Happy Birthday, Dear Boobie

Happy Birthday to you! Hip, hip …..

Today, Boob in a Box turns one. When I posted my very first post on 7 April 2014, I wasn’t sure how long I’d stick at this, or who (if anyone) would read it, but I decided to give it a crack and press the publish button. I’m so bloody glad that I did. During this year, so much has happened, and the cheap therapy that writing provides has been invaluable.

The absolute best thing about this whole blogging caper has been your comments, emails and tweets. In the words of the famous Australian orator Jeff Fenech – I love youse all.

To mark the first birthday of Boob in a Box, I’m going to republish some of my favourite posts. Many are from early on when my only readers where me and one of my dogs (the other one just wasn’t that interested). So for some of you, these stories will be new, and for others it will be a trip down memory lane from way back in the olden days of 2014.

One post that struck a chord in my own heart, because it was the first time I’d put what had happened to me into words (well words other than FUCK, SHIT and OH MY GOD), was this one about what happens when you find a lump in your breast – When I Think About You.

mastectomy cake

 

The First Time

A year ago today, my writing was published for the very first time on the Internet – that is, if you don’t count Facebook status updates about my kid, my dog, and my dinner. At that point I hadn’t yet taken the plunge and started my own blog, so my story about how funny cancer can be was published by the fabulous Woogsworld. The reaction I received to that post was the final impetus I needed to take the plunge for myself, so I thought it appropriate to republish the post here today, to mark the anniversary of the loss of my Internet virginity. (I am now concerned that someone who searches ‘loss of my Internet virginity’ is going to be directed to my blog, and be very disappointed.)

When Tragedy Meets Comedy

I recently read an article here about a study done by researchers in the US, which essentially showed that it takes 36 days after a tragedy for jokes about that tragedy to become funny. To clarify, we’re talking about large-scale tragedies like Hurricane Sandy in the US, and not your five year old missing an episode of the Octonauts (although the fallout from that can be quite terrifying). Apparently, if you try a one liner on days 1- 35 post-tragedy you’ll be met with stony silence, but come day 36 you’ll have them laughing in the aisles.

This article made me think about the issue on a smaller scale, and my own responses to personal tragedy. I deal with most difficult situations with a big dash of humour – a psychologist might say it’s because I’m an emotional cripple who uses humour to push down those uncomfortable feelings, but I like to think that I was born with a glass half full kind of attitude which helps when you are wading through the waist-deep shit that life sometimes throws at you.

The past ten years of my life have seen the highest of the highs, and the lowest of the lows. Highs like marrying the best person I’ve ever met and giving birth to our healthy son. Lows like having four miscarriages, the last of which saw me on the floor bleeding and alone in the toilets at my workplace. To be frank, there is no humour in the personal tragedy that is miscarriage, whether it be 36 or 365 days later. But I’ve since faced what I hope is the biggest challenge of my life (because seriously if shit gets any bigger than this, it’s all over rover), which I guess fits the bill as a personal tragedy, and to be honest it’s been the source of some real belly laughs.

In October 2012 I was diagnosed with cancer. I was 42 and healthy as a horse. I’d found a lump in my breast, immediately gone to the GP who said ‘oh I don’t think it’s anything to worry about’ (famous last words right there), followed by scans, two biopsies (first one was inconclusive) and then the earth-shattering phone call two days later. Not only did I have breast cancer, but a very aggressive type which had already spread into my lymph nodes. They cut my right breast off the next day, as well as removing 16 lymph nodes. When I received the pathology report in hospital, it noted that the removed breast had weighed 1.5kg. I asked the oncologist if he thought I could legitimately claim that as a loss at my next Weight Watchers meeting, and quickly discovered that whilst I might not subscribe to the 36 day rule, he sure did.

Chemotherapy is not funny, until it is. One particular day my drug regime was changed. Due to common allergic reactions from one of my new drugs, I was given an infusion of a powerful antihistamine drug through my drip before the chemo drug. The nurse administering the drugs failed to mention that I’d be having the antihistamine, and if she had I might have told her that I can have odd reactions to many common medications, particularly antihistamines. But she didn’t, so as the drug started pumping through my veins, I started hallucinating in the most spectacular way, at which point I pronounced very loudly to the entire chemo ward that ‘this shit is good’. Apparently my speech was so slurred that my friend who had accompanied me to chemo for moral support thought I was having a stroke, and at that point bashed long and hard on the red emergency button. In my drug-addled haze I started laughing hysterically to the point that I was braying and snorting like a donkey, and once the medical staff worked out what was going on, they all joined in the laughter. I apparently provided much mirth for the entire ward until the effects of the antihistamine wore off several hours later. When I returned for my next round of chemo two weeks later, one of the other patients who was having her infusion set up said ‘this shit is good’ as I walked past her bed. Comedy gold right there.

Quite possibly the best joke about my cancer came from my husband (otherwise known as the most supportive man in the universe). After chemo and radiation were done, we decided to that despite the fact it was June, a trip to the coast was in order. Our four year old would swim happily with icebergs, so there was no putting him off the idea of a dip in the outdoor pool, regardless of the fact it was 11 degrees outside. Of course he needed an adult in with him, and despite me pulling the ‘but I’ve had cancer’ card to try and get out of it (which I have done many times since) I ended up getting in the pool with him. As first my legs, then my torso felt the temperature of the water, I started shaking and my teeth were chattering uncontrollably. That was when my husband, in his ever-laconic fashion, says from his position in dry, warm clothes by the side of the pool ‘You know, if you had two tits they’d both be freezing off right now’.

As the old saying goes, comedy is tragedy plus time. For some of us, that time is 36 days, for other the equation requires a far shorter amount of time to pass before shit gets funny.

The Blame Game

I made the mistake last night of getting involved in a Facebook thread on my local newspaper’s website. They’d posted a link to this opinion piece, where the writer talks about how offensive it is to be told that diet and healthy living can cure cancer. By the time my husband drew my attention to the thread, all sorts of crazy had been unleashed in the comments, with talk of big pharma conspiring to not cure cancer so they could continue to make money from selling chemo drugs, anti-perspirants causing cancer and positive thinking being the key to a cure, all with a bit of God bless you action thrown in for good measure.

I went into that thread, and I posted about how my remission had been achieved via a range of medical interventions. I noted that healthy eating and living sensibly (ie not drinking or smoking) likely made my treatment a bit easier, because introducing unnecessary toxins into the body when it’s being hammered by chemotherapy would not be a smart thing to do. I thought that posting a reasonable, sensible response from someone who’d actually done the hard yards of cancer might put a lid on some of the ridiculousness, and perhaps encourage some factual debate, but obviously I was being very naive. It deteriorated pretty rapidly overnight, and this morning I felt the anger rising inside of me as I read about freedom of speech and how everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Freedom of speech, or more precisely freedom of expression, is the right to express your opinion without fear of censorship or retribution. Freedom of expression does not mean you can say what you like without being questioned, without being asked to provide evidence to support your opinions, or without having your opinions proven to be incorrect. Freedom of expression does entitle you to say that eating organic fruit and vegetables will prevent cancer, but it does not make you correct. Freedom of expression does give you the right to say that positive thinking will help cancer to go into remission, but it does not make what you say right. Freedom of expression may be a right, but it should be treated as a privilege, and used with consideration for how it may impact on others.

Opinions, theories, ideas and anecdata about cancer are dressed up in many ways and presented as fact. I have been asked lots of times since my diagnosis in 2012 about whether I’m now eating all organic food, or doing juices. I’ve been asked about my exercise regime, my sleep habits, and whether I’ve given up alcohol. I’ve been told about news bulletins about how too much dairy might cause cancer, and others about how not enough diary might cause cancer. I’ve been sent links to articles about the power of positive thinking, and how to reduce stress, and the benefits of yoga.

Mostly, all of this has been done with good intentions; I’m a likeable enough person and people don’t want to see me die of cancer, which is nice. I get that, I really do. But by suggesting how I might change my life so that breast cancer doesn’t come a-knockin’ again, you are suggesting that the way I was living in the months and years preceding my diagnosis in October 2012 caused the cancer in the first place. You are blaming me, the victim, for bringing it on myself. And that is utterly offensive.

When I first met with my medical oncologist in November 2012, we had the sort of conversation that no-one ever envisages themselves having. I was sitting next to my husband; thankfully our four-year old was at daycare. We went through my brief history of breast cancer to that point. I’d had a mastectomy and axilla (lymph node) removal five weeks earlier, with the subsequent pathology results indicating that my cancer was enormously unpredictable and rampantly aggressive. I’d had scans which had shown that somehow, by some unfathomable fortune, it had not yet spread into other organs, and could therefore be treated. The medical oncologist asked me many questions – about smoking, family history, alcohol consumption, gynaecological and obstetric records, breastfeeding, possible chemical exposure – all the while taking detailed notes. He then put his pen down, looked me square in the eye, and said ‘You know what? Sometimes shit just happens.’

And that’s the thing, isn’t it – the thing that everyone’s afraid of? That notion that shit just happens, without reason or explanation, to good, decent people who are just going about their lives, terrorises all of us. But for those of us living with, through and beyond cancer, it’s more than a notion, more than a bogey-man hiding under the bed that’ll be gone when we turn the light on. Shit happened to me, for real. On that day in 2012, the medical oncologist told me that my chance of still being alive in five years was 50%. Today, my chance of still being alive in 2017 is still 50%. Shit actually happened to me, and the residue is sticky and stinky and hideously unpalatable. So when someone tells me that to keep the cancer from recurring I should think positively, or eat kale, or do yoga, it unleashes a fury inside of me like nothing else.

What would happen if I did go on a completely organic, vegan diet, quit my job to avoid the stresses it brings, and move to the country to spend my days meditating and doing yoga, and the cancer still came back? Would people take back all their suggestions and ideas, apologise to me for suggesting that I wasn’t doing enough to keep myself alive and well, and rethink their presumption that illness and disease are always able to be controlled by the force of human will? Or would people publicly lament my cancer with platitudes about being brave and inspirational, whilst privately thinking that I hadn’t done enough, or soon enough, or properly?

As it happens, I do use a number of complementary therapies and treatments to assist in managing the side-effects of my ongoing cancer treatment, and to help keep me as well as I can be, despite the challenges I face. I see a chiropractor, have acupuncture, and regularly take turmeric and fish oil amongst other things. I do all of these things in close consultation with my oncologist, who is the only person I judge as being qualified to advise me on what may, or may not, be of benefit to me. I am the one who will live, or die, by the choices that my doctor and I make, and as such they are intensely private and should not be open for discussion. One person’s right to speak freely does not trump another’s fervent wish to be free from judgement and blame about something which is, terrifyingly, totally out of their control.

The Old Grey Mare

Before reading this post, please accept my apologies for the dodgy photographs, and give a small vote of thanks that I don’t have Instagram.

I found my first grey hair at the age of 28, but by then I’d already been colouring my hair for a few years, albeit pretty casually. As soon as I found that grey hair I was at the salon as quick as you can say ‘get rid of any trace of old lady-ness off my head, stat!’, and from then on, I had my hair professionally coloured every six weeks. Fifty shades of brownish-auburn.

Before

Before Grey

When chemo made my hair all fall out (except for my cockroach-esque eyebrows that hung in there despite the intense chemical warfare), I knew that when it grew back it’d be grey. I really didn’t give a fuck about the colour, because HAIR!

during chemo 4

Bald, smiling, bit of lippy on but looking and feeling like absolute shit thanks to massive doses of chemotherapy and steroids.

When it first grew back it was almost white, and at the nape of my neck it curled in a way that could only be described as pubic. Then it gradually went straight, and a much darker shade of grey. It suited me; I got constant compliments from friends and strangers, and I look back at photos and think how much my face glowed under its short cap of silver.

During Grey

During Grey

I kept it grey for a year. Not because I wanted to, but because I was told by the oncologist that I would likely have a severe skin reaction to hair dye, and to leave it au naturel for 12 months to allow all of the chemo drugs to be completely removed from my system. From the day of my diagnosis with breast cancer, I did what I was told. I had my right breast cut off, did chemotherapy, then radiation, then hormone therapy. No swimming during chemo, no cold seafood, no soft cheeses, no manicures or pedicures, no massages, no unprotected sex (LOL). No deodorant during radiation, no scented moisturiser, no exercise which causes the core temperature to rise, no raising my hands above my head. And even then, even after the treatment was done, no remedies to treat my horrendous menopause symptoms, no hair dyeing, still no unprotected sex (still LOL). So the moment I was allowed to exercise my free will, even in the smallest way, I did. Exactly one year to the day from the end of my chemo treatment, I was at the hairdressing salon having my hair coloured brown. Totally sticking it to the cancer man!

julie now

After Grey

That was more than a year ago now. I initially loved the brown hair, mainly because it made me look exactly the same as I looked before cancer. And to my poor brain, which had been addled by so much fear and anxiety, looking the same as I did before was very important. I was desperate to prove to myself, and everyone else, that cancer hadn’t changed me, that I had weathered the storm unscathed (apart from the collateral damage of my right breast). But I gradually started realising, when I started writing my story down, just how fucking pointless and exhausting it was being in denial.

Today, I feel like I’m getting pretty close to coming to terms with the fact that I am no longer the same person I was before October 2012, but that it’s OK. And so, to celebrate, to mark this milestone of my life, I’ve decided to let my hair go grey. Right now, it is a distinctly unglamorous mix of grey roots and brown ends.

Going Grey

Going Grey

Like the saying goes, the old grey mare, she ain’t what she used to be. But that, my friends, is fine with me.

storm poem

A Life More Ordinary

I love the day-to-day sameness of life. I wake up at about the same time each morning, because my six-year-old wakes up at about the same time each morning and I am greeted by his beautiful toothless grin as he wishes me good morning. I shower, washing my hair, then face, then body. I get out and dry myself in the same order every day – face, arms, legs, front, back. Teeth cleaned, deodorant on, skin moisturised and then into bra and undies while that soaks in, make-up on, hair tamed. Iron my clothes, get dressed, downstairs to make Hugh’s lunch and my lunch and have a quick bite of breakfast before I’m out the door just before 8am. In the afternoons I’m home around 5, I cook dinner while Dave supervises homework, piano practice and footy kicking. We eat, Dave cleans up, we loll about for a while watching dodgy television and then I put Hugh to bed, always with a story first. Dave and I then watch whatever tv series we are currently obsessed with – last week it was season three of House of Cards, this week it’s season two of The Fall. Every weekday, lots of sameness. Very ordinary.

Saturdays we get up a tiny bit later, do multiple loads of washing – darks, coloureds, whites (always in that order) and then Dave and I attack the housework – he does bathrooms and toilets; I do kitchen and floors. After that I pick up my mum and we go grocery shopping. The afternoons are a bit more fluid – maybe a playdate, maybe lunch out, maybe some fun shopping, maybe a nap. Saturday night is wine or cider, sometimes takeaway, sometimes a night out with friends. Sunday is sleep-in, more washing, park time, play time, then cooking a few meals ahead for the week, and making something remotely healthy for lunch boxes. Sunday is the day banana bread for morning teas seems like a good idea, until Monday comes around and nobody likes banana bread. Weekends are relaxing in their ordinariness.

The thing is, there is so much joy in my ordinary life. So much pleasure in the sameness. In 2012 and 2013, my life was punctuated by scans, diagnoses, surgeries, treatments, illness and despair. There was no ordinary; life was upside down and inside out. I craved normalcy, but there was none to be had. Christmas 2012 my present was a gorgeous pair of earrings that the jeweller told my husband would suit someone with short hair (I guess no hair is the shortest kind of hair), New Year’s Day 2012 was spent having a cytotoxic infusion, later that January my son started school for the first time as I again went off to chemotherapy, and then we celebrated his 5th birthday the day I finished radiation, with third degree burns weeping through three layers of bandages and clothing. So little ordinary, so much fucking horrible.

But, thanks to a mix of the wonders of medical science and plain and simple good luck, I got a second chance at ordinary. I’m now 2 years, five months and five days into a remission that I was only given a 50% chance of having. I look like an ordinary person; I have hair, I can walk more than 100 metres without needing to sit down, my skin isn’t grey, my face isn’t bloated, and I don’t have a catheter sticking out of my chest. I am an ordinary person; I make my son the same school lunch every day, I sleep in my mismatched pyjamas in bed next to my husband every night, and I absolutely fucking revel in all of the ordinary, the normal, the same.

There is, however, one neither normal nor ordinary thing that cancer has given me that I plan to hold onto, and tightly. Just under a year ago, inspired by the tales my prosthetic right breast had to share, I started this blog. In those 11 months, I’ve had a small but dedicated group of readers who’ve encouraged me to keep telling my stories and who’ve inspired me to think and write, to put into words (and dodgy memes) my pain and happiness, and joys and fears. Then, last week I wrote a post about children and friendship – or maybe it was about bigotry and intolerance – or maybe it was just about love – and it’s safe to say that it went absolutely fucking nuts. More than 250,000 – yes, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND, people viewed my post via Facebook shares. A quarter of a million people read my words, heard my voice, felt my anger and my sadness, and expressed their own.  The resulting conversations, via comments here on the blog, on Facebook, Twitter and via email have had the most incredible impact on me, and I am abuzz with the power of words and the possibilities they bring.

A little bit of extraordinary in a life more ordinary.

Think of the Child

My six-year-old son’s best friend is an amazing girl called Pascal. They have been solid buddies for almost three years now. They don’t attend the same school, but have regular play dates and sleepovers, where they play outside in the dirt with items pilfered from my kitchen concocting ‘ant stew’ (which doesn’t actually involve any ants), make indoor tents out of sheets strung over dining chairs, and put on puppet shows using old fridge boxes as the stage. They have tennis lessons together on a Friday, joyfully running to meet each other at the courts and racing around in circles like a pair of excited puppies.

Their beautiful, innocent meeting of hearts and minds has given rise to a broader friendship at the family level, which has been cemented through trips to the theatre, lunches and dinners out, birthday parties, and camping trips. The camping trips have been a real revelation, as anyone who’s ever slept on an air mattress for three nights whilst not showering for three days whilst managing diminishing ice in the esky would know – if you can camp happily with another family, you’ll be friends for life.

Hugh and Pas

Pascal is the sort of child that parents dream of their kid becoming friends with. She is whip-smart, loyal, kind, insightful, happy, well-mannered and incredibly aware of the world around her. She is naturally-gifted at sport, and likes art and cooking and flower-arranging. The last time she visited our house, she made a pink collar out of paper for one of our dogs, and told my son that although she no longer sleeps with a stuffed toy, it was ‘pretty cool’ that he still does. She has the most beautiful blonde curls, and a smile that lights up her whole face, and usually the whole room. She may only be seven years old, but the love and care she shows for my son is something truly special, and he feels the same way about her. When they are due to see each other, he will count down the hours, alive with anticipation at the thought of being with someone he adores. Hugh, and Dave and I as his parents, have been blessed by this friendship. We hope that they will be in each other’s lives for a very long time.

It’s largely because of this friendship that I felt absolutely white-hot with rage when I read this article in our local paper. As I read the story of this hateful, small-minded group and what they stand for, my skin started to prickle and I could feel the blood start to pump in my temples. You see the one thing about Pascal that I didn’t feel relevant in my description of her, is that her parents are a same-sex couple. It’s not relevant because it doesn’t change anything about her. It certainly doesn’t make her less smart or less caring or less capable or less blonde. The only thing I think that having same-sex parents does change, is perhaps make her more likely to be the target of bigotry and ignorance from people who claim to be Christians but whose actions are the very antithesis of the central tenets of Christianity. And the thought of that simultaneously makes me furious and breaks my heart.

The slogan of this nasty little group is ‘Think of the child’. Well I am sitting here, thinking of the child. Actually, I’m thinking of several children. I’m thinking of Pascal, and how blessed she is to have two smart, capable, caring and wonderful parents who love her and cherish her, and who are dedicating their lives to raising her (and her gorgeous little brother) to be the absolute best people they can be. I am thinking of Hugh, and how much he loves his friend, how proud he is of her and how much he has benefited from being involved with another family, just like ours, where love and happiness abound.

And most of all, I am thinking about the children of people like David van Gend and the other members of the Australian Marriage Forum, and how they are growing up in the shadow of bigotry, ignorance and fear. I’m wondering who’s thinking about those children, the ones who are clearly the most at risk.

First to Go

My Dad died on Sunday, 22 February. He was 82 years old. There is no tragedy in the death of an octogenarian who passed away peacefully in a bed in a palliative care ward, having received visits from his nearest and dearest throughout his final day. There is of course sadness, especially for my mother who has lost her husband of 57 years. She is a very healthy and spry 79-year-old, and it is hard to imagine what is going on in her mind as she thinks about the years she has ahead of her, without the person who has been her constant life companion since they met when she was 21 years old.

This past week, I have done many things for the first time. I have seen my father’s still-warm body before it was taken to the morgue. I have helped organise a funeral for an atheist who loved gospel songs like Old Man River and When the Saints Go Marching In. I have set my six-year-old straight on his notion that a funeral is a ‘big, fun party’, and held his hand as he stood in front of his grandfather’s casket and wondered what it might be like inside. I have greeted people at the chapel with a smile and a hug, and farewelled them in much the same way, just with added panda eyes. I have truly felt like a 45-year-old woman, really for the first time, as I’ve comforted my parents’ friends, who used to be 45 when I was a kid, and whose numbers are dwindling with every passing year. A husband left here, a wife or two there, a very occasional couple who no doubt wonder which one of them is going to be the first to go.

Some couples are not afforded the luxury of contemplating whose ageing body, with its uncountable wrinkles and aching joints and failing faculties will be the first to give out. Some couples are split in two by death, well before death has any fucking business coming to call. A few weeks ago, my friend Antoinette found out that the cancer has moved from her bowel, to her liver, and now to her lungs, and it will kill her. Her husband knows who will be the first to go, and who will be left with four small children to raise. He knows who will never live the dream of dying a natural death at 82. Last Friday, my friend Jules found out that the surgery that might save her life could not be performed, and that she will die from cancer. Her husband also knows who will be the first to go, and that he too will raise four children without their mother. Right now, my friend Deb is living out her last days in hospital, with her husband by her side, while cancer kills her. She is not even 40 years old. There will be no grey nomading, no retirement villages, no chance at 57 years of marriage.

My father had a beautiful baritone singing voice, and I have many memories of him singing the gospel songs that his atheist heart loved. I also have memories of him helping me buy my first car, move furniture into my first house, and the day he met my soon-to-be husband for the first time. I distinctly remember the first time he met my newborn son, and declared he’d be much more interested in him when he could talk. I remember the difficulties as he aged, and his last year of sickness and dementia. An awful, difficult time, but the ridiculously cheap price of a life lived long.

The words of this song made me cry last Thursday at my father’s funeral, but they are making me cry even more today. Please keep a place in your heart for those who know, far too soon, that they’re going to be the first to go.

I get weary and so sick of tryin’
I’m tired of livin’, and afraid of dyin’
But Old Man River, he just keeps rollin’ a
Old Man River, he just keeps rollin’ along

Fatherhood

Last week I had to put my elderly father into a nursing home. He’s 82 years old, has dementia and failing kidneys and liver. My also elderly mother had been caring for him at home, but it all became too much for her and he was hospitalised and then moved into an aged care facility.

That sounds like a simple story, but it isn’t. Since Dad went into hospital in January, my life has been a complex mess of all the normal things (full-time job, small child, husband who works and studies) and all the other things (ACAT assessments, Centrelink, public trustee, banks, nursing homes, forms, more forms, and more fucking incomprehensible forms). It’s all hard, but made so much more difficult by my father’s dementia, which features anger and confusion, and his lucid moments, which also feature anger and confusion. I’ve been told by my father that he hates me. He’s told my mother, his wife of 56 years, that she is the devil incarnate. They’re just words, and they’re coming from someone who doesn’t even physically resemble my father any more, but they bloody well hurt and it is all so hard.

Over the past couple of months I have spent a lot of time ruminating on the nature of fatherhood. My father was in many ways a classic example of a 1970-80s dad. He went to work, went to the pub after work to have beers with his mates, and came home as dinner was being put onto his tv tray in front of Kingswood Country or Love Thy Neighbour. On weekends he played golf, mowed the lawn, and drove us to sport. On Sunday afternoons he would always ‘have a camp’ which involved a nap from which he was not to be woken, under any circumstances. He signed our report cards, came to watch school musicals, and taught us to ride our bikes.

But if I am perfectly honest – and really, that is what I have committed to in writing this blog – as an adult I never really connected with my father. He was a very judgemental person, and also quite fearful of difference and change, and I regularly, and keenly, felt his judgement of me and my life choices. Quite perversely, I seem to have inherited this judgemental bent from him, although I think my access to tertiary education has given me a much wider perspective on difference than my year eight educated father. My father also seemed to be baffled by how he had any part in producing a strong, forceful woman who refused to take on any traditional, stereotypical female roles unless they were of her own choosing. He seemed blind to the fact that I was determined to be all the things my mother had not been allowed to be, because of the family she had been born into (youngest of 8 children whose father died when she was in utero) and because of who she had married.

Today, I feel very much like I have already grieved for my father, because any good sign of the man I knew has been totally erased. I administer his life so he is cared for, and I support my mother each day with phone calls and visits and food and love, but in my heart, my Dad is gone. It’s times like these that I realise the value of the lessons that cancer taught me about strapping yourself in and hanging the fuck on, knowing that at some point the hellish ride will be over.

All this thinking about fathers and the nature of fatherhood has not been sad and full of lament. My own husband, Dave, has yet again been the most amazing source of support for me and my mother during this whole dreadful period. There is so much he has done, little things, big things, sacrificing time and money completely selflessly. Yesterday he installed a television in my father’s room in the hope it might interest him, drove across town to get some tank water my father might like the taste of, and then fed my father chocolate pudding with a spoon. This is the man I chose to be my father’s son, and every day I am thankful for my choice.

Billy cart

Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice. – Charles Kettering

What I’m …

After last week’s emotional overload post, it’s well and truly time to lighten things up around here. Mrs Woog is desperate to know what’s going on in my life – who can blame her really, I am eternally fascinating – so here goes:

Waiting For

A cure for cancer. Seriously, hurry the fuck up researchy-type people, there are amazing human beings dropping off the perch left, right and centre. To help those researchers come up with a cure for breast cancer (which is close to my heart, quite literally), get off your arse and go for a walk or run in the Mother’s Day Classic, all the funds raised go directly to breast cancer research. There are walks being held all over Australia, but sadly only those attending the Toowoomba walk will get the pleasure of seeing me sweating it up in a pink polo shirt and dodgy tracky dacks.

Enjoying

These two, always. So much love, fun, happiness.

dave and hugh currumbin

Eating

Not much, because owing to side-effects from the drug that is supposedly keeping my cancer at bay, I have severe, chronic, bloody bastard reflux. I am eating like a fussy sparrow, picking around the edges of meals, terrified of awakening the beast that has taken up residence in my oesophagus. Fortunately I discovered that Camembert is reflux-proof, so I am sustaining myself thusly.

cheese

Wanting

World peace. And to be significantly less interested in I’m A Celebrity Get Me Outta Here. I don’t know how or why it happened, but I am ashamed to say that I am watching this program. And enjoying it. I am also loving Jo Thornely’s recap of each episode.

Wearing

Clothes a size smaller (refer to reflux reference above). Finally, cancer has given me the weight loss that all those cheesy movies promised me. Ohhh, did someone say cheese?

Space on the Couch

The other night, my son was sitting next to me on the couch watching tv (it was I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here actually, please don’t judge me). Apropro of nothing, which is the way conversations often unfold when you have a 6-year-old, he pointed to the space on the couch next to him and said ‘a toddler would fit perfectly there’. Not understanding what he meant, I said ‘whose toddler?’ and immediately his eyes filled with tears and he said ‘our toddler, if I had a brother or sister’.

Right then and there, my heart, which has had its share of bruises and battering over the years and is generally pretty hard-wearing, broke into about a thousand pieces. Before I could stop my own tears, they were there, dripping down my face. That made Hugh cry more, and try to comfort me at the same time. ‘Mummy I know the other babies died and your tummy is broken, but I still wish I could be someone’s big brother’.

It would be impossible to express just how much I wish he could be someone’s big brother too. He doesn’t know that he also could have been someone’s little brother, and how much I wish he could have been a middle child, which is actually where he sits in the order of my pregnancies.

Miscarriage is still a taboo subject in our society (and many others). We generally don’t talk about it, or if we do it’s in hushed tones as if it’s something about which we should be ashamed. If I am completely honest, shame is the right word because each time my body let go of another pregnancy, I felt like an abject failure as a woman. Everyone else could do it, sustain a pregnancy 40 weeks and take home a healthy baby, but my body seemed to specialise in rejection.

My first pregnancy was a surprise – not because we were not trying to fall pregnant, but because it happened so quickly. I was 37, but got pregnant in the second month of trying. Because I wasn’t expecting to get pregnant so easily, I had no idea that I was and it was only after an epic, emotional meltdown after a stir-fry didn’t turn out how I expected, that I did a test and broke the wonderful news to Dave. In our naiveté, we decided to tell everyone, and the day after we’d phoned his parents to tell them, I started bleeding, and after five days of agonising cramps that left me breathless (what I later realised where contractions), I had the first of a series of surgeries because whilst my body couldn’t sustain the pregnancy, it couldn’t quite get rid of it either. Completely and utterly useless.

Three months later, and I was pregnant again. I so wanted to be happy, so wanted to think it would all be ok, but that was just not possible anymore. Or was it? I settled into the idea that my body might just do it this time, when again the blood … always the blood … Another surgery, another trip home from hospital with nothing to show but a more hardened heart, and a deepening sense of what was verging on hatred for my own body.

A couple of months after that, and yet again I was pregnant. We were nothing if not fertile. This time both Dave and I only talked of the pregnancy in an almost clinical way, waiting for the seemingly inevitable failure. The blood came, very early this time when I was only six weeks along, so we trundled off to the obstetrician’s office (again) for an ultrasound (again) to confirm that the pregnancy was lost (again). But then the glorious sound, a weird echoing sound like a wet drum being beaten, and the pulsating embryo on the screen. A heartbeat, not dead, and apparently not dying! We were incredulous, fearful, maybe even a tiny bit hopeful. I continued to bleed on and off for the next seven weeks, the fear and loathing of my body growing by the day, but each and every visit to the obstetrician, with his dreaded dildo cam, showed a healthy foetus, growing strong. The bleeding stopped at 13 weeks gestation, and whilst there was some sense of relief, the inspection of the underpants for tell-tale signs, and the sense of dread and foreboding, continued right up until my beautiful, big, healthy boy was delivered alive and kicking at 38 weeks and 5 days gestation. My body, it was a wonder! An amazing, fantastic thing, a joy! It had produced the most divine creature, it was redeemed.

Once the shock and awe of having a new baby settled down, we decided to try for a sibling for our gorgeous boy. He’d never be a little brother, but he could be a big one. Getting pregnant = easy. Done. The day I returned to work from maternity leave I was already pregnant again. I was in love with my body; it had given us Hugh and now it would give us his sibling. Then, the blood. Again. All over. Again. At least this time my body seemed to have worked out how to complete the miscarriage, so no surgery. Bad luck comes in threes, right? So that’s our three things, three miscarriages, next time will be fine.

Next time? Houston, we have a problem. Getting pregnant = hard. We went from taking 1-2 cycles to fall pregnant to 12 months with no success. We moved to fertility drugs, which send me batshit crazy. I remember contemplating physically hurting Dave for leaving some clean towels unfolded. Those drugs did nothing, except make me homicidal and therefore trying to get pregnant a terrible chore, but we were determined and moved onto IVF, which involved a four-hour return drive each time we need to see the specialist. More drugs, this time hard-core, injected by Dave into my stomach multiple times each day, causing bruises as big as dinner plates all over me. Because my body is once again useless, it does not respond at all to the drugs, despite me being given the highest legal dose, and it’s all over. No more babies. Ever.

Two years later, and we had come to terms with our only child. He is a blessing; adorable, loving, bright and healthy. I’ve had counselling, I have accepted the situation and finally I don’t hate my body any more. Life is good. And then I start feeling so shit, so tired, so over everything and it is all hauntingly familiar, so I find an expired pregnancy test in the back of the cupboard and as soon as I pee on it, it’s positive. I’m 42 years old, we’ve both been sick with the flu for weeks, I have been declared infertile by the best-known specialist in the state, and I’m six weeks pregnant.

Blood tests and scans are hastily done, and although it’s early it all looks good. My body, wow, my 42-year-old body, I am amazed by it. My mind takes a while to catch up, and I lie awake at 3am every night worrying how everything will work out. I am so old! I gave away all the baby clothes! I don’t have any good names picked out! But then, gradually, I get used to the idea, and during the day Dave and I email back and forth about baby names. I think I almost have him convinced on my favourite boy’s name (Arlo), when I stand up one day in my office and feel a weird pop, like I’ve wet myself. I make my way to the toilets, where I miscarry for the fourth time. Oh, my body, you have really done me over this time. I drive myself home, silent and stony faced, and am taken to the hospital from there, wheeled through the corridors and asked by a nurse why I’m not crying.

That baby, who might have been a boy who might have been called Arlo, would have been only a month or two old when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Or quite possibly, I would not have been diagnosed with breast cancer because I would have been breastfeeding that baby, and thought the lump was a gland or mastitis or more likely I would not even noticed the lump because I would have been too tired and too frazzled to shave my legs, let alone do a breast self-examination. Maybe losing that last baby gave a boy a chance to keep his mum, whilst taking away his last chance to be a big brother.

Hugh knows that I had other babies in my tummy but they died, and that now my tummy can’t make any more babies. He knows it, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it. He’s the only child in his class who doesn’t have a sibling, the only one who has playdates organised for him most weekends to ensure he doesn’t spend all his time with adults, the only one who calls close family friends cousins so that he feels like he has something akin to a brother and a sister. He’s the only child.

As for me and my body, well the hate is gone. It may have produced a giant cancer that nearly killed me, and I did wonder how it could betray me again, and so deeply, but having marvelled at the way it withstood all the cutting and the poisoning and radiation, and how it soldiers on despite the legacy those treatments have left behind, I cannot despise it.

One day, when my boy is old enough, I will tell him about how my body gave me a son, and then gave my son his mother, and we will both see, that despite the pain of circumstance, those are our gifts.