadly at the long-awaited pink line on someone else's pregnancy test. She likes things to be done right. She doesn't like to be asked too many questions at once, in case she misses a bit. 

She drank more than a lot of other girls in college, but was never messy. She smoked until it was no more use to her socially. She offered to be the pretend patient in the tutorials - why should it always be the men who take their shirts off? She was, without really being conscious of it, determined to behave any way she liked, and was not always aware when society had its frowny face on. 
She climbed Kilimanjaro (there was no way I wasn't going to get that in somewhere). 

Now she re-appears every other week, gets on her smart clothes and packs her stethoscope into her bag. She marches in and sits in her chair, goes through results, phones interns to give out about shoddy discharge letters, holds widowers' hands. 

If I bring her to the hospital, to get loaded up with skin-destroying, white cell-munching, head-fuzzing chemicals, she'll never be the same. 

So it's Mrs Chambers who goes in and sits in the recliner and drinks tea. And surrenders. 

She's a martyr, that one. I'd be lost without her.