The weekend just gone was an amazing one for me. It started on Friday morning at Brisbane airport, when I sent somebody I’d never met a photo of what I was wearing so she could recognise me in the crowd. It ended with the two of us hugging goodbye at the same airport late Sunday afternoon. It was a hard, tight hug, the sort of hug you give someone who means the world to you, but that you may not see again. It was a cancer kind of hug.

In the middle of those two airport scenes were three days of love and laughter and tears and pain and life. I went to Melbourne to meet with some of the members of my online cancer support group, called The Cancer Clique. The Clique formed early in 2014, an informal amorphous microcosm of life-threatening illness and tits and arse jokes disguised as a private Facebook group. Day after day, night after long, unforgiving night we posted about treatments, side effects, funny stories, myriad fears and terrible, awful, unclenching pain. And then someone suggested we meet, in the flesh. I immediately said yeah! But then started having second thoughts because, well, weirdos on the Internet. But I talked myself around, assured that no-one on the Internet could be that much weirder than me, and booked my flights.

So what happened on this weekend? Lots of things, too many and many too private to mention here. But I do want to share my top five highlights:

1. Friends in Need …

This is my beautiful friend Deb, who was stuck in hospital and unable to come to high tea at the Windsor. So we bought high tea at the Windsor to Deb, in the form of pilfered scones wrapped in a napkin. And because nothing says friendship like letting someone touch your prosthetic boob, Deb copped a feel.

 

2. The Official Awkward Silence Count

Zero. Eight people who’d never met before in person, very limited alcohol (it’s a liver cancer thing), hours and hours of unbroken time together, and not a single awkward silence.

3. Show Me Where It Hurts

Not everyone with cancer is bald, or pale, or thin, or sickly. In fact, many of them are bloody gorgeous. Because it can be difficult to judge someone’s state of health from just looking at them, it is sometimes necessary to ask them to show you where it hurts.

4. No Lies

Honesty is the manure of human relationships. It can be stinky and unpleasant to work with, but it makes the garden grow and grow. We talked about death, and dying and life and living, all with complete honesty and a fucking giant dose of black humour.

5. Bitchy Cake Face

I invented a new thing. It’s called Bitchy Cake Face, or BCF for short. It’s similar to bitchy resting face (when your ‘normal’, unsmiling face makes you look like a bit of a bitch), but it’s directed at cakes. I love cake like a fat kid loves cake, but my face most definitely does not show it.

When I got in the car to drive home from the airport on Sunday, this song came on the middle-aged lady radio station I listen to. The aptness took my breath away for a second or two, and then I sang along, loudly, and thought about all my weirdo internet friends. Deb, Megan, Jo, Emily (who took the amazing photos I’ve used on this page, apart from the first one), Jules, Antoinette, Sherie and Natalie, this one’s for you.

At the end of the school year – last year, bloody hell how did 2014 become last year so quickly? – my beautiful boy got a lovely report card which reflected how much he enjoys learning and being in the milieu of a busy classroom. I was particularly pleased to see that his ‘best’ result was for ‘The Arts’ which back in the olden days we used to call ‘Music’. He has been learning piano for almost two years now, and at the ripe old age of 6, can read music confidently and knows his Beethoven from his Mozart. Because my husband is a teacher and I learn lots about education from him, I know that music training has been shown to enhance spatial-temporal reasoning (the ability to picture a spatial pattern and understand how objects can fit into it) and mathematical ability (I know what it is, but I sure as shit don’t have it). But I think of equal importance is the positive impact that an appreciation for music and art and literature has on us as individuals, and our society as a whole.

I loved music as a child, and by the time I was in year 6 (in those days the second last year of primary school in Queensland), I was in the school choir and fife band. I stood in the back row of the choir, because I was very tall for my age, and would sing my little heart out in glorious almost-harmony with my classmates. The fife band was my real love, primarily because it involved a fancy uniform of gold jacket with epaulettes and a box pleated green skirt with knee-high white socks and shoes. We also got to march in the town’s annual parade, and go to various marching band competitions around the state, which was almost exactly like an episode of Glee except that we were all actually school children with mediocre talent and not 25 year old professional musicians, and the grooviest song we ever got to play was Mull of Kintyre, which let me tell you, despite what the title might suggest, is not a song that’s going to be covered by Kanye West any time soon.

Like my son, I loved school and school loved me. I was a bright kid who got away with chronic laziness by being blessed with a ridiculously good memory. I was good at sport (represented the district in both softball and basketball), and was happy, well-adjusted and liked to do the right thing. In May 1980, the local eisteddfod was held, where hundreds of children from all the schools in the area would compete in musical and dramatic competitions. Our school choir was entered, and we rehearsed our two songs for months before the big day. Our event was held in the evening at a big local church hall, which smelt of felt tip pens and 4-7-11 because it was mostly used for bingo.

There were about 15 schools competing, so those schools waiting for their turn were sat in rows in the audience. In the row in front of where I was sitting was a crew of boys from another school who were turning around and pulling faces and saying nasty things for what seemed like interminable hours. I finally reached the end of my tether with these boys, and decided to retaliate by working up some static electricity by rubbing my school shoes on the carpet vigorously, and then zapping them in the back of the neck with my finger. Just as I did this to the first tormentor, our music teacher and choir mistress Mrs Hooper appeared at my side to lead us up to the stage. She became so instantly enraged by my behaviour that she leaned down and did one of those whispering yells into my ear, where there was hardly any sound but spittle flying everywhere. She told me to stay in my seat because my appalling behaviour meant that I would not be allowed to perform with the choir. So there I sat, as the rest of the choir filed onto the stage, devastated and sobbing silently to myself.

You might think that’s where it ended. Fairly significant punishment right there and then for what was probably a pretty minor incident. But you’d be wrong. I hardly slept that night, full of remorse and sadness, but went to school the next morning thinking that it was over and done with. As I was walking across the school yard towards my classroom, I was confronted by Mrs Hooper, who still appeared to be as angry as she had been the night before. She stood looming over me, with her big 1980s hair, and proceeded to deliver to me, an 11 year old child, a torrent of terrible abuse. She told me I was ‘a stupid, fat, idiot girl’ who was ‘an embarrassment to myself and my school’ and should be ‘ashamed of myself’. She then summarily kicked me out of both the choir and the fife band, and told me that I would not be missed because I had ‘no musical ability anyway’. I am not making this shit up, and I am not taking liberties. 34 years on, I remember her words exactly – I remember her face, her voice, and her complete and utter contempt for me.

I walked straight to my classroom, but I said not a word to anyone, such was my shame. I was shaking with fear and the utter humiliation of it, but got on with my work, which to rub salt into the wound, was maths. Long division, or in my case, very fucking long, and usually wrong, division. Somehow though, my classroom teacher, the wonderful Mr Moor, found out about my run in with the hideous Mrs Hooper. He took me aside after morning tea and asked me what had happened. When I told him, his face kind of melted into a mask of poorly disguised anger combined with sorrow, and he knelt down so he could look me right in the eye, and told me that I was ‘a good person and a good student’.

I’m not sure what happened after that, but probably nothing, because this was 1980 in a public school and you’d have to set fire to the principal’s poorly-disguised wig before your parents would be called, so Mum and Dad were none the wiser. Mrs Hooper continued as the music teacher, so I would see her every week for a half hour lesson with the rest of the class. She never spoke to me, or even made eye contact with me, and I remained utterly terrified of her. I never again sang in a choir or a played in a band, although the following year, when I was chosen as School Leader, I felt that maybe she had been wrong about me.

Today, as a 45 year old woman, I know she was wrong about me. But I can still recall those words, and the sentiment behind them. Music teacher’s revenge – the ultimate ear-worm, her words got into my head and I’ll probably always carry them with me.

I love Christmas. LOVE IT. I have always been a fan, but since the whole cancer thing, the feeling of joy I get from searching far and wide for gifts for my nearest and dearest, putting up the tree, nagging Dave into putting up the outdoor lights and wrapping the presents has increased about a million-fold. I’m alive, and I’m well and I’m loving the shit out of the season, completely and unreservedly without apology.

For me, Christmas is primarily about the food – making it, sharing it, and eating it. So far this festive season we’ve been to a dinner with our neighbours, hosted a barbecue for 19 friends and their kids and another dinner for 8 other friends, and gone for dinner and to see the amazing Christmas lights in our city with our other dear friends (who recently gifted me the Pussy in a Package). Dave’s been to his work Christmas dinner, I missed mine because I was crook (sob, sob) but made up for it with a lovely lunch with my fabulous workmates.

We are hosting either 13, 16 or 17 people for lunch on Christmas Day – the numbers are a bit fluid as we get a lot of pleasure out of having strays and waifs at our place, and some people’s plans aren’t get locked in until closer to the day. It really doesn’t matter how many there are, as we will have enough food to share with a small army. Ham, turkey, beef, pork, potatoes cooked in duck fat, roasted beetroot and goat’s cheese salad … you get the idea. I am, as I have previously mentioned, a feeder from way back, and Christmas Day gives me a chance to show my love and appreciation for everyone in the best way I know how – by making a heaving table of deliciousness for them to slowly consume over the afternoon.

Of course Christmas is also about family, and in particular my little family of three. Hugh still firmly believes in Santa and is full of ideas about how Santa knows what all the kids are up to and what they will be getting for Christmas. His wide-eyed wonder and excitement is contagious, and I am now counting sleeps until the big day, so I can see the look on his face when he finds his Santa sack. He is getting a much wanted but completely unexpected gift, so it should be a joyous – if early – morning.

Christmas 2012 I was in the middle of chemo – bald, sick, and pretty well convinced that I wouldn’t make through the coming year. So to be two years down the track, and feeling good, makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world. I had my regular appointment with my oncologist on 9 December, and was utterly thrilled to be deemed well enough to be moved from a three-monthly check-up schedule to six-monthly. That means I will only have to go back to the mind-fuckingly awful chemotherapy ward twice next year. I could say that news was the only Christmas present I need, but I’m just not that kind of Hallmark kind of cancer patient – bring on the gifts!

Best wishes of the season to you all, thank you for reading and for commenting and for being so bloody kind. I’m going off air for a while to spend time with my loved ones, and I hope you all have the chance to do the same.

See you on the flip side!

Today I am tired, sore and a bit over it all. I will very soon be ensconced on a tropical island, cocktail in one hand whilst the other is resting on my belly full of Thai food, but I need a kick up my substantial arse to help me do all of the things that need to be done between now and then.

One of the ways I got myself through cancer treatment, was to create mental lists of things that made me laugh, things that were good and right about the world, or that made me feel warm and fuzzy. Let me tell you that the warm part was easy – hello early menopause – but the fuzzy was a bit more difficult, thanks to the all-over medical Brazilian that results from chemo.  I christened my mental recipes for positivity the Not Shit List, and there were many late nights and early mornings, where I was unable to sleep because of a range of crazy drug interactions, where coming up with a Not Shit List served to calm my mind, focus my energies and prove to me that everything I was going through was going to ultimately be worth it.

So, in an attempt to lift myself out of my Turd-day funk, I present to you my Not Shit List for 20 November 2014:

1. The whole tropical island holiday thing.

One day in July, I sat at my computer, hovering my finger over the publish button of a post I’d had drafted for a while. Once again, I couldn’t bring myself to press that bloody button, so instead I went online and booked a holiday to Thailand for the end of the year. The act of doing that – of feeling confident that I would be alive and well enough to go on a holiday in five months’ time – gave me the courage to then go and push publish on that post. Turns out that people liked that post, and they shared it with others who shared it some more, and suddenly my blog, and a photo of me without a top on, was getting traffic from all over the world. Sure, those who arrived at the blog via a search for ‘naked tits’ would have been fairly disappointed, but all the amazing, positive comments made it so worthwhile.

2. Books

I used to be a voracious reader, but these days I read so much for my day job that I don’t have much appetite for reading for pleasure. But each time we go on holidays, Dave and I get a couple of books each, which we usually end up sharing over the course of a couple of weeks’ break. This year I ordered them online, and when they arrived in the mail, the feel of their shiny new covers smell of the fresh paper made me more than a little excited. This holiday Dave and I will be sharing The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan,  Love Your Sister by Samuel Johnson, Here Come the Dogs by Omar Musa, and Not that Kind of Girl by Lena Durham. We will intersperse these with other assorted short works of non-fiction, including my long-time favourite:

3. Random weirdness.

I arrived home yesterday to find this message from my husband which had been carved into the dirt on our driveway with a high pressure cleaning hose.

4. Cooking.

Speaking of pies and all things food, you know, when I was single and share-house dwelling in my 20s, grocery shopping consisted of gathering up an arm-load of those packets of dry pasta and sauce mix that you add water to, some tinned corn and a bag of grated cheese. Oh yes, I was quite the gourmand in those days, preferring to spend my hard-earned on clothes, shoes and cans of pre-mix vodka and orange. These days, I am somewhat of a food snob, which I believe stems from my twelve months maternity leave, most of which was spent parked in front of the Lifestyle Food channel with a baby who took 115 minutes to feed and fed every two hours.

These days, I love cooking – it is a passion, a hobby, a distraction and a creative release. I love searching for new recipes, working out how I can convert them to gluten-free (Dave has coeliac disease), and then presenting them to family and friends for their enjoyment. As for those pies? Mea culpa, friends, mea culpa.

4. Shopping.

It may be shallow to admit that one of the things that brings me pleasure is looking at and sometimes buying stuff, but hey, I’ve had cancer so nobody’s going to call me shallow to my face, are they? Through my random trawling both online and in actual shops (old-fashioned gal that I am), I develop regular obsessions with certain items that I usually can’t afford. At the moment it’s these sunglasses:

Yes, totally Dame Edna but I reckon I could totally rock them with my un-ironed cargo pants and manky t-shirt whilst watching Hugh’s Saturday morning swimming lessons.

5. 30 Better Options Than Tony Abbott

It’s funny, but it’s also true – 30 Better Options Than Tony Abbott.

Not Shit List complete, and you know what? I really do feel better. Care to share your Not Shit List?

Yesterday, my computer finally got sick of me and my email hoarding ways, and refused to let me send or receive any more until I cleaned out my inbox. I went into sent items, and found I had not deleted anything from there since August 2012. I started merrily deleting messages in big chunks without opening them, until the subject line of one, dated 5/10/2012  caught my eye.

My results.

At 10:53 am on 5/10/2012, I emailed my friends, and said:

I’ve just been told that I have breast cancer. Will be seeing my GP at 12:30 to get a referral to a surgeon. Sorry to tell you this so impersonally but it’s all I can manage right now

I have no recall of writing or sending that email, with its bizarrely unnecessary specifics (what the fuck does it matter what time the appointment is?), people-pleaser’s ultimate apology for not doing an individual ring around about my diagnosis (sorry? I mean, seriously?) and that missing final full stop which just leaves my words out there, trailing and flailing …

I’ve come a long way since then. Sure, I haven’t deleted a single email in the entire 769 days, but I’ve done a whole bunch of other stuff that I never imagined I would have to do, or be able to do, or live to tell about doing.

Other people’s lives also get fucked over by dreadful things. Some people get their share of fucking over, and then a bunch more just to be sure. One of them is the phenomenal Eden Riley, who at 2:16pm on 15/10/2013 texted her brother Cameron, and said:

Hey Cam, how are you going today? Xx

Cam never responded to that text, because he had died.

Over the past year, Eden has been trying to deal with the suicide of her beloved baby brother. Because grief (and life) is boundless and boundary-less, Eden is raising awareness about suicide by running  The First International Lip Synch Awards.

The Awards are Eden’s ode (one of many) to her brother. They are also an ode to all of us. To me, and you. Here’s to being 45 and sitting at your dining room table using your kid’s iPad to video yourself lip synching to Madonna, watching it back and cringing at your bizarre hand gestures and weird right eye twitches, and then publishing it on the Internet anyway. Here’s to living life in whatever way makes sense to you. Here’s to being stupid idiots and not caring.

May the breast man win.