Not A Drop

I went to see "A Star is Born" in the hopes of having a good cry. 

I went to a counsellor the same day.

Not a drop.

I did that thing of playing chicken with the counsellor when she went silent for ages. I thought I was going to get the giggles, so I ended up filling the space. But I should have held my nerve.

It is very hard to go to counselling without thinking of Tony Soprano.* 

I was never much of a crier when I was little. I remember watching TV with a relative once (non-Irish) who started sobbing away at a made-for-TV movie, and I was gobsmacked at the shamelessness of it. Even more incredibly, as the credits came up, she just blew her nose, wiped her face and switched over to Wheel of Fortune. I couldn't understand how such heartfelt emotion could be switched on and off. If I had reached the point of tears, that usually meant I was facing down deep disconsolate pain and my inner angst had burst out of my nail-digging fist. It would evolve into a wailing and a shuddering and a sickupping mess. It wasn't just something that could come upon me like a sneeze or a giggle, out it pops and you move on, without analysing deeply the whats and whys.

Everyone knows that this all changes when you become pregnant or have children. The floodgates open, the heart creaks at any tiny hint of something small being hurt or harmed, and the tears leak like my kitchen ceiling. It's enjoyable and liberating and I absolutely loved going to see Mamma Mia in the Mums 'n' Babies cinema club and soaking the Baby Bjorn with my tears as well as the baby's drool. 

There is something very therapeutic about a good cry. But Bradley and Gaga didn't do it for me. And I find I am boring myself, these days, so pouring my heart out to the kindly therapist totally failed on the lacrimation front. I could think about my children being motherless, that is always a shoo-in for producing a good salty flow, but I'm not a total masochist.

I was reading Sara Baume's "A Line Made By Walking", in which a young woman who is suffering an emotional wobble returns home to live in her dead grandmother's house. She describes lying with her face on the carpet for hours. That's how I feel on my down days. This insight I am getting (only intermittently, thankfully) into the world of depression is revelatory. It's the absence of feeling, the vacuum of emotion, that is most disturbing. Sadness, heartbreak, desolation - they would all be an improvement on the black-hole-ness. Despite many years of speaking to people with low mood, I always assumed there were strong feelings involved - raw emotion, deep hurt. Now I realise that those would be a relief, a sign that you were still able to feel and experience life, rather than just existing in this detached nothingness. The ability to have a good cry is the very thing that depression takes away from you.

I am grateful for the fact that my visits to the dark places are brief. I think my impatience is serving me well here; boring as I am when I'm content, it's a far sight better than the Father Stone I become when I'm feeling low. So my subconscious self decides to snap out of it, to change the channel. 

We went to see The Grinch the following week.

The tears flowed.  

*{To be fair to the counsellor, in addition to the usual dying/not-dying dilemma that I bring, this time I had the extra baggage of Doing Work on the House. She just threw her hands in the air at that stage. Someone who is mid-renovations cannot be helped by conventional psychotherapy. And if you're living in the house at the same time? Well then you pretty much deserve all the misery. There is no way to keep positive and chirpy when every day starts with the rat-tat-tat of three burly builders dragging a load of rubble into your kitchen, before you've had your first sip of tea. Lovely fellas they are, but Christ I will be happy to see the back of them}

I'm a Loser Baby

I didn't make it to the final stages of the Blog Awards. Very sad. 

Looking down the list of finalists, though, I see that my USP isn't S very well in today's culture. Sticking to conventional medicine and eating just, well, food, isn't going to get me very far in the world of cancerlebrity. 
I don't eat meat though! Except lamb and duck, and the occasional nibble of a cheap burger. 
And I tweet! I am hip down with the SoMe groove! Can't manage Instagram but, and SnapChat is a whole other mysterious realm. Facebook makes me jittery (poor grammar and multiple u ok huns give me heartburn).
But my biggest crime of all is being on Their Side. You know, those evil conniving doctors. Liars, cover-uppers, misogynists, pocket-liners, poisoners, couldn't-give-a-shitters. 

Sigh.
It will be ever thus, and I need to get over it. 

So besides the crushing disappointment of not winning any awards, I am once again trying to win the war against insidious and creeping doubt. The astute amongst you (hi mum) will be aware that it's been almost two months since my last scan, so I am in the upswing of scanxiety once again. I know this because all of my muscles hurt. I grind my teeth at night and the muscle spasm cascades merrily down my neck and spine. I have accepted that I have a functional disorder - a physical condition caused by psychological distress - but I always assumed that if you were aware it was psychological then the curse would be broken and the pain would fall away like the thorny forest around the freshly-kissed Aurora. Because if you know your anxiety is the cause, then you can tell your body to calm down, right? Not so. And each new pain triggers further anxiety and off we go again. 
[I've just realised that fibromyalgia would be an excellent topic for an award-winning blog. Not sure I could handle the offers of iv mistletoe infusions or angel therapy though]. 

I'm listening to Tindersticks. I had forgotten how good it feels to listen to miserable music. 

I'm rambling. I've been hell-bent head-down determined focussed goal-orientated for months now. I had very little pain during that time. It works. It steers me away from the thoughts of doom demise death desertion. 
I had calluses, not sores, and I'd like to keep them.
But the old skin cracks reappear, the memory of the spotty skin and the tingling fingers and the bloody bloody drain. 
They are there in the past, but also in all likelihood in the future too.
The acceptance of that is good for me. I have spoken to people whose cancer has recurred and they have been cut in half by the shock and disbelief, and the ignominy of having their hopes and dreams set on fire in an instant. But but but. I never thought it would come back. It's why the bloody treatment bells are a bad idea. "Don't be so negative!!" I hear the cries. "Negativity will kill you!" Emm, no, that would be the cancer, love. Besides, a pessimist is never disappointed. 

So I will forge ahead, filling my days with distracting busy-ness and ignoring the background stomach-lurching uncertainty of When. 

It's Not The Waking

This time last week I was filled with that kind of excitement that makes your skin tingle, but you don't realise it's happening. I was buzzing around from room to room, feeling for my phone in my pocket, spinning my head around to see what I might be missing. My brain was on overdrive, doing quick facial recognition checks (it's so good when people actually look like their Avatars) and slotting names and faces alongside each other in my internal database. 

I didn't know that this person was me. I know I like meeting people, and I know I like talking, and I have realised you get to talk more if you listen more, but I did not know that I liked hugging strangers, or brazenly accosting people to introduce myself. 
I've taken to organising events in recent years to make up for my complete absence of social life, and generally that involves guilting my friends into travelling long distances to go to the pub with me. This time it was a bit different, because this wasn't a simple matter of sipping pints of Guinness while reminiscing endlessly about the old days. This time there was a purpose or even, dare I say it, a Cause. 

We were gathering together to talk about being female doctors. We were standing up there and pointing loudly at our woman-ness. We might as well have all been naked with a baby hanging off each nipple. We could not have been more female. 
And it felt ridiculously good. It felt empowering, liberating, enlightening. Exactly what all the critics would worry that it might be like. Bloody women, giving out, no bloody gratitude for all we've done for them, would they not go home and get back to their knitting, 'tis the children I feel sorry for.

Knowledge filled the room. Did you know that some specialities have more female doctors than men? Did you know that those specialities tend to be the lower-paid ones? Did you know there is a massive gender pension gap for female doctors in Ireland? Did you know that some hospitals have far fewer female consultants than others? Did you know that gender affects health outcomes for the entire population, in a multiplicity of ways? Did you know that 160 million women are "missing" worldwide? Did you know that female surgeons have better patient outcomes than male surgeons? Did you know that if you put one hundred women in a room together, they will create an environment where individuals who usually find it hard to speak up at meetings will raise their hand?

Afterwards, I smelled of at least eight different hugged-on perfumes. 

Later on we drank some bubbles on the chilly rooftop, and ate some great food, and chatted about table quizzes and children and lifechanging injuries. We danced a little bit. 

This is where it begins for WIMIN. 
This is going to be the start of something.

Oh, and for the record, one professor brought her knitting with her. 

Busy Busy

I am neglecting my flock here. 
Sorry. 
Lots going on.

www.wimin.ie

https://www.mercyfundraising.ie/events/cork-mini-marathon

But also I have been shortlisted for a Blog Award (self-nominated; how un-Irish is that?) so I thought I better throw something down here. 
Don't even have time to find the link now, got to go and collect a child....

It Is What It Is

I had a scan, and the scan was good. 

I'll have another one, another time. 

I wish I could explain why I find talking about scans so difficult. 

I feel immense pressure in the doing, waiting, hearing, relating. 

There have been scans that I haven't told anyone about. I shouldn't do that, but I do. 

This one is done now though, and it was fine. 

Job done. 

Tripping

I think that this is the fourteenth trip “abroad” I have had since being diagnosed. That’s three and a half years, more or less, which works out as four trips per year I suppose (mathematical genius strikes again).

We are in a campervan on the North coast of Spain, in a secluded campsite next to a dramatically stunning beach famous for its caves. Old men drink cider poured from a height, old women bring their walking sticks into the sea with them. 

I walk into the waves, planting my feet firmly into the clean clear sand, and brace myself for the rush and push and splash of the water over my head. My children are as happy as children can be, and when the ice cream is dripping down their hot chins, peak joy is upon us. 

Adults don’t tend to enjoy these things as much. We talk a lot about holidays, we plan and discuss and compare. We make decisions based on cost, convenience, familiarity. We make sure there’s “something for everyone” - kids clubs, bike rental, supermarket nearby, educational excursions. You can see the determined look on the parents’ faces at the airport check-in desk - herding suitcases and clutching travel documents, frantically patting pockets up and down, rooting in handbags, sighing relief. Children are ignored and then screamed at. They understand the excitement, but not the tension. Aren’t we having fun yet? Sit down. Be good. Be quiet. You can have the window seat on the way back. Give her the stickers. Don’t spill the peanuts. 

Then there’s the luggage reclaim (“keep your hands away from the belt!), the airport transfer (“it’ll be here any minute, stop whining!”) and the hotel check-in (“I want this bed! No me! No me!”)

Before all this, there’s The Preparation. “Have you packed yet?” I hear, over and over, four, five or six days in advance of departure. I look blankly. Why would I have packed? The flight isn’t until the evening time. How long does it take to put some stuff in a bag? But the question does not relate to me shoving my knickers and socks down into the corner of a rucksack. What they really mean is “have you sourced/bought/washed all the items required by all the passengers, and hidden them from them so they don’t get worn, and second-guessed what each person will decide at the last minute that they absolutely cannot do without, and have spares of everything just in case?”

[This seems to be one of those situations where women have brought a lot of this trouble upon themselves. Let the little blighters (and any accompanying adults) do their own goddam packing. It is a life skill worth nurturing. Don’t disempower them by taking control.]

{Now, there’s nothing to stop you repacking it all once they’re done. Obsessive compulsive traits can be nurtured too, you know}.

So holidaying is always a little bit stressful, and apprehension and anxiety are part of the deal. Generally though, hopefully, at some point in the proceedings the bags will be unpacked again, the children will have ice cream drippings on their chins, the mozzy spray will be working and the glass of vino will be delicious. Ahhhh.

What I have found, though, since being “sick”, is that the initial anticipatory anxiety is a million times worse than it used to be. I worry that something will happen to me beforehand, that will stop me from going. I worry that I will become incapacitated on the plane, with a massive pulmonary embolism or an acute bowel obstruction or a sudden portocath explosion. I worry after I land about a DVT creeping slowly but deadlyly towards my chest. (Clotting is a significant player in my Anxiety Lineup). I worry about how much this will ruin everyone’s holidays, and how I failed to find the EHIC card and even though I filled in the replacement form I never brought it to the right lady and now I’ll have to explain all this to the lady at reception in the hospital and I won’t be able to breathe because of the clots everywhere and then I won’t remember any Spanish and I bet you can’t park campervans in ambulance bays even though it would be exactly the right size…

The initial panic fades after a few days but there are always new terrors lurking around every heavily-engineered EU-funded bend. Which is why I have found that I am better off, paradoxically, going on the kind of holidays that are not of the straightforward plane-transfer-hotel-beach kind. I need to have something else to worry about, to keep my mind off the dread fear of Getting Sick and Ruining Everything. So a ferry journey across the Gascanane Sound to an island where medical treatment involves a helicopter evacuation makes sense to me. I know that I would have to be really really sick to call the nurse out in the middle of the night, and in completely arseways logic that is reassuring to me. I have to get over the niggly silly thoughts about whether I am pathologically out of breath or if that’s just the vertical incline of the country’s steepest hill. I push the negative thoughts away because they are too much trouble in the middle of the Atlantic. 

Same goes for renting a camper van, hurling a load of children and bags and groceries into it, and careening off down the motorways of northern Spain. So much can potentially go wrong, and I am the least of it. Will the gas tank explode? Will we misjudge a low-hanging bridge? Will a child fall out of the top-bunk and smash through the floor? Will we float away on the torrential flood that seems to follow us wherever we go? Much further back is Will I live through it all?, and that is where I like that thought to be. 

Many cancer patients find it hard to travel at all. They worry about becoming unwell while away (see, I’m not the only one) and they find it hard to get travel insurance. My thoughts on insurance are this - if you’re a bit sick, the EU/NHS will kindly look after you for a while (if you’re an EU citizen, that is). If you get in such a bad way that you need to call on insurance, then the game is probably up anyway and you can easily squeeze a few quid out of a GoFundMe page….

Our lives are full of uncertainty now, and you might as well be uncertain somewhere nice. 

Step It Up

That last post was a bit of a brain-spew. Sorry. 

What may (or may not) be of more interest is what's going on cancer-wise.

I had five sessions of SABR radiotherapy in Dublin, which involved a LOT of podcast-listening while commuting for six hours each time. It was just after the referendum, so I had a fair amount of eighth-related stuff to listen to, as well as a very entertaining GP podcast from Australia, and the first series of Serial. 

The radiotherapy was easy; lying, breathing, holding, holding, holding, breathing normally. Repeating x4. 

The children got a few extra grandparent-treats, the patients' appointments were adjusted slightly, and no one was particularly put out by the experience (except maybe the car, which is used to a maximum of 60 miles per week, and was beginning to look at me sideways when I approached it at 6:30am, AGAIN). 

I don't appear to have any side effects from the treatment, though the word Fatigue has been used once or twice, to gain sympathy and a license to nap. 

I will wait and see if the two tiny lung lesions are now even tinier. It will be an awful waste of diesel if they're not. 

In the meanwhilst, I signed up for Bowel Cancer UK's clever fitness initiative for the month of June, where people are asked to do 30 minutes of exercise every day for 30 days, and get other people to donate money. That sounds pretty simple I thought, and I was sure that I could clock up half an hour of activity without even thinking about it. But it turns out I'm a little bit lazier than I thought, and thirty minutes is actually quite long. Though the fact that it's time-based rather than distance-based makes it the perfect goal for someone with a short-legged child, as our one mile walk to school and back often takes at least that long. And there is something about the forbearance that is required to stop and look at every ladybird and jump over all the cracks that makes it seem even more virtuous. I have been throwing in a bit of kayaking and dancing and cartwheeling too, just to mix it up. I also did the Irish Cancer Society Colour Dash with my eldest daughter. Who knew that being pelted with different coloured powder while running/walking around a 5k course after four hours sleep and with a bit of a hangover could be so much fun? Not so sure that inhaling all those colours is necessarily the right thing to do after a load of lung radiotherapy though - they told me to watch out for funny-coloured sputum but I'm not sure what they'll say when I tell them it's bluey-pinky-purple...

The hangover was a result of another Doctors' Disco, which had slightly less dancing and more stout-drinking than previously, but was a lovely opportunity to meet old friends and remember an extra special one. 

So the thirty days of #stepupfor30 are drawing to a close, and I will try to continue the good habit. You'd hear them saying it, all the fit types, that exercise really does make you feel wonderful, but I was never really listening. Blah blah blah. Turns out that the little smuggers are right though. 

I didn't have any great ambitions for the sponsorship, other than reaching the £100 target that was needed to get a free tee-shirt (and Doug pretty much sorted that out straight away), but if you felt like throwing a tenner in their direction you can donate here. Please don't give any more than that, you know I will be back looking for something else off ye all very soon...

Work

It's a thorny one. The work issue. 

I spend a lot of my own work talking to other people about their work. Either they want to and can't, or they don't want to but can, or they're not sure and they want me to decide for them.

It is possibly the one area where I have become less sympathetic rather than more so,  since I've had my own experience of ill-health.

We know doctors don't do sickness, and a big part of that is not doing absenteeism. We simply aren't into it. It is not a neutral subject for us. We are not like, "eh, whatevs" about whether we go to work or not on any given day. We are defined by, nourished by, enraged-but-captivated-by our work. It is not a meh kind of job. It is horrific, excoriating, exhausting, illuminating, inspiring, breath-taking. 

So we are not best placed to make a judgment call about whether taking a few duvet days is a reasonable thing to do if you've had a bit of a cold, or whether a few extra weeks tacked on to the end of a gallbladder op recovery period is just what anyone would do in the same boat. Our boat is nothing like other people's boats. Ours is leaky, and carrying a lot of sick people who are glaring at us saying "C'mere, where are you going, Captain? We need you!" (Some of this is the usual "doctors-thinking-they're-gods" hyperbole. Some of this).

By dint of our stubborn pig-headed inflated-ego-driven work ethic, we are a useful study group for anyone trying to figure out if work is good for you when you are faced with a life-altering illness. Because whether it's good for us or not, we will work through pretty much every adverse condition you can throw at us. 

Sometimes that's not very wise. I do recall sitting in a consulting room the size of a wardrobe with a patient whose TB was so active he was actually wearing the mask they give infectious people (but never really expect them to wear). My white cell count was diddly-squat (making me very prone to life-threatening infections) but I just held my breath and nodded at him for the five minutes it took me to fill in his social welfare cert. 

In season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale (which is about a fictional dystopian world, Gilead, where women are fierce oppressed altogether), two women work together in secret because the man is too sick to fulfil his duties and they need to cover for him. They were both professionals in their former lives, but that right had been taken away from them. They enlist the help of another woman, who was formerly a neonatologist (and who can now cure the apparently-moribund-but-healthiest-looking 10-month old I've ever seen). The handmaid (who is about as shat-on as it is possible to be) isn't even allowed to own a pencil, in case she would go around inciting subversion (or making lists of jobs for the man to do). When the two women get the opportunity to use their skills again, to activate their long-dormant knowledge and experience, they are elated and, almost unheard of in Gilead, actually smiling (cue lingering close-up...)

There is worth to work that exceeds financial reward. Yet there is almost a universal assumption that when you are sick or injured, that you should not work. Of course you shouldn't work if you simply can't - I don't think I would have been on the top of my doctoring game if I saw a few patients while I was off my trolley on fentanyl in ICU - but I am talking more about long-term absences, particularly related to cancer. 

When I first asked my oncologist if I could work, he said why not? He had spent many years in the US, where patients had to go to work because the welfare system is so shite, and they needed to earn money to pay for their treatment. That doesn't sound like the ideal scenario for rehab and recovery. But in Ireland, I think more cancer patients could be supported and encouraged to explore the possibility of returning to work, perhaps in a reduced capacity or in a different role. The organisation Working With Cancer is a UK-based enterprise which aims to support both employers and employees in dealing with return to work after cancer diagnosis and treatment. I have not come across anything equivalent in Ireland.

In the past three and a half years, the times that I have been most down, most despondent, have been related to feeling that I have not been pulling my weight at work. I have realised, though, that I cannot commit myself entirely to one job, or one kind of work, as it quickly wears me down and wears me out. Instead, I have found that working on projects about which I am truly passionate has lifted me out of any tendency to wallow or ruminate. Taking on new challenges, trying things I have never done before, walking into a room of strangers and saying "hello" - these are all things that I shied away from in the past. It seemed that life would be so much easier if you just ride along with it, keeping your head down, doing the same old same old, day in day out. Using cliches like those and not even realising it. But that is what crushes you, makes you flat, makes you two-dimensional. 

Do something that makes you think you're great. It's a good feeling.

Other-End-Oscopy

(Thanks for the title, Doug)

I am horrified to realise that I have come all this way without ever sharing with you all (The Masses, I'll have to call ye) about the delight that is a colonoscopy. 

How could I have neglected this important part of your education about the life of a bowel cancer patient? 

Perhaps because the thought of it makes me gag. Because as soon as the last one is over I shut my eyes and cover my ears and mutter "la la la la" and hope it all goes away and never comes back (a bit like some No voters...)

But as long as I am alive (cue multiple reassuring sounds and uncomfortable shuffling of feet), I will need to have regular colonoscopies. 
No one knows quite how regular, because guidelines on how to appropriately manage Stage 4 cancer patients generally extend as far as "Try a few things, then book the hospice". 
There are more and more of us now though. "Survivors". Oh how we detest the word. 
"Living with and beyond cancer" is the trendier term. There's gazillions of us roaming around. Semi-riddled. Given the Half-Clear. Terminal in the Ryanair sense (a few miles away from the real thing). And we need to be monitored to see when/if we return to what's statistically expected of us, like good little no-hopers. 

That means scans every now and then, or then and now, or whenever we get an ache or a lump, or when our private vs public status allows.

It means scoping up and down and sideways (for ear cancer, like). It means PETs that aren't cuddly. It means ear-thundering MRIs, cold-gelled ultrasounds, tumour marker blood tests (they're hilarious; never before have I seen so many disclaimers at the bottom of a lab report. Useful only if they're so high that the cancer itself has walked to the hospital and slapped itself onto the lab counter).

I don't like to get into the My-Cancer-Is-Worse-Than-Yours game (Rubbish. I totally do. Cos I would WIN).
But no other cancer requires the regular ingestion of what can only be described as the Serum of Saruman mixed with Dib-Dab powder. There has got to be a better way. Two litres of the stuff has to be got through, allegedly over 3-4 hours but it takes me a whole day. I hold me nose, I drink through a straw, I add ice. I still have tears running down my face, and full-scale gagging noises coming from deep inside me.

And then there's the "outcome". The "output". The "desired effect". 

I've had proper dangerous tropical diarrhoea, requiring me to knock on the door of a Slightly-More-Than-A-Hut type dwelling at the side of the road in rural Kenya, begging to use their hole in the ground (it was in a separate hut - I knew the place was fancy). That was pretty bad. 

But hour after hour after hour of hearing what sounds like a full carwash bucket being sluiced down the toilet, knowing that it has come from the bit of you that doesn't usually make such waterfall-y noises, is quite an experience. 

We always learned that cholera causes severe, life-threatening watery diarrhoea. I don't think I fully understood what this meant until I saw litres of wee-coloured stuff coming from my butt.

I found this list of helpful advice:

I mean, who doesn't love a bit of gelatin? Melted horse hooves - what's not to like?
Number 9 could result in Actual Bodily Harm.
Number 10 is a bit contingent, isn't it? You only get the reward if your colonoscopy is "successful". Define, please? Successful if it finds a huge tumour and you haven't wasted everyone's time?

My top tips are as follows

1. Scald off your tastebuds a few days in advance with some boiling tea.
2. Ban all eating, by anyone in your house, for the full fasting period.
3. Don't do the weekly grocery shop when the next food to pass your lips is 24 hours away.
4. This one isn't mine, but it seems wise: don't attempt to mow the lawn after taking the prep (thanks RK!)
5. Grin and bear it. Your reward will be the deliciousness of drug-induced sleep, followed by the ambrosia of hospital tea and toast. 

Bottoms up!

Never Better

In a couple of weeks I'll be going back to Dublin for some more of the fancy radiotherapy I had last year. 
(SABR is it's official title, I've learned, which means stereotactic ablative radiotherapy, but also has a pretty appropriate meaning in Arabic).

I have to go back because there are two small white bits on my CT scans in my right lung. They've been there a while, on three scans in a row. They're a little bit bigger now than they were four months ago. 5mm now instead of 4. Or something weenchy like that. 

They could be cancer. They could be snot. They could be little pieces of popcorn I inhaled while I snoozed on the couch. 

I have metastatic cancer, cancer that spreads. Once the cat is out of the bag, you can never get it back in again. Even if the cat is really good at hiding, you know it's out there somewhere. (Let's not even get Shrodinger-y about this; my brain might burst).

So when stuff pops up that "could be cancer", the wise money is on it, in fact, being cancer. Not snot. Or popcorn. 

I could takes my chances and stand firm on the snotcorn theory. I could have another few scans and see does it suddenly leap out of the picture hissing and spitting, saying "I AM cancer you dumbass, what did you think I was? A misplaced salty cinema snack??" 

But the Too-Lateness of that is a little bit offputting.

So I will set the GPS for Poshville again and go for a few sessions of very expensive snotcorn removal.  

No to No

I am anti-abortion.

I am pro-choice.  

For years, I have been able to have these thoughts, in my head, keeping them to myself, reasonably happy with how they felt. I never had to commit them to paper, or proclaim my opinions publicly. I never had to get off the fence. 

I have been broadly liberal, mostly tree-hugging, fairly non-discriminatory, largely into Equality and Diversity and Inclusion and all those lovely buzzwords which make me feel like a Good Person. 

I have been unshackled by religion and yet a staunch believer in morality and integrity, and lots of other "christian" ideals. 

But now it's time to pick the splinters out of my backside and jump off that fence. 

Ticking the NO box on the ballot paper would be easy. 
NO = I don't like killing babies.
NO = I think all women should love and cherish the life growing inside them.
NO = all life should be valued.
NO = abortion should never have to happen.

But that's not what NO means. 
NO means all the same stuff still happens, in the same unsafe, demeaning, traumatic, shame-inducing way that it currently happens every day.
NO means that we continue to brush the uncomfortable thoughts under the carpet, and fool ourselves into thinking we are morally good and right for doing so.

In my lifetime I have held five two-lined peed-on pregnancy tests in my shaking hands. 
Only three of those potential lives came into the world. The other two were just as precious to me, but they simply didn't make it.

I could get pregnant now. I have functioning ovaries and a wonky-but-working womb. 

But I have been radiated upside-down and sideways for three and a half years. I'm pretty sure that's not doing my eggs any favours. And I will continue to be radiated for the rest of my life,  getting scanned every few months, getting superstrength zaps any time  any straggly cancer bits raise their ugly heads. If the cancery bits get very feisty they'll need a good dose of Toxic Waste chemo to beat them into submission. 

None of which is in the What to Expect guide to a successful and healthy pregnancy. 

What would I do? 
Would I suspend all treatment for my Should-Be-Dead-By-Now cancer, and try to nurture the potential life inside me? Knowing that both of us could end up in the morgue, leaving behind the three lives I have painstakingly brought this far? 
Or would I erase that potential life, with a reluctant and broken heart, to grasp at the fragile straw of saving my own skin? 

I don't want to have to think about it. I don't want to face up to the reality of that choice. I wish it would all go away.

Voting No doesn't make it all go away.

It just makes those decisions so much harder.

Not Me

In our house growing up there were six children, plus a seventh ephemeral being known as "Not Me".
This entity (it had no gender) was invariably present whenever a wrongdoing had been detected - a broken cup, a busted lip, a stolen fiver. 
"WHO DID THIS?" 
"Umm [you guessed it], Not Me."

I am not about to fess up to a 35-year-old misdemeanour (though, yes, it was me who picked all the wallpaper off the wall). 

I want to put my hand up and say, instead of #MeToo, #NotMe.

I am one of the lucky ones, one of the minority (yay! another minority to be in! kudos).

I have never been assaulted, raped, beaten, psychologically disintegrated, molested or mentally tortured. 

But I know, personally and professionally, individuals who have endured all of these things. I have looked into the eyes of people who have been in fear of their lives because they were a victim, a target, an opportunity, a soft touch. 

I confronted a man who had committed a crime, though I was too young at the time to realise that's what it was. I was not his victim and I thought I was a heroine, swooping in to avenge on someone else's behalf. Looking back, all that happened was that he patronised me out of it, and I failed to report his sorry ass for using his position of power to abuse young women. He moved on.

I giggled when a very famous individual groped my knee - I was too giddy at the excitement of a bottle of under-age cider, and besides, he was just a drunken dirty old man with fancy French shirts and a big boat. I knew my father didn't vote for him anyway. 

I was less impressed when a pudgy, also-famous, fella decided to give me a big wet kiss on my cheek just because some football match had finished with a score that pleased him. But I was hardly going to make a big deal out of that now, was I? There I was, shouting Man On and Square Ball and Refereeeee! so I I was obviously into the whole thing, and as the only woman in the room I was surely going to offer up a cheek in celebration? Hardly worth getting my knickers in a knot over. 

And the point is, these are only minor transgressions in the scheme of things. They annoyed me, like wolf-whistles are annoying, or sniggers, or inappropriate jokes. These are the baseline. You do not get through life as a woman without some of these. 

There are the other grey-area ones, about consent, or not. There's always a few of those scattered around in the past. 

But I have been lucky, and I realise it. 

However, I cannot abandon those fear-filled eyes that have looked into mine. I cannot walk away from the bruised cheekbones, the crushed spirit, the defeat. 

I cannot join in with the "Erra don't mind your bloody Women's Day business. What about the poor men?" carry-on. 

I don't want to see that fear in anyone's eyes, male or female. I don't want to hear about relentless emotional abuse and degradation from anyone, male or female. 

It just so happens, that in 18 years of doctoring, the majority of those eyes have belonged to women. 

Human

You have a vocation.

You get paid a fortune.

You get upgraded on flights. 

You play golf all the time, that's why I have to wait two days for an appointment (yes I said days not weeks - this isn't the NHS, you know).

You never get sick because you can fix yourself, or get yourself all those fancy disease-finding tests that you are too mean to book for me.

You are in the pocket of Big Pharma - more money, on top of the bazillions you already get paid. Greedy wench. 

You believe research that has been funded by the Bad Guys and give me drugs and vaccines that are going to harm me. Because you're stupid and gullible. 

You deliberately failed to realise that I had the illness that was the least likely statistically, based on my symptoms, and treated me for the one most likely. Pfff. 

You worked for twenty hours straight and then fell asleep on my pillow behind me while you examined my chest. And then continued to work for another ten hours. Disgrace.

On your first day back after 13 months off work you were unable to manage the workload of two doctors, you couldn't fix the IT system, you didn't drag your consultant back from somewhere else, and you chose to stop a drug because it was potentially harmful but you didn't tell my family not to give it. Murderer. 

You publicly advise people to avail of a potentially life-saving vaccine. I believe the vaccine harms people. I'm going to tell everyone you're a bad doctor. I'm going to persuade two of my friends to do the same. You've never been my doctor, or theirs. 

I think you might have done something wrong, so I'm going to get them to investigate you. If they find out you were right and I was wrong, you will be the one to suffer the consequences. Will I even realise that you died because of me? 

You keep complaining. Complaining about something called FEMPI, which sounds a bit like one of those handbags I have. Complaining that you don't get treated fairly. Fair? I've seen how much you get paid. It was in the paper. It must be true. 

You rush me sometimes. I don't like to be rushed. Your brow is furrowed and it's making me think I've done something wrong. I'm just scared, because the internet told me I have a fatal illness. 

You should be what I need. You should fix me. You should understand me. It is my right.

You told my mother everything was going to be okay. It wasn't. You told me my son was perfect. He isn't.

You lie. You're lying now, "to protect my identity". My ass. To cover yours. 

You look a bit uncomfortable when I tell you that I think you're great, that I couldn't bear to have anyone else as my doctor, that I trust you. You can trust me. I won't stab you in the back when things go belly-up. 

You seem genuinely pleased for me. 

You seem genuinely upset for me. 

I have protection from you. You have none from me. 

I never think about you when I don't need you. 

If I meet you socially, I think, "what can you do for me?"

I pass judgment on you. I've seen you doing it to me. 

You say you're going to leave. But sure you've only started!

You say you would advise your children not to follow in your footsteps. That's not very encouraging. 

What about me? What will I do without you? The diluted-a-million-times stuff doesn't seem to be doing the trick.


You're my doctor. 


I'm only human.

Climb Every Mountain

People I have never met were telling me to get up off my arse last week. 

For someone who is not good at taking instruction, that was hard. 

Not as hard as trying to lift 65kg of creaking bones up out of a snowdrift while skeeting sideways on gigantic skis, though. 
With non-existent abdominal muscles, a recently-injected rotator cuff tendinitis, and a big dose of Poor Me.
As well as the ignominy of seeing my nine-year-old scoot past me, snow spraying dramatically into my face as she skidded to a perfect halt at the end of the (teeny) slope, and said, "Did you fall again, Mummy?"

Once again, I am reminded of the wisdom of Homer (Simpson, not the other lad): If at first you don't succeed, give up. 
Nevertheless, she persisted.
And fell over, and fell over, and fell over. 

I could have helped myself, by taking all the advice (available in spades) and paying attention to the small details. 
Put on the boots right Day One.
Keep your knees bent (or is that straight?) Thud.
Look where you're going. Eh, duhh. Thud.
Plough. Pizza. Plough. Thud.

I may have got a bit cranky. I may not have expressed verbally how mind-blowing it was to be heading up an actual Alp, the fiery cold air in my lungs, the treetops poking out of the perfect white blanket, the wide-eyed astonishment of the young faces against the perspex of the it's-ok-it's-Swiss-so-it-must-be-safe Great Glass Elevator thingy whooshing us up and up and ear-poppingly up. 

I complained that any holiday that involved Lugging and Exhaustion and Wrecked and Worth It Though in its previews was destined to be a struggle. I whinged about the searing pain in my calves. "I thought I knew pain", I said (cos, like, cancer and that). "Torture", I said. 
But holy god it was lovely up there, snow-angelling away the muscle aches, watching the spreading joy of mastery in the quick-learning low-gravity-centred lucky sods around me. 

We returned the Calf-Torture Devices and went back up the mountain without them for one last hurrah. Hurrah! 
We have all the gear now, and we know all the tricks, so we'll be back. (No guarantee that the bargain basement stuff we bought will survive to next year, but then again, you could say the same for me).


Thank you, Spreadsheet Man. 


A closing thought on abbreviations.
CHF = Swiss Francs
CHF = Congestive Heart Failure
A coincidence? Not when you see the prices.

Flying Solo

I'm very fond of my own company. I have never been afraid of solitude, sometimes relishing it so much that I might appear unfriendly or rude. I just really like silence and free space to think and absolute personal freedom. 

Where the diddly-feck am I going to get that then, with a husband, a job (that by its nature requires there to be another person in the room) and three needy need-sponges. 

Through a clash of scheduling there arose a situation where I went one way, my children went another, and my spouse went to a fancy restaurant with his dad. 

I travelled backroads in the dusk, roads that I have known since I was a child and yet I asked Little Miss iPhone for her assistance. She is irritatingly wrong-but-right. I listened to 76 minutes of a rugby match, got out of the car at a garage, got back in, heard the commentator lose his nut and then opened the door (thus turning off the radio) just as the ball went over the bar. (Watching that in French is wickedly sublime).

I joined a social occasion, in a place with which I am increasingly familiar and with faces that I have been looking at now for over twenty years. While the hair distribution has changed, the giggles remain the same. 

What I enjoyed most of all though was hearing new stories. 
[*Corn-alert*]  Listening to people, and finding out more about how others live their lives, is really quite enjoyable.

Yeah so I'm supposed to do that all the time at work, but that's an uneven transaction; they tell me what I need to hear in order to help them. Or I ask them questions and only listen to the answers I want to hear.*

But I've become genuinely interested in other peoples' lives. Possibly because I drone on and on about my own now, and I'm bored to tears. Or, subconsciously, maybe I'm storing up interesting stories to write about...

I probably didn't spend enough time catching up with my old buddies but, it seems, they are in it for the long haul and we will meet again soon enough (camping in the back garden guys; it's in the diary. And now the blog. Nailed on.) 
And I'll be back for the Rooibos.

Anyway, I liked being master of how late I was going to stay up and how many pints I was going to drink and what side of the bed I was going to sleep on. Just for one night though. Trusty companions have their place in the world, after all. 






*I like this from Joanna Cannon's "The Trouble with Goats and Sheep"

And I like this from the Waterboys. It's not about me, like. It's just lovely.