Clichés

Having “I Will Survive” in my cancer playlist was inevitable. I avoided that song Survivor, by the girl with the large bottom (or is it when she’s with the other two girls with large bottoms, anyway you know which one I mean. She wears camouflage.)

But you cannot go through this whole cancer rigmarole without tripping over saccharine over-obvious inevitabilities, like someone buying you a cosy hat, and finding yourself saying things like “life really is too short.”

There’s nothing wrong with the cliches. Sure where would we be without them. 

I am back at work two days per week. The first few patients I saw back in July must have thought I was on speed. I was glowing with enthusiasm, hurling open the waiting room door and shouting out the next patient’s name, beaming at them when they sat down in my room, bellowing “how are things with you then?” gleefully. Thankfully, most of them I had never met before, so they did not know I had been AWOL and just thought I was a ferociously naive new girl. Helped by the acne making me look about twelve. 

It felt bone-tinglingly great to be back at my desk, doing my thing. I kept forgetting the names of things and people, but felt no shame in admitting it. 

I felt alive. (c.f. first paragraph...)

After a few weeks I started getting cross with people. Thinking, “get over yourself, there’s divil-all wrong with you."
Another cliché.

I was blown off course a bit by a fella coming in to me, who I don’t like much, for reasons I won't go into. He had been in hospital the week before and came to me with his discharge letter and prescription. I had a not-very-well-hidden shneer on me.  “Terrible news”, he says. “Oh yeah”, says I, thinking he’ll have had a bit of pneumonia or a dose of gastro. I open the letter. 

Diagnosis: Colorectal carcinoma with multiple liver metastases and suspicious pulmonary nodules. 

Ah.

I take a little gulp. He says again, “Terrible news.”

Hmm, I say. You never know. 

He has cancelled his appointment for the oncologist. He doesn’t want to go through what his wife went through. 

I say to him maybe it won’t be that bad. “I’ve heard the type of chemo they use for this isn’t the worst.”

“Really?”

“I heard you mightn’t be sick at all.”

“Oh.”

If it was anyone else, I may well have let the professional facade slide and told him my tale, and we could have formed a little support group right there and then. But I didn’t, and he left, possibly a bit more inclined to go for the treatment, but still believing his life was guaranteed to suck from here on out. 

I cannot decide if I should tell my patients about my diagnosis or not. The people I have nearly told so far are: a nun; a gentle single lady in her 70s; a young mum with a life-threatening brain condition, and a 99 year old with dementia.

Go do your work there, amateur (and professional) psychologists. 

I wonder what would happen if I did tell. I guess l it would slow up my consultation rate quite significantly - it’s not really the kind of thing you can just slip into conversation and then move casually back to examining bunions. And once it’s out there you can’t take it back. I would have the inevitable outpouring of sympathy and platitudes, and the usual foot-shuffling and looking away. My practice has a large elderly population, “salt-of-the-earth” types, with traditional working class values and expectations. These are people who say “the big C” under their breath, and bless themselves. They don’t want a brash cancer-whupping atheist messing with their world view. 

And how many of them will think feck this I’m out of here, in case it’s contagious! Look at her with her big open sores on her face! Get her a bell!!

But if I don’t tell them, they’ll invent their own truth. 

“I heard she had post-natal depression, couldn’t handle the third baby. It’s another redhead, you know.”

“I heard she hurt her back in an accident and is taking a case, she’s going to get millions.”

“No sure, she ran off from the husband and shacked up with one of them foreign fellas that works in the hospital, I sees her down there waiting around for him to finish his shift.”

“Go way out of that girl, I know for a fact it’s the drink....”

You can’t escape the clichés.