New Kids on the Block

After my cat Cosmo died last year, Dave made it clear that he didn’t like the idea of getting another cat. His reasons were good – we already have two dogs and a fish, we live where paralysis ticks are rampant (and one had nearly killed Cosmo a few years prior), and perhaps most significantly, Cosmo was a bit of an arsehole.

Then, towards the end of last year, and quite possibly after an undiagnosed head injury, Dave rang me one afternoon at work and said, appropo of nothing, ‘So, do you want a cat?’.

Someone at his workplace needed to give away their cat, and Dave has a very soft heart, so offered to take it. As it happens, that cat ended up getting a last minute reprieve by its owners, so we were still catless but the seed had been planted. Cat nip, actually.

A few weeks later, our friend Jules, who’s a vet, posted on Facebook looking for someone to take two kittens who’d been found dumped in a box on a school oval. What I think about people who dump defenceless animals in boxes would take up an entire post, and would consist mostly of words like ‘fucking’ and ‘arsehole’, but suffice to say the photo of these two bundles of cute tugged at my heartstrings, and we went to check them out, with the prospect of possibly bringing one home.

We got both.

Meet Lulu:

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and Inky:

inky

They enjoy playing with Lego

lulu and inky 2

having mock sword fights with their tails

lulu and inky

shooting lasers out of their feet

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and licking each other’s backs

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But most of all, they enjoy being arseholes.

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Cosmo would be so proud.

Short and Sweet, with a Side of Flies

In the last eleven days I have been in, through and around three states of Australia. Goondiwndi, Narrabri, Dubbo, Parkes, West Wyalong, Wagga Wagga, Gerogery, Glenrowan, San Remo, Cowes, Rhyll, Winchelsea, Colac, Camperdown, Warrnambool, Cressy, Melbourne and Geelong have all played host to our little white car with the luggage pod in top, stopping at servos and cafes and parks and beaches and giant statues. We’ve seen fabulous things, had fun, laughed, bickered, played I Spy and thanked the gods of the internets for our mobile wifi.  We’ve caught up with brothers, in-laws, nephews, great nephews, cousins, grandparents and friends. We’ve slept like babies, all of us, in a different bed almost every night, tired out by so much seeing and doing. We’ve marvelled at how long the days last down here, sweated and whinged through 43 degree days and then hastily purchased warm clothes when we reached Phillip Island, where the beautiful little penguins like it cold and blustery.

And tomorrow it’s Christmas Day, which we’ll spend with extended family in tiny Beeac, population 500 people, a lot of cows, a lot of sheep, and a fucking plethora of flies. We’ll recount funny stories of our trip so far, and speculate on what might lay ahead in our trip back home, which will take a different route. 

The rhythm of this trip has lulled me into a blissful state of relaxation. I’m not someone who normally dozes off anywhere except my bed, but yesterday I fell deeply asleep in a movie theatre, and right now, as I sit here warching absolutely nothing happen in the main street of this part of the world, my limbs are loose, my breathing is slow and I feel pretty much perfectly at peace. Peace on Earth. 

Merry Christmas.

My Word

The written word provides me with many things. Sustenance, knowledge, comradeship, heartbreak, solace, agony, ecstasy, joy and escape. I devour, with a fervent hunger, books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, Facebook posts, everything. The only exception to this has been when I was going through chemo. I only read two things through the entire eight month treatment process. The first thing was a text-book on breast cancer which my surgeon gave me after I asked him one too many tricky questions. I read that book cover to cover, sinking deeper into the mire of my disease with every word, which seemingly rendered me completely incapable of setting my mind to reading anything else. That text-book, like the cancer itself, took me over.

The second thing I read whilst I was in the depths of the disease was a children’s book, called Mr Chicken Goes to Paris. Hugh was 4 at the time, and quite obsessed with this book, which tells the story of a giant, top-hat wearing chicken who takes up his friend Yvette’s invitation to visit Paris. Every night I’d read the story to him, and he would try out his French accent repeating words like ‘bonjour’ and ‘magnifique’, and then ask me, every single night, if we could go to Paris. I would always say yes, of course we can, and then once he was asleep, get into the shower and cry until the water ran cold because how could I go to Paris with my boy if I was dying?

Then slowly, gradually, I started taking my life back from the claws of cancer, and with it came my love of words, and of reading. Rediscovering my love of words lead me to rekindle my love of creative writing, right here on this blog. I always wrote stories as a child, I wrote poetry as a teenager (and had some of my work published in an actual book), and then did two degrees in English Literature. But then, unleashed into the real world, I had to turn my love of words into earning money, which involved learning to write in very technical ways. My first ever ‘proper’ job was working in a publishing house (where one of my tasks included walking the managing editor’s dog), and all of the things I’ve been employed to do over the past twenty-something years have involved writing, but not the sort of creative writing that makes me feel vital and excited and free.

At the same time that this blog has re-opened my own mind’s eye to focus on writing, my now seven-year old boy has also started to bloom as a reader and a writer. Under the gentle guidance of his wonderful teacher Mrs Mackenzie, along with constant encouragement from Dave and I, Hugh has developed a love of reading which sees him having three novels on the go at the same time. He has favourite authors (and authors whose work he doesn’t like), makes up alternate endings to books once he’s finished reading them, and talks about what book characters would do in real life contexts. All this fills my heart to bursting, and I am keenly aware of our shared genetics. Then he tells me that he loves reading more than ice-cream, and I realise that as similar as we are, we are also very different. I’m still proud of him though – enormously so.

This week he brought home a book review he did for assessment. I’ve included picture of it below, but as seven-year old boy handwriting can be hard to read, I’ve transcribed it here. Word for word, no editing, no embellishment, no fixing.

Banging! Pursuing! Tricking! Elizabeth is the main character from ‘The Paper Bag Princess’ by Robert Munsch.

Elizabeth is all dishevelled and has tangled hair. She wears a dirty, old, paper bag and a bent crown perched on her head like a bird’s nest.

She wears a dirty old paper bag too, because the Dragon burnt all the sterotypical princess clothes.

Elizabeth thinks things and she does them correctly. She is very ingenious, so she can find the dragon and outsmart the dragon. I think Elizabeth should get a thank you or a well done from pitiless, vain Prince Ronald. Elizabeth made the right choise by not marrying Prince Ronald and did not accept Ronald’s poor behaviour so she could be joyful and free. Elizabeth is a character that stands up for herself.

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My boy, the child of my heart. My word, oh, my word.

I’m Growing a Beard Downstairs for Christmas

I’m growing a beard downstairs for Christmas. It’s been a long-term project, started about two years ago. At this point, I can hear 1970 calling, asking for its hippy free-lovin’ bush back.

I have several dear friends with bowel cancer. No, I don’t exclusively hang out with people with cancer (because, let’s face it, some people with cancer are absolute arseholes), but through a support group for people with the dreaded big C, I’ve met some bloody amazing women with this fucking awful disease.

At this point you are wondering why I started off talking about my pubes and then segued into bowel cancer. Stay with me friends, and it will all become clear (unlike my downstairs department).

The fabulous Australian musician Kate Miller-Heidke (who is basically related to me because 20 years ago the young bloke who eventually became her husband was in a university class I was teaching) has done a Christmas duet with a band called The Beards. Being middle-aged, suburban, and incredibly un-hip, I cannot claim to have ever heard of The Beards until today, but as the lover of a man with a mighty ginger beard, I can say without a doubt that they must be a great bunch of blokes.

Plenty of musicians put out Christmas songs, and let’s be frank most of them are shite. But this one from Kate (cos we’re totally on first name terms) and The Beards is not shite, it’s bloody hilarious, and the kicker is that all proceeds from download sales will go directly to Bowel Cancer Australia. So, it’s a Christmas song that’s not shite, but it’s dedicated to raising money to stop the shite (literal and figurative) that bowel cancer causes in so many people’s lives.

So please, get on board. The pink cancer gets so much attention (for which I am forever endlessly fucking grateful), but it’d be great to see the less glamorous brown cancer get some attention and some money for research and support. You can preview the song here on Kate’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/katemillerheidke/videos/10153264876293730/ and then you can pay to download the song and thereby donate money to Bowel Cancer Australia by going here:  http://www.decembeard.org.au/ChristmasSingle

pubes

Media Tart

In my previous post, I talked about how a couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of being one of the guest speakers at a day-long forum for breast cancer patients. It was a day of revelations, epiphanies and really delicious chocolate slice.

At the same venue as the forum, the ABC was wrapping up a week of broadcasting from my home town, with live broadcasts of its morning tv and radio shows. I was enormously excited to see the ABC Queensland newsreader Karina Carvalho in the flesh. I do believe that as well as being an incredibly talented journalist, she is also the most beautiful human being I’ve ever laid eyes on. Jimmy Giggle was also there, apparently he is a bit of a thing in the pre-school mums set, but I could never get past that high-pitched voice and the annoying owl side-kick. Anyway, I digress.

During the forum lunch break, I was approached by a bloke in an official-looking ABC polo shirt, and asked if I was Julie from Boob in a Box. Before I could answer, my fellow guest speaker Susie excitedly told the bloke, who turned out to be ABC Southern Queensland’s breakfast radio host David Iliffe, that she likes to wake up with him every morning. Realising that my fifteen minutes of fame may be rapidly dwindling, I interrupted that particular love fest to assure David that I was in fact Julie. He then asked if I’d be willing to be interviewed for his show. It took me about four milliseconds to agree.

I have always held a deep desire to be a radio announcer. Given that I don’t have a journalism degree, or want to drive a black thunder and give away icy cold cans of coke, or hold rabidly right-wing views about refugees or dole bludgers or single mums, that particular dream is highly unlikely to ever become a reality. So the next best thing is to be interviewed on the radio by someone who asked such interesting questions that I pretty much instantly felt like we were just two people having a chat (apart from the giant fuzzy microphone that is).

I was very excited when David told me that my interview would be played at 7:15am the following Monday morning, but considerably less excited when at 7:20 the following Monday morning I realised that instead of listening to the radio I was arguing with Hugh about whether he should eat the rest of his breakfast or not. He thought not, I thought otherwise, and I missed hearing my own dulcet tones on the radio. Other people heard it, and told me I didn’t sound like a total dickhead, but until I heard it myself I wasn’t convinced.

David kindly sent me the link this morning. I don’t sound like a dickhead, but boy do I have the rising intonation at the end of sentences thing nailed. David assured me that half the population do this, and that he hadn’t noticed until I pointed it out, at which point I realised why my friend Susie liked waking up with him every morning.

If you’d like to hear me talk about cancer, and this blog, and you my lovely readers, in my frighteningly Strayan accent, here’s the link: https://soundcloud.com/abc-southern-qld/how-the-boob-in-a-box-blog-has-helped-woman-with-breast-cancer

Moving In

On Friday night, Dave and I went and saw the comedian Lawrence Mooney do his live show at the Brisbane Powerhouse. It was a superb show – equal parts hilarious, clever, thought-provoking, inappropriate and downright rude. The underlying premise of the show is about Mooney and his brothers travelling to England to bury their uncle and settle his affairs. Early on in the set, he made the observation that whilst our bodies are amazingly good at sending pain signals to our brain as soon as we stub our toe or paper cut our finger, they are totally shit at giving us even the slightest hint that we have a golf ball sized tumour growing in one of our kidneys. The audience laughed – most of them a bit reservedly (because: cancer) and then he came in with the killer (pardon the pun) part of the story. I’m paraphrasing here, but something along the lines of given the stats, and how our bodies seem so focussed on stubbed toes and paper cuts rather than serious ailments, he pointed out that there was likely to be at least one, if not more, people sitting in the audience with terminal cancer who didn’t know it yet. He put it out there, and let it sit. Most people laughed, but that sort of nervous titter that quiets off very quickly, whereas I had a good, deep belly laugh. Because he’s right, and because I had my check-up last week, and so as far as medical science and I know, that person sitting in the audience with undiagnosed terminal cancer was not me.

But listening and looking around and people laughing so hesitantly and nervously about cancer really tickled my fancy. Cancer is a club that nobody wants to join, and people are so fearful of it (rightly so, it’s fucking terrifying) that they dare not tempt fate by laughing too fulsomely at a cancer joke. The week before I’d been a guest speaker at a day-long forum for people with breast cancer. Looking out into the audience full of bald heads, scarves and wigs, I was struck by a distinct feeling of belonging, of knowing and of connection. I didn’t need to explain or contextualise my story for these people, because it was each of their story too. I didn’t have to use analogies to try to describe the emotional pain of diagnosis, I could just go right in and talk about that pain, and how I came out the other end of it. I didn’t need to detail how the fear at the beginning was so all-consuming, because they too had been consumed by that same demon; in fact some of them were still being ruminated in the belly of the best, not yet regurgitated out in a form barely resembling their previous self. So I talked, and I talked, told jokes about missing breasts and being high on pethidine, and they laughed big, jolly, guttural laughs. I connected with these people, because they are my tribe.

It was an epiphany of sorts to realise that these people, mostly women whose breasts once delivered pleasure and joy and sustenance for babies, but who had subsequently been chopped and poisoned and burned, are now my people. What’s between us is unspoken – a knowing. After my speech I stood in line to grab a coffee at morning tea, and had the most raw conversation with Trish, whose wig looked so bloody good that I was totally fooled, and whose taste buds are so destroyed that she didn’t care what sort of cake she had with her coffee. She wanted cake though, because it’s cake and she’d made the huge effort to be out and about when her body was screaming at her give in and get into bed and not get out until her next chemo treatment. I told her the chocolate one looked dodgy and she should definitely have the pecan, mostly because I have working taste buds and wanted the chocolate one. Later I talked to Ros, who couldn’t work out how to use her bloody iPhone so I typed the URL of this blog into Safari for her and set up a bookmark. I didn’t wonder why a grown woman couldn’t use her own phone. During chemo I crashed my car into a fence because my brain simply forgot how to drive.

The theme of my speech at the forum was ‘moving on’. I prepared a whole presentation on the subject beforehand, but it wasn’t until I stood there on that day, in front of all the cancer peeps, that I realised that finding a good head space after cancer is actually more about moving in than moving on. Moving on implies that you can leave cancer behind, without a backward glance. I don’t think that’s possible – it’s just too big a thing to pop in a cupboard along with your ab crunch machine and cake pop maker. Instead, I think you need to move in to the tribe, the been there, done that, still doing it, have the missing bits to prove it gang, and find your peace. Look around and see your common pain, and know that you aren’t alone, and you will never be alone in your experience. Admitting that what happened to you actually fucking happened, and to varying degrees is still happening, and that you now belong in this group, you will always belong in this group, is about moving in, in order to move on.

Two days after speaking at the forum, I opened a bank account so that we can save for a trip to Europe in 2017. That’s the year Dave will turn 50, and I will reach the holy grail of cancer – five years in remission. Before the forum, before I had my public epiphany, I would not have suggested to Dave we plan such a trip, let alone open a bank account specifically to fund it. But by accepting that I am a cancer person, and that I’ll always be part of the tribe, I have taken a big step towards moving in, and thereby moving on.

move in

Touch My Titty Tuesday

Today is Touch My Titty Tuesday. It’s an annual event, where I turn up at various medical centres, and allow a mix of people I’ve never met before and some that I have, touch my left breast. They also don’t mind having a good hard look at the place where my right breast used to be.

On Touch My Titty Tuesday, I like to pretend that I’m both brave and inspirational as I sit smiling in the waiting room. An hour before I’d been dry-retching with fear in the bathroom at home, but there I sit with a magazine, watching The Morning Show, and wondering if Stone Dine cookware is really all that it’s cracked up to be.

On Touch My Titty Tuesday I first see a doctor who examines my breast and what’s left, then wait a bit, then have a mammogram, then wait a bit, then have an ultrasound. Then I see the doctor again, and walking into the room I am reading her face, scanning, scouring, searching for a sign. She smiles. SHE SMILES. When it’s going to be bad news, they don’t smile. Ask me how I know. But she smiled. She smiled.

On Touch My Titty Tuesday, my next stop is the medical oncologist. When we first met, this guy was serious. Very serious, actually, but that is probably the only way to be when you have to tell someone that their five-year prognosis is 50/50. But as time has gone on, and my tests have been clear and I’ve continued to feel well (apart from the hideous side effects but for the purposes of a short and sweet blog post, let’s not dwell on those) and to live my new normal life, the seriousness has eased and I feel like maybe he’s not so worried about me. Perhaps that’s just me projecting, because I’m not so worried about myself, but that’s certainly not a bad thing, is it? In any case, these days our meetings are far easier (for both of us, I suspect) and he smiles – really smiles – and makes a joke about not wasting my time, given how well I am, and says see you in a year.

On Touch My Titty Tuesday, the doctor who used to need to see me fortnightly, and then monthly, and then three monthly, tells me he now needs to see me only yearly. I think to myself that my titty will feel unloved without its regular outings, but decide not to share that joke with him – we might be more comfortable with each other now, but really, we’re not quite at that point yet (and let’s face it, probably never will be). I leave, smiling, really smiling.

On Touch My Titty Tuesday, I begin my fourth year in remission. It’s been three years since I felt like I was on the precipice of losing everything, and here I am, hopeful, optimistic, fortunate.

On Touch My Titty Tuesday, I’m feeling good.

 

Three Years

Three years ago today, I had my right breast and lymph nodes removed because I had stage 3C, oestrogen positive, invasive ductal cell carcinoma with spread to 12 of 16 lymph nodes. For a while, that sentence was a sentence, and it defined me and how I existed. I wasn’t really living my life then, but rather just existing while I endured surgeries and chemo and radiation.

In the months after treatment finished I sometimes felt like a stranger in my own life – on the outside looking in. I went through the motions in two ways – with no emotion or with too much. I felt nothing or I felt everything. I thought about what the world would be like when I died, and had my funeral planned in minute detail. Cancer had sucked the life out of me, but there I was, still alive. The Walking Dead.

But then things started to change, slowly but surely. I connected with a group of other cancer people. Cancerians? (Like Rotarians but without the community spirit and sausage sizzles.) And I started to disconnect from the hospital, and the treatment, and moved out from under the cloud. Holy shit, there’s sunshine, there’s Vanuatu, there’s me with my George Clooney hair looking like I belong in an my happily average life.Julie an Dave

Soon after I started feeling like being at work made sense again, and that sending my son to after school care would not be the catalyst to make my cancer return. I started a blog, started speaking about my experiences, and started realising that everything – and I mean everything – that I had experienced was normal. I was not unique, special or crazy. I didn’t deserve cancer, I didn’t invite cancer, but I got it anyway.

Cancer will always be part of my narrative, but three years on it’s no longer the central theme of my life story. It doesn’t define me, or degrade me, or deny me. Remission three years on feels good. It suits me. I think I’ll keep it.julie

Maybe

It’s October, which means it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It also means that about a week’s time, it’ll be three years since I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Three years. I know I should be moved to wax lyrical, but all I can think is holy fuck, three years. Three. Years. Such a short time; such a long time. Such a hard time; such a good time. So much fear; so much grace.

The fact that it’s October pretty much passed me by until about ten minutes ago. That’s because this year September pulled out the big guns to take all of October’s shitty limelight, and wrested the crown of most bullshit month ever.

September started out really well, with Dave’s university graduation and Father’s Day celebrated with a hangover. I then felt a bit sad, as September 9 is my Dad’s birthday, and the first without him here. He was a cranky old shit who would let you know in no uncertain terms if the present you had so thoughtfully chosen was not really going to work for him ‘what am I supposed to do with this?‘, but he was my Dad, and he’s gone.

Moving on from that momentary melancholy, was the high point of the month, with Tony Abbott getting unceremoniously arseholed by the silver fox that is Malcolm Turnbull.

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Source: @textsfrommalcolm on Instagram

We then rolled into the last two weeks of school, winding down towards a few days at the Gold Coast and then on to our long-awaited and militarily planned camping trip with our usual camping buddies. Firewood was gathered and packed, water bladders filled, menus decided upon and food purchased, tents and sleeping bags and toilet paper all packed.

And then, dear reader, it all went to shit. We arrived at the Gold Coast, and we got about 45 minutes at the beach with my beautiful friend Antoinette and her husband and kids before Hugh took ill. Hugh basically never takes ill, so I was completely unprepared for the onslaught of crazily high fevers, vomiting and diarrhoea. We headed home, cancelled the camping trip, unpacked all the wood, and the water, and the tents and the sleeping bags and the toilet paper, and waited, despite Dave’s suggestion that we should take him to the doctor, for him to get better. Except he didn’t get better, and by Thursday night we were in Emergency being told that he had pneumonia, and would have to be admitted.

It won’t surprise you to know, that after miscarriages, and cancer and the whole thing with my Dad dying earlier this year, hospitals freak me out.  I stood watching as my 7-year-old had a chest x-ray, thinking about the ultrasound I’d had in the same place four years ago, which showed our miracle pregnancy was no longer a miracle. I sat looking at my 7-year-old lying listless on a gurney in Emergency thinking about how my Dad had looked on a very similar gurney when he was close to death in February. And when the doctor put the chest x-ray on the light box to show us our boy’s congested lungs, I remembered, so clearly that I could smell the smells and taste the fear, of the anaesthetist showing me the x-ray of my lungs before I went into surgery. My lungs were clear but my right breast looked like a giant white cloud of cancer.

I sat for four days in a chair next to my boy’s bed as the oxygen, antibiotics and fluids worked to fix his poor, sick little body. I felt so cold the whole time, but especially that first night, full of my own fear, combined with a decent dose of guilt that I had not realised how sick my child was, even as his lungs were struggling to work. Had I let my own anxiety about doctors prevent me from seeking help sooner? I don’t think so, because I truly thought he had a virus that would pass, as viruses do, but, I have to be honest and say … maybe. Maybe.

So here I sit, with my big, fat maybe. Hugh is out of hospital, and doing well. He’s had the shittiest school holidays ever, but has been rewarded with about as much Pokemon paraphernalia as a boy can handle. He’s a robust and otherwise healthy child, so he’ll bounce back and no doubt be regaling his school mates with stories of x-rays and drips and wheelchair rides. My boy is going to be just fine, and I am utterly relieved and thankful, but also shaken by the notion that maybe I’m not as just fine as I thought I was. I’m going to let the dust settle on this, and then I’m going to have my annual mammogram and my three-year post-diagnosis review, and I’m going to talk to my doctor about where I’m at.

Maybe I’m at where I should be. Maybe it’s normal. Maybe nothing’s ever going to be normal again.

Maybe. Maybe.

Fortune Cookie

I’m a 46 year old tubby, one-breasted woman with greying hair, dodgy joints and reflux so severe that causes me to regularly burp some syllables of my words instead of speaking them. I get hideously dry skin in winter, I have a random thick, black hair that grows out of my chin, and fart like a draught horse if I eat cabbage or kale. I have a quirkily named autoimmune disease of the thyroid called Hashimoto’s disease (wax on, wax off), and a neurological condition called Hemifacial Spasm which, left untreated, would make me look like Strop from The Paul Hogan Show.

strop

But here’s the thing – despite all that, I reckon I’m pretty fucking awesome. I’m smart, and I’m funny. I’m loving, and loyal and I can always hold up my end of a conversation, because I’m well-read and interested in news and current affairs. I’m a pretty excellent cook – I made creme fucking brulee for the first time when I was in the middle of chemo – and in 25 years of driving I’ve had one speeding fine. I’m always well-organised, to the extent that upon returning a permission form to my son’s teacher at school drop-off yesterday, she smiled and said ‘oh I knew you’d be first’. I’m also thick-skinned, because whilst some would take that as a passive-aggressive dig, I took it as a compliment and will endeavour to continue to be first for the remainder of the year. I’m married to a teacher, so I know they need at least one of ‘those’ parents to bitch about in the staffroom. Might as well be me.

I have naturally straight teeth, smooth, clear skin that people often comment about, and really high cheekbones. I have an eye for detail, and a head for trivia. If sleeping were an Olympic event I’d be a gold-medallist, and trust me when I say that no-one does a better car-karaoke version of Kanye West’s Gold Digger than me. I have a good heart and give crackingly-good advice, particularly in regard to situations involving arsehole boyfriends, dickhead bosses, and what to watch on Netflix (Orange is the New Black, House of Cards, The Fall, True Detective, Bloodline, Friday Night Lights, Nashville …).

Probably my greatest feature is my resilience. I think I was born with a glass half-full mentality, but the things I’ve been through over the last few years, smashed that glass into a million pieces, which I then had to walk through with bare feet. I remember when I was having my first (of four) miscarriages, thinking that if I got through today, tomorrow would be better. The next day wasn’t better, but it wasn’t worse, so I took that as a win and looked forward to the next day, and the next. I did that another three times, finding my way through dreadful periods of loss and heartache and trauma. I think losing those babies taught me how to find a reason, any reason, to push through when all you want to do is fall down, and showed me the inestimable power that resides in shared experiences. I joined an online parenting forum group after my first miscarriage, and simply knowing that I was not alone in my pain, that I was not the only one, gave me the strength to dust myself off and have another crack.

The pathway through cancer diagnosis and treatment simultaneously teaches and tests resilience. You learn that you are going to have to endure physical and mental torture of the highest order, and the minute you think you’re prepared, it ramps up a notch and you have your breast cut off, vomit so much you wet yourself and get told you are likely terminal whilst you’re alone in a hospital room late on a Friday night in October. The next morning your four-year old bounces into that same hospital room, and the same doctor who has given you the news the night before says you can go home, so you pretend to your pre-schooler that it’s wonderful, exciting news, whilst knowing that you are being sent home to enjoy the time you have left. A few days later, when the test results show that doctor to be gloriously, stupendously, wrong, you think to yourself how wonderful it is to have a cancer that might be able to be cured, and look forward – actually counting down the days – until the start of chemotherapy.

Resilience is all about adaptation. It’s about finding a tiny spark of hope where all seems lost, or acknowledging that there is no spark to be found, and walking away to find hope in something, someone or somewhere else. Resilience is not about always being happy, or positive, because fuck knows there really is no way to be happy about losing babies, or boobs, or parents, or friends. Resilience is about learning to accept that shit happens, turning that dreadful shit over in your hands a few times to make sure you’re completely aware of its awfulness, and then digging a fucking great big hole with the shovel you never knew you had, burying that shit, and wondering if you might have a new career as a hole-digger.

I’m middle-aged, fat, scarred and sore. I am funny and feisty and bright and happy. And I roll with the punches, like a ball of deep-fried ice-cream that I ate not so long ago.

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