Radioactive

Three days have elapsed now of radiotherapy and overall I must admit to you that it is, so far, a complete anticlimax. I don't know quite what I expected but had been warned that the side effects would include possible sunburn and tiredness... So far, not a twinge.

So for all you radioactive virgins out there what is it like? Well, I walk in to the hospital and have been allocated my own gown for the next six weeks. Having changed, I move to a room where I lie down on an extremely hard bed and raise my arms up in stirrup like holders above my head. My face is turned to the right so as not to allow my brain, or throat any contact with the beams and the technicians then proceed to line me up correctly to ensure that the beam only skims along the top of my chest and doesn't touch my lungs... I haven't asked the 'what if' question but I presume it can't be worse than cancer...

The radioactive machine itself is like a huge porthole and it whirrs around me into three different positions. The first is just to my right where it goes across my chest; the second from the left lowered angle, and the third is right above my collar bone. As my cancer had advanced into the lymph glands in my armpit, the radiotherapy zaps the lymph glands which are slightly higher up the chain just in case the cells had permeated further...

And so my days have become a monotony of treatments, of walking to and from the hospital and regularly checking my watch to ensure I don't miss the appointments. It is strange though because I do feel that I am moving on... I am again in the cancer limbo but it isn't as dark as it was during chemo. I wonder how much of that is because I am, no longer, with my tumour. It does not shadow my life with its looming gloom but has become a remote island in my past. One where I disembarked for a short while and got lost, but am now back on my ship steaming past.

And as the sun streams into springtime London, as the hair sprouts from my head, I reflect on how very lucky I have been so far...

Minerva

The Final Hurdle

The final hurdle is before me. Today is the first day of radiotherapy treatment. I will have 15 minutes zapping every day for 6 weeks, not including weekends. I am, in a strange way, looking forward to it. I want to get this treatment over with, to move on with my life and back to work.

I feel like I am shut up in a room and through the windows I see life passing by, the trees and people waving to me as they move on, love, live and feel, and I, shut in my room, just watch them all, disassociated from the real world, its cares and concerns. My room is the cancer room, a room where you become aware of the deeper, stronger current beneath the normal driftwood of our life's waves.

I realised this after the holidays with my children where, for the first time, I didn't worry excessively about the state of the house, but played with them where there was a choice, hung out with them, and listened to them. Every time where there was a choice of me splitting or being with them, I was with them. Suddenly, when you realise how fragile our lives are, it becomes a clear road. To live in the moment with my three wonderful girls was/is the biggest lesson I have learnt this year....

And now, the final fence....

Minerva

A hero...

I saw a hero today... I saw a man who only three years ago was over 300lbs, was a smoker, an eater extraordinaire, a man who knew that his obesity was shortening his life radically...

I saw that man, today, run 26.2 miles of the London Marathon in a wonderful time of 4 hours 28 minutes..and in the process he raised over 20 THOUSAND pounds for Macmillan Cancer Support.

That man, that hero was my brother....

And as I waved my flag and kissed his hot, sweaty face half way round, I almost burst with the pride of my brother, my dearest loving brother showing us, and the world that he could do it.

And there were 35,000 other winners out there today - not just the wonderful man who came first, but every runner that sweated, ran, walked, limped, wheeled or crawled around that course deserves to be hailed a winner...

A hero indeed...



Minerva

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday service in a quiet country church. Surrounded by the stone which has endured for centuries and tombs which shout of lives lived in love, I rest and my mind slips away. The windows, rainbow coloured, shower the floor with multicoloured beams of light as the pastor talks, the people sing, and the children fidget in the pews.

A moment of calm, an island of repose in the flowing seas of our lives. I rest, look over in my mind the events of the past seven months and wonder at the emotional and physical roller coaster. It is hard to think of a life, of a family pre-cancer. Now cancer colours my life, and will forever. I will never forget my brush with mortality and the one in three chance that it will come back will tinge every experience I have. I am determined now to live with no regrets, to be brave enough to do those things which I have either been putting off, or too shy to face up to.

But for now, repose and a rest before the treatments and the onslaught begin again next Wednesday. Until then, I am in the thick of my children, laughing, playing and having fun with them. There is, at the moment, no yesterday and no possible future - only the immediacy and joy of Today... just where I want to be,

Minerva

Regeneration

A woodland walk over orange sandy paths in the woods, high on a hill above the Cheshire fields. Sun sprinkles rays through the leaves. The wood resounds with laughter of children freed from their Winter quarters of sofa, living room and walls and dogs leap like rabbits over the tree roots. Look down, look down into the sand around your feet and look at the gnarled, twisted roots, wrinkled like crumpled paper. Those thin wraiths that burrow deep into the wood around your feet sustain the life of a wonderful, splendid tree that rises up proudly above the earth displaying its new green shoots of clothes for all to see and admire.. All fuelled by dried up, kicked by careless feet, gnawed by squirrels, roots.

So too is this stage that I am going through. The first tendrils of sunshine, of an end to treatment have reached this Wintered tree. The sprigs of hair echo the regeneration of the plants around me and as they, magnificent specimens that they are, are sustained by wintered roots, so too shall a new wonderful person rise from the gnarled, experiences that have so far made up my year. The root of chemo, the root of hospitals, staff, illness and of course, the canker that is cancer are all part of the sustenance that this new being needs, to grow, to rise up and to become a splendid tree again, waving its branches as part of the forest, rustling its leaves in the heat of the Spring sunshine....

Minerva

First Episode

of the third series of 'Attacking Cancer' began today. I had my radiotherapy planning appointment which is where radiographers set you up and take measurements ready for the six weeks of radio which will start on the 26th April. The idea is to give my body, in particular, my chest and remaining neck lymph nodes low doses of radiation over a six week period to kill off any remaining cancer cells.

I cannot tell you how cold the room was where they house the machines. I had to strip to my waist and was positioned with my head to the right to avoid radiation, my arms up above my head and naked to the waist. I had to stay still like that for an hour and a half. Normally it should only be 45 minutes but as the measurements didn't work for the first essai, they had to do it again... and oh, I shivered with the cold. Forget goose bumps, this was full blown shivering despite the arm holds and the head hold. I don't know how the elderly or the very young would tolerate that... I barely did (or did barely...) *grin*.

In order to replicate the same position over and over again, they had to put three tattoos on me. I wanted 'mum', 'brother', and 'Robbie Williams for ever' but sadly, it was only three tiny black dots. One on either side of my chest and one right in the middle of my sternum. I was quite worried about the pain but to be honest, they were nothing more than pin pricks and completely bearable. An injection is worse than these tattoos were...

So now, cancer treatment is on hold for two weeks. My children arrive today and I flip seamlessly from cancer patient to mother - a role that I love which gives meaning to this diurnal round.

Roll on the Easter holidays,

Minerva

Identity.

I don't know who I am anymore. I look in the mirror and I look at photographs of myself before this whole episode started and I don't know which person I am. I no longer feel like the attractive, laughing, sexy woman I see in photographs from last summer and yet, when I look in the mirror, I don't know this porcupine-haired, shy, mousy person either. Neither and yet both are me.

I have always been earthy, sensual, direct as a woman and now? Now I feel none of those things but rather as a butterfly who has transformed again into a caterpillar. I have none of the longing for emotional or physical union that I used to yearn for, my instincts are completely otherwise, to withdraw, to regroup and to find who the real 'Minerva' is.

This journey that I have travelled over the last few months has not just transformed my body, but also my very self. The 'tricks' that I had begun to rely on and live my life by just don't work for me any more. The constant quest for the next gadget or the next toy now seems empty when you have looked into the great canyon and realise that it is a baggageless holiday.

This year is a year of reckoning for me anyway. I have always thought, even from being a teenager, that I would never see being 40 - that something would get to me before then... Now that something nearly has, perhaps I am finally facing growing up and the requisite taming that accompanies it...

Only really one thing is certain, and that is that my mind, my body and my soul are in a state of flux... Who am I?

Minerva