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.
