Although it's a lie that it starts at 40 - unless the next 6 months see some kind of miraculous rebirth. Or some kind of end to the Hormonal Civil War... .
I guess what they meant when that phrase was coined was something to do with being a woman, well over your childbearing years and looking forward to the kiddies leaving home - so that you could spend the next 20 years weaning yourself off the valium and working out what to do with your beard/garden/life and wondering if you'd be happy working in the local charity shop.
Life is different now. I had my kids at 30 and 35 (pause to smile and reflect on whether that classifies me as a 'young mum' in today's world) and so by the time I hit 40 although my second child will be leaving home, it will be to start Reception, not college. Therefore my Life will Begin at around 55. Which means that hopefully I'll have a good few years before the Alzheimer's/osteoporosis/arthritis kicks in to Get Out There and Do My Thing. Perhaps I'll be able to have a Gap year (never did that in my 20s) and head forth into the great beyond to compare beards with Indian Yogis.
Anyway, on a lighter note, the Lump has been checked and all is fine. Fine being the kind of loose word you employ when you mean it's not cancer, but it's not going away either. Please don't get me wrong - I'm ecstatic there's nothing untoward with Lump, and profoundly grateful that I'm lucky not to be facing the Big C, but all the same I'm not wildly pleased to know that Lump is now a bit of a permament fixture.
Apparently, at My Age, these things tend to be 'cyclical', which means that it will let itself be known every time my breasts react to a bit of pre-menstrual hormonal flow - so for about two weeks of every month, my left boob will feel as if someone's set about it with a baseball bat. Great. An attention-seeking Lump to go with the crippling ovulation pains, insomnia, night sweats and acne that already predate a period at My Age. (I apologise to the women out there of My Age who don't suffer any of this stuff and who think that women like me have it all going on in our heads. I'm really, truly sorry you haven't got a bloody clue what it's like. I SO wish you did.)
Still, having spent yesterday morning at the GPs (my yeast issue is now so prevalent I'm contemplating changing my name to Candida) and another entire morning at the hospital, at least maybe now this particular 'medical' phase of my life will stop and I can get on with other issues. Like normality, how to earn some money again, and getting back to the writing I so loved before my life became about waiting rooms, squidgy plastic chairs and scones.
You know you've spent too much time in medical institutions when you leaf through the pile of mags on the 'coffee table', realise you've read all the Hello's, Good Housekeeping's and Best's from this year AND 2006 and actually feel excited to see the Woman and Home you started but had to put down in a hospital in Cambridge. Worse, as time ticks on and you've finished that, flicked idly through a 2005 Country Living and nodded off with a couple of National Geographics, you actually find yourself picking up a Saga Magazine. And enjoying bits of it. Trust me, it is possible to lose the will to live in a hospital without actually being remotely ill.
There are, at this precise moment in time, no imminent medical institution visits. Arthritic Son has two checks in August, Recovering Husband has one at the end of May and I have a follow-up with my GP in June. By my reckoning, that means I should be able to go a whole month - maybe, dare I even think it, LONGER - without setting eyes on latex gloves, signs for prostrate checks, hideously patterned curtains or photos of La Beckham's latest haircut or horribly dessicated limbs. Yippee! Bring it on!
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
On Keeping Yourself Occupied...
Which is what they tell you to do in Times of Worry, isn't it? And what better way to do that than to immerse yourself in Family Life?
Well, actually, I can think of one. Instead of taking your 8-year-old to a Dr Who Trading Card convention at the local city library, with his 8-year-old mate, Teenage Toddler and a few other 8-year-old mates thrown in when you get there, why not try drinking yourself into a coma? Far more pleasurable and infinitely less probability of inducing a stroke.
Picture the scene. It's Saturday afternoon, unseasonably warm (so unseasonable no one's yet turned their heating systems off) and there you are crammed into a corner of a glass-constructed library with 4,000 card-hungry 8-year-old boys, a smattering of strange, tic-infested men who are not there with children, and a bright red Dalek.
It's carnage. No one's allowed to touch the Dalek, which shrieks, has flashing lights and comes complete with all the egg-whisk attachments that work like spiritual magnets to young boys, plus an oddly enthusiastic, slightly wierd 'guardian' who lynches you as soon as you make eye contact. It also has a sign saying 'Do Not Touch' which might as well be written in Skaro for all the notice five excited boys take of it.
As I'm busy wishing I'd bought a choke chain to restrain Teenage Toddler, one of the 8 year olds gets barked at by Wierd Guardian.
'OI! It says don't touch!'
'No it doesn't!'
'Read the sign.'
'What sign?'
'The one that says Don't Touch.' Angry pointing. Accusing eyes in my direction. (Not his fault. He can't be expected to know which of these four 8 year olds is mine - incidentally, not the one touching the Dalek. Oh no. Mine's currently on the floor pretending he's been exterminated. I let go of TT and snap at him to get up at once. I will have control, I will, I will.)
'Oh, THAT,' says oldest son's 8-year-old mate. 'I thought that said Donut. I thought it meant you got a donut if you dared touch it.'
I raise my eyebrows at Guardian, smile weakly and shake my head.
This seems to signal to him that I'm up for hearing everything there is to know about his Dalek friend. It's from the 60s (aren't we all?), it's called Derek and it cost £1400 to make. A kit would cost three grand. His mate's got a white one called Minty. Another mate's got a grey one called Wolfgang, which he once took to an airport where it caused mayhem, ho, ho. (I am not making this up.)
I nod like one of those dogs in the back of a car, aware that two of the 8-year-olds are now chasing each other round the library. One streaks past me with the other in hot pursuit. I haul at the back of my older son's t-shirt and place my hand on his mate's head - hoping to infer physically that I am to kids what Victoria Stilwell is to dogs. I am reminded of chariot racing Ben Hur/Gladiator style.
Wierd Guardian is happily telling me how Derek et al will never depreciate in value when I see a small flash of red and white bombing through the library doors into the large, open and probably-full-of-nutters-and-paedophiles foyer. I fire instructions at the two 8 year olds and pelt after TT who is happily trotting off into the shark-infested crowds.
'Hey!' I shout. He turns and looks decidedly annoyed that I've curtailed his little adventure. 'Where are you going without telling mummy. You NEVER leave mummy.'
He pouts. 'I find Daddy. I want Daddy.'
'Well, I would've taken you. You never, ever go off like that.'
He looks at me stubbornly. 'I want Daddy.'
'Right, we'll go and find Daddy.'
'I want Daddy. I don't want you.'
'Alright! I've said we'll go and find Daddy. Just let me tell the boys where we're going.'
'But I want him now!'
I grab his hand and semi-drag him back to the Seventh Circle of Hell. Three of the boys are waiting. One of the others streams past like an escaped terrier.
'Mum! I touched the Dalek!'
'Mrs Felix's Mum, do you think it's strange there are grown-ups here without any children?'
'Daddy! I want to find Daddy', sobs TT.
'Boys, wait here. Don't touch anything. I'll be back in a minute.'
'Can we have a drink?'
One of the other boys returns, face streaked with tears. 'Someone's stolen my ultra-rare's! Where's my dad?'
'I'm hungry.'
'Let me go! I want Daddy. Not you. Dad-deeeeeee!'
'They - sob - were my - sob - only ultra-rare's! I want my dad.'
'Can we have something to eat?'
When I die, In A Minute will be engraved on my headstone.
I cheered myself up on Sunday by gardening. Before I had kids, this meant a nice, quiet day pottering about and listening to the birds whilst also being Creative and Productive. Nowadays, it's the bits I squeeze in between catering for kids, answering endless questions for kids, sorting out kids' fights, administering plasters to kids or locating dock leaves and Anthisan to put on kids' nettle stings.
Even so, I'd still suggest gardening to anyone who has Issues of any kind. If you're worried, anxious or restless, calm yourself with a bit of gentle weeding and/or a little bit of planting - a kind of yoghurt-weavery meditation in movement. If you're blocked or frustrated, dig a bloody big hole. If you're feeling snappy, pissy or PMT-y, prune and hack - there's something tremendously, destructively therapeutic about it. If you're feeling like you want a fight, tackle tying up a rose, ripping out some nettles, forking over some hardened, globally-warmed soil. And if you're a mess, like me, do all of them. Extreme Gardening is where it's at for those of us who can't afford acupuncture.
And for the last couple of days? Well, I'd love to be the Julie Andrews, spiritually-sorted type who just needs to sing about raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string to make myself feel better. But I'm a 21st century woman. Vacuous, shallow, and Western. So, naturally, I went shopping.
Well, actually, I can think of one. Instead of taking your 8-year-old to a Dr Who Trading Card convention at the local city library, with his 8-year-old mate, Teenage Toddler and a few other 8-year-old mates thrown in when you get there, why not try drinking yourself into a coma? Far more pleasurable and infinitely less probability of inducing a stroke.
Picture the scene. It's Saturday afternoon, unseasonably warm (so unseasonable no one's yet turned their heating systems off) and there you are crammed into a corner of a glass-constructed library with 4,000 card-hungry 8-year-old boys, a smattering of strange, tic-infested men who are not there with children, and a bright red Dalek.
It's carnage. No one's allowed to touch the Dalek, which shrieks, has flashing lights and comes complete with all the egg-whisk attachments that work like spiritual magnets to young boys, plus an oddly enthusiastic, slightly wierd 'guardian' who lynches you as soon as you make eye contact. It also has a sign saying 'Do Not Touch' which might as well be written in Skaro for all the notice five excited boys take of it.
As I'm busy wishing I'd bought a choke chain to restrain Teenage Toddler, one of the 8 year olds gets barked at by Wierd Guardian.
'OI! It says don't touch!'
'No it doesn't!'
'Read the sign.'
'What sign?'
'The one that says Don't Touch.' Angry pointing. Accusing eyes in my direction. (Not his fault. He can't be expected to know which of these four 8 year olds is mine - incidentally, not the one touching the Dalek. Oh no. Mine's currently on the floor pretending he's been exterminated. I let go of TT and snap at him to get up at once. I will have control, I will, I will.)
'Oh, THAT,' says oldest son's 8-year-old mate. 'I thought that said Donut. I thought it meant you got a donut if you dared touch it.'
I raise my eyebrows at Guardian, smile weakly and shake my head.
This seems to signal to him that I'm up for hearing everything there is to know about his Dalek friend. It's from the 60s (aren't we all?), it's called Derek and it cost £1400 to make. A kit would cost three grand. His mate's got a white one called Minty. Another mate's got a grey one called Wolfgang, which he once took to an airport where it caused mayhem, ho, ho. (I am not making this up.)
I nod like one of those dogs in the back of a car, aware that two of the 8-year-olds are now chasing each other round the library. One streaks past me with the other in hot pursuit. I haul at the back of my older son's t-shirt and place my hand on his mate's head - hoping to infer physically that I am to kids what Victoria Stilwell is to dogs. I am reminded of chariot racing Ben Hur/Gladiator style.
Wierd Guardian is happily telling me how Derek et al will never depreciate in value when I see a small flash of red and white bombing through the library doors into the large, open and probably-full-of-nutters-and-paedophiles foyer. I fire instructions at the two 8 year olds and pelt after TT who is happily trotting off into the shark-infested crowds.
'Hey!' I shout. He turns and looks decidedly annoyed that I've curtailed his little adventure. 'Where are you going without telling mummy. You NEVER leave mummy.'
He pouts. 'I find Daddy. I want Daddy.'
'Well, I would've taken you. You never, ever go off like that.'
He looks at me stubbornly. 'I want Daddy.'
'Right, we'll go and find Daddy.'
'I want Daddy. I don't want you.'
'Alright! I've said we'll go and find Daddy. Just let me tell the boys where we're going.'
'But I want him now!'
I grab his hand and semi-drag him back to the Seventh Circle of Hell. Three of the boys are waiting. One of the others streams past like an escaped terrier.
'Mum! I touched the Dalek!'
'Mrs Felix's Mum, do you think it's strange there are grown-ups here without any children?'
'Daddy! I want to find Daddy', sobs TT.
'Boys, wait here. Don't touch anything. I'll be back in a minute.'
'Can we have a drink?'
One of the other boys returns, face streaked with tears. 'Someone's stolen my ultra-rare's! Where's my dad?'
'I'm hungry.'
'Let me go! I want Daddy. Not you. Dad-deeeeeee!'
'They - sob - were my - sob - only ultra-rare's! I want my dad.'
'Can we have something to eat?'
When I die, In A Minute will be engraved on my headstone.
I cheered myself up on Sunday by gardening. Before I had kids, this meant a nice, quiet day pottering about and listening to the birds whilst also being Creative and Productive. Nowadays, it's the bits I squeeze in between catering for kids, answering endless questions for kids, sorting out kids' fights, administering plasters to kids or locating dock leaves and Anthisan to put on kids' nettle stings.
Even so, I'd still suggest gardening to anyone who has Issues of any kind. If you're worried, anxious or restless, calm yourself with a bit of gentle weeding and/or a little bit of planting - a kind of yoghurt-weavery meditation in movement. If you're blocked or frustrated, dig a bloody big hole. If you're feeling snappy, pissy or PMT-y, prune and hack - there's something tremendously, destructively therapeutic about it. If you're feeling like you want a fight, tackle tying up a rose, ripping out some nettles, forking over some hardened, globally-warmed soil. And if you're a mess, like me, do all of them. Extreme Gardening is where it's at for those of us who can't afford acupuncture.
And for the last couple of days? Well, I'd love to be the Julie Andrews, spiritually-sorted type who just needs to sing about raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string to make myself feel better. But I'm a 21st century woman. Vacuous, shallow, and Western. So, naturally, I went shopping.
Friday, April 20, 2007
The Lady of the Lump
One vowel is all it takes to mark the change. Recovering Husband is going from strength to strength, Arthritic Son is unaware of anything other that Dr Who, he's so well, and Teenage Toddler has stopped screeching for Calpol like some old alcoholic in a nursing home. So inevitably, it would seem, it's my turn. I'm booked in to have the breast lump checked at the hospital next week.
'There may be a bit of a wait,' warned the appointments woman. 'Be prepared.'
Ordinarily, with no child in tow, the prospect of a waiting room, a comfy chair and a mag would have appealed in no small way. However, now, after the last few months, it's just about enough to make me reach for the veg knife and wonder if I'd be suited to self-harming.
The one good thing about being the sort of women who attracts problems like cow's backsides attract flies, is that they never come along on their own. Sometimes that is deeply distressing and sometimes -admittedly rarely - it has a positive side. Therefore, today, the virus Teenage Toddler has so kindly shared with me is actually helping. Yes, I feel like crap. Yes, I am Queen of Snot, and yes all I want to do is curl up in bed/cry/put off swallowing until 2010. But at least I'm not worrying about my lump. See? A healthy bit of PMA for you.
The other thing I wanted to mention, briefly, although I could go into so much detail if I had the energy, is how crap some friends are. Someone wrote in my autograph book when I was about 8 that 'A True Friend Doesn't Just Stay While the Sun Shines' and I remember thinking what a load of rubbish it was - I could have named at least three little chums who'd have happily played with me in the rain. Well, not for the first time, but still just as upsettingly, at the age of 39, I have realised the essential truth of this. My phone, when I was happy, smiley, witty, good company, rang all the time. So much so, I got into the habit of letting the answerphone get it it drove me so mad. My calendar fair bulged with people wanting to spend time with me. And now? Cue ghostly whistle, tumbleweed and silence.
It hurts.
'There may be a bit of a wait,' warned the appointments woman. 'Be prepared.'
Ordinarily, with no child in tow, the prospect of a waiting room, a comfy chair and a mag would have appealed in no small way. However, now, after the last few months, it's just about enough to make me reach for the veg knife and wonder if I'd be suited to self-harming.
The one good thing about being the sort of women who attracts problems like cow's backsides attract flies, is that they never come along on their own. Sometimes that is deeply distressing and sometimes -admittedly rarely - it has a positive side. Therefore, today, the virus Teenage Toddler has so kindly shared with me is actually helping. Yes, I feel like crap. Yes, I am Queen of Snot, and yes all I want to do is curl up in bed/cry/put off swallowing until 2010. But at least I'm not worrying about my lump. See? A healthy bit of PMA for you.
The other thing I wanted to mention, briefly, although I could go into so much detail if I had the energy, is how crap some friends are. Someone wrote in my autograph book when I was about 8 that 'A True Friend Doesn't Just Stay While the Sun Shines' and I remember thinking what a load of rubbish it was - I could have named at least three little chums who'd have happily played with me in the rain. Well, not for the first time, but still just as upsettingly, at the age of 39, I have realised the essential truth of this. My phone, when I was happy, smiley, witty, good company, rang all the time. So much so, I got into the habit of letting the answerphone get it it drove me so mad. My calendar fair bulged with people wanting to spend time with me. And now? Cue ghostly whistle, tumbleweed and silence.
It hurts.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Crises-R-Us
I told you there was a reason for this blog's title. Just to prove I'm a) not lying or b) the victim of some kind of bizarre Munchausen's-like syndrome, or even c) so bored/weird this is what I do for kicks, I shall share with you my latest 'adventure'.
What with Recovering Husband having seen his GP yesterday (another 3 weeks' sick note, mind) and Arthritic Son seemingly declared in drug-controlled remission in his last clinic, things would be looking up, wouldn't they? Even the Teenage Toddler has stopped behaving like Mussolini in the last few days. Although this could be owing to the fact he's passed all his viral symptoms on to me - rather like the transferral of demonic possession in the Exorcist but without the added benefit of its taking place within a work of fiction.
So, having been feeling a tad rough, and wondering if I ought to start looking at my own health now that I've Florenced my way through everyone else's for what feels like eternity, I decided to have a word with the Nurse Practitioner about stopping smoking - I felt rough, hadn't had a cigarette for almost 24 hours and wanted to seize the moment. I also wanted to ask a few q's about the depressing and hideous event that is Significant Rise in Amount of Facial Hair. (Well, all hair if I'm honest. And think yourself lucky I don't mention the other Bodily Issues. What joy it is to be nearly 40 and undergoing hormonal civil war - is it any wonder we're all such sour, pike-faced old bags?)
Having explained myself, I waited expectantly for her to offer me some patches.
'Well,' she said. 'I think really you need to pick a date.'
'I thought I was. Um, today. Carpe diem and all that.'
'Ye-e-es,' she said in that way that people use when they want to sound thoughtful and well-meaning but are really saying, ''Oh God I've got one here who could get lost in a phone box.''
'It doesn't really work like that though,' she continued, eyes awash with pity at the hapless pariah before her. 'You need to set a date.'
'Oh. So, no patches today then?'
Smiles. Looks at me like I'm as naive as the Andrex puppy. 'You see, you haven't prepared. People have more of a success rate if they prepare.'
Haven't prepared! I've just spent the last few months wondering if my husband has cancer. I've never thought or read so much about smoking in my life - I am now virtually the Grim Reaper's Bitch. I sort of explain this.
'Fear really isn't the way. Really, I think for you writing down the pros and cons, filling in an Action Plan, would be a good idea. Seeing a smoking councillor. Recognising that those addiction patterns need changing. Working out how you're going to feed those little hungry birds in there.'
'Birds?'
'The little receptors in your brain. But I've got all the information you need here.' Busies herself collecting lots of photocopies and shiny cardlets with numbers on them. 'Take it home and have a look. You can always come back and we'll talk some more when you've set a date.'
At this point, I feel utterly depressed, and realise that if I really, really wanted to stop I'd just bloody do it.
As if that wasn't enough, I quickly, forlornly, mention the hirsutism and associated hormonal stuff - I can't face coming back again (how long before 'Munchausen's?' pops up on the computer screen?). It transpires that because I've had periods for 30 years (yes, I was only 10) and early menopause runs in my family, it's fully possible I am peri-menopausal and/or have polycystic ovaries. Tip top. Plus for all of that, I need to see the doctor.
Suddenly, for the first time in 24 hours, I really, really want a cigarette.
So today, I went back. A speculum and an internal later, and my GP's booking me in for a pelvic scan, which will take a few months to come through. While I'm lying there wondering if she thinks I have Munchausen's - and if, in fact, I actually do - I remember to ask her to check the wierd thing in my left breast, adding that I'm pretty confident it's probably all in my head. Stress and all that.
But no. Lumpy massy thing it is and she'd like it checked.
'Are you worried?' she asks.
This makes me smile. 'I've kind of gone beyond worry recently. What will be will be.' (While this may sound philosophical and Big of me, it's important to remember it's only because I'm so knackered I can't even seriously think about it.)
'OK. Well I think for what's it worth, I'll get it looked at pretty soon. Not that I'm worried, I'm pretty sure it is hormonal, but I think you've gone through enough recently. You've kind of been through hell, haven't you?'
If it weren't for the fact she'd probably certify me, I'd have wept, clung to her knees and begged her to take me home with her and make me some soup.
'I'll get you in in the next two weeks,' she says.
So, here we go again. Still, if I'm good and don't eat much in between now and then, at least I can treat myself to a scone while I'm there.
What with Recovering Husband having seen his GP yesterday (another 3 weeks' sick note, mind) and Arthritic Son seemingly declared in drug-controlled remission in his last clinic, things would be looking up, wouldn't they? Even the Teenage Toddler has stopped behaving like Mussolini in the last few days. Although this could be owing to the fact he's passed all his viral symptoms on to me - rather like the transferral of demonic possession in the Exorcist but without the added benefit of its taking place within a work of fiction.
So, having been feeling a tad rough, and wondering if I ought to start looking at my own health now that I've Florenced my way through everyone else's for what feels like eternity, I decided to have a word with the Nurse Practitioner about stopping smoking - I felt rough, hadn't had a cigarette for almost 24 hours and wanted to seize the moment. I also wanted to ask a few q's about the depressing and hideous event that is Significant Rise in Amount of Facial Hair. (Well, all hair if I'm honest. And think yourself lucky I don't mention the other Bodily Issues. What joy it is to be nearly 40 and undergoing hormonal civil war - is it any wonder we're all such sour, pike-faced old bags?)
Having explained myself, I waited expectantly for her to offer me some patches.
'Well,' she said. 'I think really you need to pick a date.'
'I thought I was. Um, today. Carpe diem and all that.'
'Ye-e-es,' she said in that way that people use when they want to sound thoughtful and well-meaning but are really saying, ''Oh God I've got one here who could get lost in a phone box.''
'It doesn't really work like that though,' she continued, eyes awash with pity at the hapless pariah before her. 'You need to set a date.'
'Oh. So, no patches today then?'
Smiles. Looks at me like I'm as naive as the Andrex puppy. 'You see, you haven't prepared. People have more of a success rate if they prepare.'
Haven't prepared! I've just spent the last few months wondering if my husband has cancer. I've never thought or read so much about smoking in my life - I am now virtually the Grim Reaper's Bitch. I sort of explain this.
'Fear really isn't the way. Really, I think for you writing down the pros and cons, filling in an Action Plan, would be a good idea. Seeing a smoking councillor. Recognising that those addiction patterns need changing. Working out how you're going to feed those little hungry birds in there.'
'Birds?'
'The little receptors in your brain. But I've got all the information you need here.' Busies herself collecting lots of photocopies and shiny cardlets with numbers on them. 'Take it home and have a look. You can always come back and we'll talk some more when you've set a date.'
At this point, I feel utterly depressed, and realise that if I really, really wanted to stop I'd just bloody do it.
As if that wasn't enough, I quickly, forlornly, mention the hirsutism and associated hormonal stuff - I can't face coming back again (how long before 'Munchausen's?' pops up on the computer screen?). It transpires that because I've had periods for 30 years (yes, I was only 10) and early menopause runs in my family, it's fully possible I am peri-menopausal and/or have polycystic ovaries. Tip top. Plus for all of that, I need to see the doctor.
Suddenly, for the first time in 24 hours, I really, really want a cigarette.
So today, I went back. A speculum and an internal later, and my GP's booking me in for a pelvic scan, which will take a few months to come through. While I'm lying there wondering if she thinks I have Munchausen's - and if, in fact, I actually do - I remember to ask her to check the wierd thing in my left breast, adding that I'm pretty confident it's probably all in my head. Stress and all that.
But no. Lumpy massy thing it is and she'd like it checked.
'Are you worried?' she asks.
This makes me smile. 'I've kind of gone beyond worry recently. What will be will be.' (While this may sound philosophical and Big of me, it's important to remember it's only because I'm so knackered I can't even seriously think about it.)
'OK. Well I think for what's it worth, I'll get it looked at pretty soon. Not that I'm worried, I'm pretty sure it is hormonal, but I think you've gone through enough recently. You've kind of been through hell, haven't you?'
If it weren't for the fact she'd probably certify me, I'd have wept, clung to her knees and begged her to take me home with her and make me some soup.
'I'll get you in in the next two weeks,' she says.
So, here we go again. Still, if I'm good and don't eat much in between now and then, at least I can treat myself to a scone while I'm there.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I love the smell of formaldehyde in the morning....
Or whatever that disinfectanty smell is in hospitals. Where I seem to spend most of my 2007 thus far. Back today for an entire morning checking up Arthritic Son. Typical. Everyone else gets to take their kids back to school, I wind up at the Norfolk and Norwich in a waiting room with no magazines, no windows, too many people and a couple of ten year olds trying (badly) to parent a Baby on the Edge.
The only entertainment to be had was watching an undercover member of the Mummy Mafia as she patrolled the waiting room Properly Entertaining her own fat, smiley toddler and shooting surreptitious, raised-eyebrow-knowing glances at the oblivious couple. I know her sort. Years ago she would have terrified me, with her make-upless face, and her sartorial statement that she doesn't really care what she looks like because Being A Good Mum is More Important ACTUALLY, but I'm wise now. Oh yes. I know that she's just Smug Mother of One. She's done the baby stuff and emerged relatively unscathed with Smiley Properly Entertained child who's fully used to being the centre of the universe and having parents whose mission in life is to make him happy and stuff him with as much breastmilk/omega 3s/organic produce as he can humanly take.
So, I'm sitting there, feeling really sorry for the teenage parents, feeling really sorry for the purple baby in designer clothes going hoarse in his car seat or being passed from disinterested knees to having his back pounded by his dad, bored rigid while Arthritic Son plays the resident gameboys and getting my kicks by imagining the MM with her second.
Preferably, I'm thinking, with an evil leer, a second boy.
Not even a scone basket with which to cheer myself up - which is actually no bad thing. The scone habit, the fact it's just been Easter and the Contact Eating Disorder I've developed while Recovering Husband gorges to regain his lost weight, have culminated in a rather unattractive stomach/thigh event. A sort of 'hey, look I'm suddenly five months' pregnant' type of event.
Anyway, back to Arthritic Son. It's now 2 years since he was first diagnosed, almost 2 and a half since I first noticed that my 6-year old had looked particularly unwell for an entire term. I was talking to his teacher one day after school - she'd called me in to tell me he was having problems concentrating in class - and he popped his head up just beside her elbow, and as I glanced at him I was struck by how pale and sickly he looked. It was one of those horrible shocks you get when you see someone every day but suddenly realise they look quite dramatically different - not right, somehow - an image that engraves itself right there and then on your mind forever.
I knew, just knew, there was something wrong.
He was tired and snotty a lot, complaining of feeling ill a lot that Christmas, which we just put down to the weather, to the full-on nature of the winter term and school Christmases (God, when did THAT start happening? We'd have died under that kind of pressure in the 70s...). When he started limping in the mornings and complaining of knee pains, we put it down to growing, sleeping funny, damp weather - anything to explain what seemed pretty, well, unexplainable. When one knee puffed up, I took him to the GP who told me it was probably viral (oh for a quid every time I've heard that in my life) and gave me some ibuprofen.
A week later, when he burst into tears after school for being shouted at for not concentrating, too scared to tell the teacher it was because his knees hurt so badly while he was sitting, I went back. This time I was told it was probably 'housemaid's knee', which came as a bit of a surprise what with him being 6 and never having scrubbed a floor in his life (I may be many things as a mother, but I've a way to go before I get quite as bad as a character from a Dicken's novel). And on it went. More trouble with school, more fighting with teachers and GPs, more tears, more pain and more encroaching disability for my son.
Eventually, several months after we first saw the GP, and with the other knee now swelling and a child who could no longer get out of bed or the bath without help, up or down the stairs, or, in fact, walk for two hours every morning, we got referred. And I mean referred. I had a phone call at 8pm from the GP at home telling me he wanted my son in the N&N the following morning for tests first thing. A whole day of them.
From there, we've had a long journey. From diagnosis to change in diagnosis. From knowing in myself the arthritis was spreading, to locking horns with his consultant who told me that it was probably growing pains and I should 'play it down' (from a kid who never 'played it up'), to being proved right four months later. From one knee being affected to both knees, both ankles, wrists, fingers, toes, jaw, shoulders, neck. From simple anti-inflammatories to steroid injections to more steroid injections to different drugs, leg splints at night, strict physio regimes and eventually, a year ago, to the drug that turned everything round - methotrexate.
For those who don't know, this is the same drug that is used, in higher doses, for chemotherapy as it suppresses the immune system and arthritis is an auto-immune disease. It's not nice, it comes with a list of side-effects/contraindications two pages long and you have an hour's appointment with a specialist nurse to talk about it before you sign on the dotted line. It also costs a lot, so the NHS are pretty specific about needing it before they hand it out. While he's on it, we have to be pretty careful. For example, it makes him photosensitive, he can't have immunisations, or many antibiotics, he has bloods monthly to check liver, cell counts etc. We can't go somewhere malarial (just as well it isn't an option) and chicken pox, if he hadn't had it would be a real problem. There are also complications should he get a chest infection (great in light of the recent chest plague suffered by Sick Husband).
We still don't know what will happen with the arthritis. We don't know if he'll have it when he's older or whether it will burn itself out before he hits his teens or twenties. We don't know if it will flare up again should he catch an unpleasant virus (we're supposed to keep him away from outbreaks at school), or if something else will trigger another attack, if he'll get it when he's older.
All we do know, thanks to mornings like this, is that he's doing OK. His bloods aren't great, but compared to what they were, they're good. His physio is really pleased with his legs - we've spent two years trying to straighten out his knees thanks to the damage caused by the disease - and she feels he's fit enough to maybe leave with an 'emergency only' follow-up after this summer. Which is great news.
We've been a long time getting here. There are many, many times I've sat and cried for my son because of his pain, because of what we've had to do to help him. I'd gladly have taken all his pain myself and trebled it just to watch him be like all his friends, like all my friends' kids. I've wanted to literally kill some of my friends when they've told me they've kept their kid off school because they 'looked tired' and I've taken my son, hopping, limping, crying with pain, because that's what we've been told to do. I've had other mothers who had no idea of what was going on look at me, with my make-up on and my hobbling, crippled-up son, like I'm Myra Hindley's sister, just dumping Tiny Tim off so I can go and get a manicure. I've learnt that you can't fight every battle.
I could sit and cry now because my boy is virtually 'normal'. It might be drug controlled, but hopefully that part of the nightmare is over for him. Pain is almost not a part of his life anymore. He doesn't have to be the Guardian of the Den in the playground because he can't run around with the others, or not join in with the football, or walk around in lessons, or take in a cast to get his mates to sign it so that we can try and teach him about acceptance. He doesn't cry or moan when I go to get him and tell him we're walking, we don't have to have the conversations on the way home about how important a role Guardian of the Den is (think Hagrid, I always told him) or at what point of the evening physio gets done (it's weekly now) alongside homework, which is, I agree with him 'totally unfair'.
I can be more of a 'normal' parent now. I'm not looking for how much slack you cut because the kid's got a lot on his plate already, or is in pain, or feeling rough due to a new drug. I don't need to watch him like a hawk anymore, always on the case for new evidence of the disease spreading, or side effects, or wrongly working joints. And I don't need to fill in those godawful disability living allowance forms that ask me to specify how long - in minutes - he needs help for during the day, or in the night, or going to the loo, or getting out of the bath... I can breathe again.
I've learned a lot of things throughout this journey. Too many to go into here. But I've learned one thing above all, all you mothers out there. Never, ever, doubt your own gut feelings about your child.
The only entertainment to be had was watching an undercover member of the Mummy Mafia as she patrolled the waiting room Properly Entertaining her own fat, smiley toddler and shooting surreptitious, raised-eyebrow-knowing glances at the oblivious couple. I know her sort. Years ago she would have terrified me, with her make-upless face, and her sartorial statement that she doesn't really care what she looks like because Being A Good Mum is More Important ACTUALLY, but I'm wise now. Oh yes. I know that she's just Smug Mother of One. She's done the baby stuff and emerged relatively unscathed with Smiley Properly Entertained child who's fully used to being the centre of the universe and having parents whose mission in life is to make him happy and stuff him with as much breastmilk/omega 3s/organic produce as he can humanly take.
So, I'm sitting there, feeling really sorry for the teenage parents, feeling really sorry for the purple baby in designer clothes going hoarse in his car seat or being passed from disinterested knees to having his back pounded by his dad, bored rigid while Arthritic Son plays the resident gameboys and getting my kicks by imagining the MM with her second.
Preferably, I'm thinking, with an evil leer, a second boy.
Not even a scone basket with which to cheer myself up - which is actually no bad thing. The scone habit, the fact it's just been Easter and the Contact Eating Disorder I've developed while Recovering Husband gorges to regain his lost weight, have culminated in a rather unattractive stomach/thigh event. A sort of 'hey, look I'm suddenly five months' pregnant' type of event.
Anyway, back to Arthritic Son. It's now 2 years since he was first diagnosed, almost 2 and a half since I first noticed that my 6-year old had looked particularly unwell for an entire term. I was talking to his teacher one day after school - she'd called me in to tell me he was having problems concentrating in class - and he popped his head up just beside her elbow, and as I glanced at him I was struck by how pale and sickly he looked. It was one of those horrible shocks you get when you see someone every day but suddenly realise they look quite dramatically different - not right, somehow - an image that engraves itself right there and then on your mind forever.
I knew, just knew, there was something wrong.
He was tired and snotty a lot, complaining of feeling ill a lot that Christmas, which we just put down to the weather, to the full-on nature of the winter term and school Christmases (God, when did THAT start happening? We'd have died under that kind of pressure in the 70s...). When he started limping in the mornings and complaining of knee pains, we put it down to growing, sleeping funny, damp weather - anything to explain what seemed pretty, well, unexplainable. When one knee puffed up, I took him to the GP who told me it was probably viral (oh for a quid every time I've heard that in my life) and gave me some ibuprofen.
A week later, when he burst into tears after school for being shouted at for not concentrating, too scared to tell the teacher it was because his knees hurt so badly while he was sitting, I went back. This time I was told it was probably 'housemaid's knee', which came as a bit of a surprise what with him being 6 and never having scrubbed a floor in his life (I may be many things as a mother, but I've a way to go before I get quite as bad as a character from a Dicken's novel). And on it went. More trouble with school, more fighting with teachers and GPs, more tears, more pain and more encroaching disability for my son.
Eventually, several months after we first saw the GP, and with the other knee now swelling and a child who could no longer get out of bed or the bath without help, up or down the stairs, or, in fact, walk for two hours every morning, we got referred. And I mean referred. I had a phone call at 8pm from the GP at home telling me he wanted my son in the N&N the following morning for tests first thing. A whole day of them.
From there, we've had a long journey. From diagnosis to change in diagnosis. From knowing in myself the arthritis was spreading, to locking horns with his consultant who told me that it was probably growing pains and I should 'play it down' (from a kid who never 'played it up'), to being proved right four months later. From one knee being affected to both knees, both ankles, wrists, fingers, toes, jaw, shoulders, neck. From simple anti-inflammatories to steroid injections to more steroid injections to different drugs, leg splints at night, strict physio regimes and eventually, a year ago, to the drug that turned everything round - methotrexate.
For those who don't know, this is the same drug that is used, in higher doses, for chemotherapy as it suppresses the immune system and arthritis is an auto-immune disease. It's not nice, it comes with a list of side-effects/contraindications two pages long and you have an hour's appointment with a specialist nurse to talk about it before you sign on the dotted line. It also costs a lot, so the NHS are pretty specific about needing it before they hand it out. While he's on it, we have to be pretty careful. For example, it makes him photosensitive, he can't have immunisations, or many antibiotics, he has bloods monthly to check liver, cell counts etc. We can't go somewhere malarial (just as well it isn't an option) and chicken pox, if he hadn't had it would be a real problem. There are also complications should he get a chest infection (great in light of the recent chest plague suffered by Sick Husband).
We still don't know what will happen with the arthritis. We don't know if he'll have it when he's older or whether it will burn itself out before he hits his teens or twenties. We don't know if it will flare up again should he catch an unpleasant virus (we're supposed to keep him away from outbreaks at school), or if something else will trigger another attack, if he'll get it when he's older.
All we do know, thanks to mornings like this, is that he's doing OK. His bloods aren't great, but compared to what they were, they're good. His physio is really pleased with his legs - we've spent two years trying to straighten out his knees thanks to the damage caused by the disease - and she feels he's fit enough to maybe leave with an 'emergency only' follow-up after this summer. Which is great news.
We've been a long time getting here. There are many, many times I've sat and cried for my son because of his pain, because of what we've had to do to help him. I'd gladly have taken all his pain myself and trebled it just to watch him be like all his friends, like all my friends' kids. I've wanted to literally kill some of my friends when they've told me they've kept their kid off school because they 'looked tired' and I've taken my son, hopping, limping, crying with pain, because that's what we've been told to do. I've had other mothers who had no idea of what was going on look at me, with my make-up on and my hobbling, crippled-up son, like I'm Myra Hindley's sister, just dumping Tiny Tim off so I can go and get a manicure. I've learnt that you can't fight every battle.
I could sit and cry now because my boy is virtually 'normal'. It might be drug controlled, but hopefully that part of the nightmare is over for him. Pain is almost not a part of his life anymore. He doesn't have to be the Guardian of the Den in the playground because he can't run around with the others, or not join in with the football, or walk around in lessons, or take in a cast to get his mates to sign it so that we can try and teach him about acceptance. He doesn't cry or moan when I go to get him and tell him we're walking, we don't have to have the conversations on the way home about how important a role Guardian of the Den is (think Hagrid, I always told him) or at what point of the evening physio gets done (it's weekly now) alongside homework, which is, I agree with him 'totally unfair'.
I can be more of a 'normal' parent now. I'm not looking for how much slack you cut because the kid's got a lot on his plate already, or is in pain, or feeling rough due to a new drug. I don't need to watch him like a hawk anymore, always on the case for new evidence of the disease spreading, or side effects, or wrongly working joints. And I don't need to fill in those godawful disability living allowance forms that ask me to specify how long - in minutes - he needs help for during the day, or in the night, or going to the loo, or getting out of the bath... I can breathe again.
I've learned a lot of things throughout this journey. Too many to go into here. But I've learned one thing above all, all you mothers out there. Never, ever, doubt your own gut feelings about your child.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Normal for Norfolk
I'm trying to get my life to return to some kind of normality - just a fleeting visit to the GP's surgery in the last few days to pick up a prescription and clock the look of alarm on the receptionist's face fading as she realised I wasn't there to 'stay' so to speak.
Recovering Husband is still at home, as he will continue to be for the next month until he can start the new job. Oh, if I had a quid for the times I've been asked how I cope with Husband at home. And another quid for the times women have told me how hard they'd find it. Which they would, believe me. So, how do I cope? Well, how does anyone? It's a waking nightmare. Kind of like the reverse of having a bad dream and pinching yourself to make sure you are actually awake. In this scenario, you feel profound disappointment that you really are.
Anyway, today I took the chance to escape. Now that Recovering Husband is capable of Doing Things, he took the kids to his parents for lunch and dropped me in the city. Or 'Up the Ci'ee' as they say in Norfolk. I had an appointment with my contact lens man and a few things to pick up for a 40th birthday party at the weekend which has specified a 70s/80s dress code. The days of dressing up as Abba or Madonna without looking like a drag queen are decidedly behind one in one's 39th year, so I'd thought I'd slip into Claire's Accessories for some glittery things to accessorise the sort of thing my mother used to wear to Pippa Dee parties in my childhood. Now, I am the mother of boys, and have just spent three months inhabiting waiting rooms, so shiny, sparkly girl-palaces don't tend to characterise my shopping experiences and I was rather looking forward to it. I now have a Mental Note to Self for the future: unless shopping with young girl and/or wishing to feel as old and hairy as Gandalf, avoid Claire's Accessories at all costs. Stick with John Lewis, Boots, Superdrug, or better still, the cosmetic enhancements offered by Superglue and Vaseline.
Refusing to be subdued by the culture shocks of a) being Up the Ci'ee and b) how bloody old I am (it's easier to see the traces of youth left in yourself when you spend weeks discussing scones with pensioners), I found myself relieved to have the excuse of my contact lens appointment to avoid more shops. I've been seeing the same opti-whatsit for years. Mr Lens (we'll call him Lenny) and I have, over the years, become somewhat acquainted with each other's lives - he's followed my pregnancies and journey through small-boy motherhood, I've followed his journeys through big-boy fatherhood - and I'm comfortable with that. It's nice. Gives you a feeling of being more than just a number on the Direct Debit transfers. But as I said, this is my life and my life doesn't really do 'normal'. Even for Norfolk.
'Now,' said Lenny, as I settle in the chair after the initial greetings. 'When did I see you last?'
'Oo, er, some time last year? Autumn time, was it?'
'That's about right,' he says, consulting his notes. 'Now. Was that before or after I had the trouble down below?'
'Pardon me?'
'I told you about it, didn't I? The old, you know, swollen testicle.'
'Um. No. I don't think so.'
'Didn't I? Oh, worrying times, we've had. One so much bigger than the other, you know. Massive. Had to do all the old BUPA visit, you know. Bit of an op.'
'Oh. Dear. Is it–?
'Oh, fine. Yes. Worrying though, waiting for a while to find out.'
'Yes, I can imagine, we've just-'
'All sorted now though. Apart from a little bit of trouble in the night. You know. Going. Get up with the urge and go to the bathroom and nothing. Get back into bed and have to get up again and go no trouble. Drives the wife mad.'
'Mmm.'
'Still, you'll laugh. One of the things they told me after the op was that it's quite normal - 60 per cent, in fact - that when you make love, you still get the orgasm but there can be a distinct lack of fluid.'
'Oh, really? How, um, mm-'
'Told the beloved that, quite seriously, you know, sat down at the kitchen table - I mean, I'm quite attached to all that down there, don't want to think there's something really wrong - and do you know what she said? ''Well, I hope you're in the 60 per cent'', she said, ''less flaming laundry for me!'' ' Lenny laughs heartily. 'Thought you'd find that funny!'
Laugh totally falsely. Resist temptation to ask why. Do I look like the sort of woman tickled by stories of other people's bodily fluid functions? Do I?
'Still', he says, wiping his eyes, 'At least they know it's not the prostrate. Thank God.'
'No. You don't want-'
'No. I mean the surgeon said to me, he said, normally your prostrate is fine, I can give it a prod and it's like' - gestures with hand like child imitating star in Twinkle Twinkle song - 'but this time he really had to fiddle about. So he wanted the tests to be sure.'
'Yes. He would.'
'So,' says Lenny, finally leaning in towards me. 'How are we getting on with these eyes then?'
It's not like I don't try to have a normal life. You just try carrying on with your shopping 'normally' after that little lot.
Recovering Husband is still at home, as he will continue to be for the next month until he can start the new job. Oh, if I had a quid for the times I've been asked how I cope with Husband at home. And another quid for the times women have told me how hard they'd find it. Which they would, believe me. So, how do I cope? Well, how does anyone? It's a waking nightmare. Kind of like the reverse of having a bad dream and pinching yourself to make sure you are actually awake. In this scenario, you feel profound disappointment that you really are.
Anyway, today I took the chance to escape. Now that Recovering Husband is capable of Doing Things, he took the kids to his parents for lunch and dropped me in the city. Or 'Up the Ci'ee' as they say in Norfolk. I had an appointment with my contact lens man and a few things to pick up for a 40th birthday party at the weekend which has specified a 70s/80s dress code. The days of dressing up as Abba or Madonna without looking like a drag queen are decidedly behind one in one's 39th year, so I'd thought I'd slip into Claire's Accessories for some glittery things to accessorise the sort of thing my mother used to wear to Pippa Dee parties in my childhood. Now, I am the mother of boys, and have just spent three months inhabiting waiting rooms, so shiny, sparkly girl-palaces don't tend to characterise my shopping experiences and I was rather looking forward to it. I now have a Mental Note to Self for the future: unless shopping with young girl and/or wishing to feel as old and hairy as Gandalf, avoid Claire's Accessories at all costs. Stick with John Lewis, Boots, Superdrug, or better still, the cosmetic enhancements offered by Superglue and Vaseline.
Refusing to be subdued by the culture shocks of a) being Up the Ci'ee and b) how bloody old I am (it's easier to see the traces of youth left in yourself when you spend weeks discussing scones with pensioners), I found myself relieved to have the excuse of my contact lens appointment to avoid more shops. I've been seeing the same opti-whatsit for years. Mr Lens (we'll call him Lenny) and I have, over the years, become somewhat acquainted with each other's lives - he's followed my pregnancies and journey through small-boy motherhood, I've followed his journeys through big-boy fatherhood - and I'm comfortable with that. It's nice. Gives you a feeling of being more than just a number on the Direct Debit transfers. But as I said, this is my life and my life doesn't really do 'normal'. Even for Norfolk.
'Now,' said Lenny, as I settle in the chair after the initial greetings. 'When did I see you last?'
'Oo, er, some time last year? Autumn time, was it?'
'That's about right,' he says, consulting his notes. 'Now. Was that before or after I had the trouble down below?'
'Pardon me?'
'I told you about it, didn't I? The old, you know, swollen testicle.'
'Um. No. I don't think so.'
'Didn't I? Oh, worrying times, we've had. One so much bigger than the other, you know. Massive. Had to do all the old BUPA visit, you know. Bit of an op.'
'Oh. Dear. Is it–?
'Oh, fine. Yes. Worrying though, waiting for a while to find out.'
'Yes, I can imagine, we've just-'
'All sorted now though. Apart from a little bit of trouble in the night. You know. Going. Get up with the urge and go to the bathroom and nothing. Get back into bed and have to get up again and go no trouble. Drives the wife mad.'
'Mmm.'
'Still, you'll laugh. One of the things they told me after the op was that it's quite normal - 60 per cent, in fact - that when you make love, you still get the orgasm but there can be a distinct lack of fluid.'
'Oh, really? How, um, mm-'
'Told the beloved that, quite seriously, you know, sat down at the kitchen table - I mean, I'm quite attached to all that down there, don't want to think there's something really wrong - and do you know what she said? ''Well, I hope you're in the 60 per cent'', she said, ''less flaming laundry for me!'' ' Lenny laughs heartily. 'Thought you'd find that funny!'
Laugh totally falsely. Resist temptation to ask why. Do I look like the sort of woman tickled by stories of other people's bodily fluid functions? Do I?
'Still', he says, wiping his eyes, 'At least they know it's not the prostrate. Thank God.'
'No. You don't want-'
'No. I mean the surgeon said to me, he said, normally your prostrate is fine, I can give it a prod and it's like' - gestures with hand like child imitating star in Twinkle Twinkle song - 'but this time he really had to fiddle about. So he wanted the tests to be sure.'
'Yes. He would.'
'So,' says Lenny, finally leaning in towards me. 'How are we getting on with these eyes then?'
It's not like I don't try to have a normal life. You just try carrying on with your shopping 'normally' after that little lot.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Thank God for Chocolate
Is it me, or is the only point to Easter?
Admittedly, I'm still a little wierd, not having been anywhere near a hospital now for at least ten days. Perhaps I'm simply struggling with having to adjust out of my scone comfort zone - although I am rediscovering hot cross buns. Caught myself wondering what they taste like at Papworth/Addenbrookes/the Norfolk and Norwich and thought, with chagrin, that I'm probably only a step away from the 'mature' lady who dresses up to go and visit sick people she knows 'just to get out'.
Anyway, Recovering Husband is doing well. He has managed to put half a stone back on, a third of the weight he's lost, and he's in the enviable position of Eating For Britain. Trouble is, he's trying to recruit me to the cause. Now, I'm no biffa, I'm reasonably proud to say - I don't cut a bad gib for nearly 40 (clothed, and if you don't look at the face in daylight hours) - but I'm no sylph either. In today's terms, as far as Size Zero goes, you're looking at an upper thigh on a good month when I've managed to get to yoga more than once, walked to school a few times restraining Teenage Toddler, and haven't sat near a pot of double cream. Also, Recovering Husband is still not smoking and has replaced that addiction with a new one that seems to focus on vanilla ice-cream and home-made chocolate sauce. Have some cocoa with your butter...
We've also been out. Well, I say 'out'. I mean we've been to see my family and we've been to see one of my oldest friends - all people I can cope with in my current post-traumatic wierded-out state. It's been great to get out of the house somewhere other than a waiting room, and it's been nice being taken care of, albeit that they're all trying to feed up Recovering Husband too, and I have developed some kind of Contact Eating Disorder. I feel like a walking Christmas Dinner.
Spent the rest of Easter watching crap TV and a DVD of 'Syriana' with 'Gorgeous George' Clooney. Who must have got an Oscar for Best Supporting Beard, as far as I can make out. It's a long time since I've watched a film so dull I'd rather watch the news instead. Such a shame. I was prepared to like it, just as last week I was prepared to hate 'Casino Royale' and ended up smitten with Daniel Craig and shouting 'ditch the bitch, James!' at the screen. No comment from RH, as he was still up beyond 9pm and too tired to multi-task by watching and listening to me at the same time.
Also watched a rather good documentary on the infamous Outback Pom Murder with the rather lovely (if rather wrinkly these days) Bryan Brown as a bit of a tip-top QC. Mentioned to RH that I'd love to do a job like that instead of my rather pointless holiday copywriting. Still not used to him responding, so the 'Well, why not get on with it then? Do a course' like all I needed was to apply to a Learn Direct advert, came as a bit of a shock. I'd rather grown to like Passive Sick Husband. I've a sneaking suspicion I'd rather grown to like it a little too much.
Admittedly, I'm still a little wierd, not having been anywhere near a hospital now for at least ten days. Perhaps I'm simply struggling with having to adjust out of my scone comfort zone - although I am rediscovering hot cross buns. Caught myself wondering what they taste like at Papworth/Addenbrookes/the Norfolk and Norwich and thought, with chagrin, that I'm probably only a step away from the 'mature' lady who dresses up to go and visit sick people she knows 'just to get out'.
Anyway, Recovering Husband is doing well. He has managed to put half a stone back on, a third of the weight he's lost, and he's in the enviable position of Eating For Britain. Trouble is, he's trying to recruit me to the cause. Now, I'm no biffa, I'm reasonably proud to say - I don't cut a bad gib for nearly 40 (clothed, and if you don't look at the face in daylight hours) - but I'm no sylph either. In today's terms, as far as Size Zero goes, you're looking at an upper thigh on a good month when I've managed to get to yoga more than once, walked to school a few times restraining Teenage Toddler, and haven't sat near a pot of double cream. Also, Recovering Husband is still not smoking and has replaced that addiction with a new one that seems to focus on vanilla ice-cream and home-made chocolate sauce. Have some cocoa with your butter...
We've also been out. Well, I say 'out'. I mean we've been to see my family and we've been to see one of my oldest friends - all people I can cope with in my current post-traumatic wierded-out state. It's been great to get out of the house somewhere other than a waiting room, and it's been nice being taken care of, albeit that they're all trying to feed up Recovering Husband too, and I have developed some kind of Contact Eating Disorder. I feel like a walking Christmas Dinner.
Spent the rest of Easter watching crap TV and a DVD of 'Syriana' with 'Gorgeous George' Clooney. Who must have got an Oscar for Best Supporting Beard, as far as I can make out. It's a long time since I've watched a film so dull I'd rather watch the news instead. Such a shame. I was prepared to like it, just as last week I was prepared to hate 'Casino Royale' and ended up smitten with Daniel Craig and shouting 'ditch the bitch, James!' at the screen. No comment from RH, as he was still up beyond 9pm and too tired to multi-task by watching and listening to me at the same time.
Also watched a rather good documentary on the infamous Outback Pom Murder with the rather lovely (if rather wrinkly these days) Bryan Brown as a bit of a tip-top QC. Mentioned to RH that I'd love to do a job like that instead of my rather pointless holiday copywriting. Still not used to him responding, so the 'Well, why not get on with it then? Do a course' like all I needed was to apply to a Learn Direct advert, came as a bit of a shock. I'd rather grown to like Passive Sick Husband. I've a sneaking suspicion I'd rather grown to like it a little too much.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Post adrenaline fall out
Is that a syndrome yet? It ought to be. Having run on adrenaline and cortisol for the last three months, wondering if Sick Husband had cancer, worrying about what would happen if he didn't get/couldn't start his new job and dealing with the demands of the house/kids/Florence Nightingale duties, I'm now experiencing the aftermath. Think of all those pictures of Hiroshima after the bomb dropped and you've got a pretty good picture of my mental and physical state.
I decided yesterday that it might do me good to try and get back into 'normal' life - if that is in fact at all possible with Recovering Husband still at home - and headed out to a bit of a mums'n'kids get-together for the Easter hols. Several shocks awaited me. The first was how out of touch with seeing people outside of medical institutions I am. I can do the non-verbal stuff really well now - I could ask anyone in anyone language if they've finished with that copy of 'Hello' - and I'm totally at home having a discussion with a complete stranger about the merits of a scone. I'm even confident these days at twisting my tongue round the names of certain procedures or medications. But put me in a room full of normal women talking about normal things and I'm completely out of my depth. I'd have been better off spending my time communicating with the 6-week old baby. She and I seem to be on pretty much the same level (look at the pretty light, look at the pretty light...).
The second shock was how normal everyone else actually is.
'No medical emergency today then?' asked my friend as she came to pick us all up. (Guardian readers note - although I may be in my car almost as much as I'm in my bed, we country-dwellers do sometimes share our planet-raping behaviour.)
'No, not today,' I smiled, almost breaking Teenage Toddler's foot as I rammed it into his shoe.
This fact hit me more as I listened to what they'd all been up to. I hadn't seen them since November last year and I have to say they're a fairly normal bunch for an NCT group. For the uninitiated, the NCT is an organisation for pregnant women and mothers of small babies to meet each other, get birth info etc in a kind of hessian-weave way (they're very hot on natural birth, 'empowerment', organic food/nappies and breast-feeding). It is supposedly for 'intelligent' women with 'awareness' but what that really means is it's for the middle-classes. I met, and still see, one group of women when I was pregnant with my first son and attended a refresher course when pregnant with the second. I'd love to paint a picture of myself as Earth Mother and say that I only went to learn how to massage my perineum, but the truth is I went to meet women I could moan to/drink wine with post-partum. My other, first NCT group (who I'll talk about another time) are Very NCT. Last time I saw them we had salmon and fine wine for lunch at one of their beautiful Norfolk farmhouses, discussed private schools and talked about skiing and Mark Warner holidays. Well, they did. I sat and got quietly pissed after depressing them all about Sick Husband, how worried about money I was and how knackered I felt.
This lot, however, are far more normal, if less alcholic (there are pros and cons for everything). They're decorating their houses, thinking about moving and not being able to afford it, planning for people to come and stay over Easter, sorting out activities for the kids, shopping at Primark and organising things. The woman who was hosting had even labelled little bags for an Easter egg hunt, labelled beakers for the kids so they wouldn't keep asking where their drinks were (she is admittedly a teacher, but even so!) In a kind of suppressed-hysteric way, I joked about how inadequate she made me feel, how organised she was. The other mums were equally impressed/scared too, so I didn't feel I was talking out of turn.
'Oh, I have to be that way,' she said. 'It's probably the part of me that's such a control freak I can't cope if things don't go according to plan. At least I know if I've planned I can relax and accept that whatever happens happens.'
'But you're so together!' I enthused. 'I'd never think of doing that even if I'd managed to think of doing an Easter egg hunt before Easter Sunday.' (My limit would probably be handing a bowl of eggs around and letting them fight over it like dogs with a fox.)
'It's from years of being a teacher, I think,' she said - modestly, let it be noted. 'Years of having to plan and think ahead.'
I laughed. 'Not like me then. Years of having to lurch-'
'From crisis to crisis?' suggested one of the others.
I was actually going to say 'from one crap freelance job to another', but I guess that made the point quite succinctly.
The third shock was how tired just eating a bit of home-made cake, drinking some tea and chatting made me. By the time I got home I felt like I'd been mugged. Funny how you can do school/nursery/paygroup runs, food shop, keep your house in order, drive to and from hospitals, run Arthritic Son to and from an appointment, do playdough Fruit Bowls with Teenage Toddler, cook, sort laundry, answer the phone, fetch wood, keep a fire going, remember to do homework, bath kids, read stories AND embed some deep worry lines into your face all in the one day, yet two hours relaxing makes you feel like you've been hit by a truck.
I got up this morning and cancelled the playdate for today. Call me the Antimother, but I just couldn't face it. Instead, I decided to use Recovering Husband and went back to bed for a spot of Jeremy Kyle and a doze. It's Good Friday tomorrow. I'll try again then.
I decided yesterday that it might do me good to try and get back into 'normal' life - if that is in fact at all possible with Recovering Husband still at home - and headed out to a bit of a mums'n'kids get-together for the Easter hols. Several shocks awaited me. The first was how out of touch with seeing people outside of medical institutions I am. I can do the non-verbal stuff really well now - I could ask anyone in anyone language if they've finished with that copy of 'Hello' - and I'm totally at home having a discussion with a complete stranger about the merits of a scone. I'm even confident these days at twisting my tongue round the names of certain procedures or medications. But put me in a room full of normal women talking about normal things and I'm completely out of my depth. I'd have been better off spending my time communicating with the 6-week old baby. She and I seem to be on pretty much the same level (look at the pretty light, look at the pretty light...).
The second shock was how normal everyone else actually is.
'No medical emergency today then?' asked my friend as she came to pick us all up. (Guardian readers note - although I may be in my car almost as much as I'm in my bed, we country-dwellers do sometimes share our planet-raping behaviour.)
'No, not today,' I smiled, almost breaking Teenage Toddler's foot as I rammed it into his shoe.
This fact hit me more as I listened to what they'd all been up to. I hadn't seen them since November last year and I have to say they're a fairly normal bunch for an NCT group. For the uninitiated, the NCT is an organisation for pregnant women and mothers of small babies to meet each other, get birth info etc in a kind of hessian-weave way (they're very hot on natural birth, 'empowerment', organic food/nappies and breast-feeding). It is supposedly for 'intelligent' women with 'awareness' but what that really means is it's for the middle-classes. I met, and still see, one group of women when I was pregnant with my first son and attended a refresher course when pregnant with the second. I'd love to paint a picture of myself as Earth Mother and say that I only went to learn how to massage my perineum, but the truth is I went to meet women I could moan to/drink wine with post-partum. My other, first NCT group (who I'll talk about another time) are Very NCT. Last time I saw them we had salmon and fine wine for lunch at one of their beautiful Norfolk farmhouses, discussed private schools and talked about skiing and Mark Warner holidays. Well, they did. I sat and got quietly pissed after depressing them all about Sick Husband, how worried about money I was and how knackered I felt.
This lot, however, are far more normal, if less alcholic (there are pros and cons for everything). They're decorating their houses, thinking about moving and not being able to afford it, planning for people to come and stay over Easter, sorting out activities for the kids, shopping at Primark and organising things. The woman who was hosting had even labelled little bags for an Easter egg hunt, labelled beakers for the kids so they wouldn't keep asking where their drinks were (she is admittedly a teacher, but even so!) In a kind of suppressed-hysteric way, I joked about how inadequate she made me feel, how organised she was. The other mums were equally impressed/scared too, so I didn't feel I was talking out of turn.
'Oh, I have to be that way,' she said. 'It's probably the part of me that's such a control freak I can't cope if things don't go according to plan. At least I know if I've planned I can relax and accept that whatever happens happens.'
'But you're so together!' I enthused. 'I'd never think of doing that even if I'd managed to think of doing an Easter egg hunt before Easter Sunday.' (My limit would probably be handing a bowl of eggs around and letting them fight over it like dogs with a fox.)
'It's from years of being a teacher, I think,' she said - modestly, let it be noted. 'Years of having to plan and think ahead.'
I laughed. 'Not like me then. Years of having to lurch-'
'From crisis to crisis?' suggested one of the others.
I was actually going to say 'from one crap freelance job to another', but I guess that made the point quite succinctly.
The third shock was how tired just eating a bit of home-made cake, drinking some tea and chatting made me. By the time I got home I felt like I'd been mugged. Funny how you can do school/nursery/paygroup runs, food shop, keep your house in order, drive to and from hospitals, run Arthritic Son to and from an appointment, do playdough Fruit Bowls with Teenage Toddler, cook, sort laundry, answer the phone, fetch wood, keep a fire going, remember to do homework, bath kids, read stories AND embed some deep worry lines into your face all in the one day, yet two hours relaxing makes you feel like you've been hit by a truck.
I got up this morning and cancelled the playdate for today. Call me the Antimother, but I just couldn't face it. Instead, I decided to use Recovering Husband and went back to bed for a spot of Jeremy Kyle and a doze. It's Good Friday tomorrow. I'll try again then.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
If you're reading this, that's a miracle in itself...
Because the last two times I've tried to write a blog, I've failed. Once because I didn't know what I was doing, and the second time because I still didn't know what I was doing, but was in the rather more dangerous position of thinking I did. Wrong button pressed, 3 hours work disappeared in a nanosecond.
Anyway, I'd better introduce myself. Firstly, by way of explaining the name for this blog. I have joked throughout my adult life of wanting one of those lives that, in visual terms, would look like a hearbeat monitor flicking across a screen - straight line, little jolt up, little jolt down, straight line again - and what I've actually ended up with is the kind of display you'd get if you wired up a monitor to someone who'd just dropped an electric fire in their bath.
A little precis of my life as it stands, dripping forlornly in the rain with its broken umbrella, may help... . I love introductions almost as much as I love being asked to give myself some kind of 'witty' moniker at selling parties where someone gives you a name sticker and asks you to describe what kind of cook/reader/body lotion user you are. So, I'm going to do mine in the manner of Maximus the Gladiator: I am 39 and in my 40th year, Mother to a an Arthritic Son, Wife to a Recovering Husband, Loyal Servant to a Stroppy Pre-Schooler, Frustrated Writer and generally Woman on the Edge.
I shall begin with the start of 2007. Christmas was fine - in the way 'fine' can be quantified when your husband discovers he is to be made redundant in February, your arthritic son has taken a drop in dosage of his horrible-but-essential medication (its magical immuno-suppressant qualities being a touch too magical) and your 3 year old discovers early onset Attitude. However, such was the Walton-esque festive vibe in the house, that I was rather looking forward to a new year. We had been through a lot, we felt, what with Arthritic Son being diagnosed in 2005 and not stable until mid-2006, Husband having already been through one redunancy when Teenage Toddler was born in 2003, and 2004 taken up with minor problems like a spot of marital separation, attending Relate meetings and the like. Things were so good, in fact, I couldn't help wondering where the catch was.
Anyway, we'd been invited to Loaded Friends for a party to see in the new year. We're talking Bacchinalian feasting, rivers of quality alcohol, a bedroom with its own en-suite and the first morning of 2007 spent detoxing in the sauna and dipping in and out of the indoor pool... in short, for cap-doffers like us, a bit of a tip-top mini-break at no charge other than having to be Entertaining - which isn't exactly demanding in those circumstances. However, 24 hours before we were due to go, Husband ended up on a course of antibiotics for his window-rattling cough and Teenage Toddler had transmuted into King of Snot. Deciding to err on the side of caution, especially in light of Arthritic Son's compromised immunity, I spent New Year's Eve watching other people's fireworks through the haze of cheap fizz, not unhappily, and chiding myself for being such a glass-empty kind of psycho moan beast that I could even wonder about 'catches'. I resolutely determined to be more positive in 2007 - and therefore attract a more positive kind of luck.
It is now the beginning of April and since New Year, I have spent the equivalent of one month in and out of hospitals and surgeries, and probably another one just driving to and from them. People at my son's school are now starting to look at me as if I have Munchausen's by Proxy and the pharmacist in our local surgery has begun to seem really quite pleased there's a two-foot thick wall separating us.
The husband ended up with what is known as a 'pleural effusion', which is a lot of nasty fluid on the lungs. Thanks to spectacularly bad handling by a GP at our local surgery, he had six courses of antibiotics, a mis-read x-ray, none of the appropriate tests and had reached almost collapse point before this got diagnosed. At which point, during the February half-term, I phoned aforementioned GP for advice and got asked what I wanted to do. Thankfully, another GP referred him under BUPA cover (part of the work package) and we got onto the treadmill of What Caused It. One ultrasound scan, a mini-fluid drain, a CT scan, endless hassle with BUPA, a stay in Papworth Hospital, a full chest drain, four more x-rays and a couple of pleural biopsies later, we now know, as of the end of March, that it's not cancer. Thank God.
As well as having a Very Sick Husband (and, in fact, a husband at home for two months), dealing with the endless running around to and from appointments, the driving to and from hospitals in Cambridgeshire (we live in South Norfolk), the Dark Places you go to when you hear words like 'biopsy', there's also been the worry about Husband's job. In between being Sick and Very Sick, he'd attended an interview (complete with fake-tanned face and resolution not to take off suit jacket in order to try and hide new-look Concentration Camp physique), and somewhat miraculously, got the job. But of course, all things being equal, half an hour after he took the phone call being offered it, subject to references and a medical report from his doctor, he received a call from his surgeon to say he'd ordered a biopsy.
Given that while all of this is going on, I am still dealing with two full-on boys, my mother is away in Spain for 5 weeks, my sister is hospitalised with vomiting and my husband's family think that I'm over-dramatising a bit of a winter cold (oh, if I had a pound for every time someone asked me if he had man-flu), to say all of this - the not knowing, the waiting, the sheer physical and mental toll - has been stressful is a little like describing the Iraq War as a 'wee hiccup' in Tony Blair's career.
People I know ask me how I cope. Take this example.
It is the week after half-term. My parents are abroad, my in-laws are in Scotland. I have four days out of five planned with hospital visits, three with Sick Husband, one with Arthritic Son - an eye check-up, which he has every 6 months (alongside monthly blood tests, three-monthly clinic visits and physio sessions) as uveitis can be a side-effect of his type of arthritis. I have already spent my Saturday trying to scrounge childcare from women at school and playgroup - which I feel bad about as it's for the first day back and I know what it's like and I'm wondering if any of them are secretly thinking I might as well ask for a kidney donation while I'm at it.
I've spent my Sunday treating the kids to a visit to the car wash (which we had to go through twice as it didn't work properly first time and then we got stuck behind an old man whose driver's side window got stuck) and a trip to the park. Arthritic Son runs headlong towards the playground and stops short clutching both knees. This is the second time in a week he has told me his knee joints have started hurting again. The first time you put it down to something like the weather, the second time you just feel sick and start having visions of going back to the 'Tiny Tim' days.
On Monday, I take Sick Husband to Cambrige for an ultrasound and a supposedly straightforward chest drain. It does not go well. Words like 'complicated', 'not quite what we thought', 'something solid behind the fluid' are bandied about. Husband has smoked for years, so it's no mental quantum leap thinking about the difference between something being wrong with you and something being wrong with you because you smoke. (Yes, I know. I KNOW.)
On Tuesday, I take him for a CT scan - Cambridge again.
On Wednesday I take Arthritic Son to hospital. I'm driving round and round the car park trying to find a space when Son asks me if I remember the last time we came and I shouted at 'that woman'.
'What woman?' I am genuinely mystified.
'You remember. The lady in the car park who didn't have any children in her car.'
'Who?'
'The one who parked in that space you saw and you asked her if she minded if you had it 'cos you'd been driving around for ages and she said no, and then you a bit annoyed and then she said tough and something about boats, and then you argued for a bit because you said the car park was meant for kids, and then you got really cross and went all red and got out of the car and I thought you were going to hit her. That woman.'
I cringe so badly, I crick my neck.
'Oh, THAT woman,' I say brightly. 'Oh, I'd forgotten all about that. It was just a silly little-'
'No it wasn't mum, don't you remember? You shouted at her that people like her made you sick and I wondered if you were going to puke in the car park, like on your shoes or something.' Laughs in the way of 8 year old boy at mention of puke.
'Ah, ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!' I enjoin. 'Well, grown ups do do things they shouldn't sometimes when they're very, very tired. But it was wrong of mummy and you must never copy it. Never.' Rapid change of subject.
We then enter the hospital, in the wrong side because I'm so tired I've lost the plot, and walk for a mile before sitting for an hour in a waiting room full of children with TB who've weed on the radiators, or so it seems – a perfect place to contemplate what a nutter/failure of a mother I am. There's not even a Grazia to cheer myself up with (well, at least I'm not Paris Hilton). Son talks endlessly about Dr Who. Pre-eye test examination happens. His are fine, mine I realise, with ageing horror, are not. See consultant. Son's eyes are given the all-clear. We talk about his drugs and I realise how this once-foreign medical language now trips so easily off my tongue. Fight off sadness about that (at least he's better than he was thanks to Nasty Wonder Drug). Head for WRVS shop as is our way - it being formerly the best method to rid him of the impression hospitals were all about needles, pain, tests, physio regimes and cortico-steroid injections - to buy chocolate. Stand in queue at till. Son skitters off to check out toys. Woman in front and woman behind till have following conversation:
'How's your mother?'
'Oh, better than she was now she's had the breast off. I can't talk about it too much though, it upsets me.'
'Oh, I know. I had the lung out a year ago now. I know what it's like with the cancer. You give her my love and tell her I know what she's going through.'
At this point, watching customers on other till hurtling through, thinking how much I do not want to be listening to this, Son runs up and tugs my elbow.
'Mum! They've got Dr Who toys!'
'Have they? That's nice.'
'Can I have one?'
'No.'
'Just one?'
'No darling,' I say wearily. 'Not today. You've got Maltesers.' Unfair exchange I know, but you have to draw lines at times like this, coming here the amount we do.
'Oh-uh! Not fair! Why not?'
I look at him. The snap in my voice comes out much harder than I meant it to. 'Oh well why not have five! What do you think?'
The two women stop talking and look at me like I'm Satan's Bitch.
Drive home with the word 'cancer' buzzing round my head like a fly I can't swat, feeling my stomach trying to ingest my spleen. Have incessant Dr Who conversation about the merits of Christopher Eccleston vs David Tennant with Son. Drop Son off, go to collect Teenage Toddler from nursery who greets me with a bottom lip the size of Wales because I'm 'not daddy', and refuses to let me see the picture he's made because it's 'just for daddy'. Get home, load washing machine from gargantuan pile overtaking landing upstairs, cook pasta for kids, prepare supper for us for later (way too full of healthy veg, garlic and chilli for kids, plus accessorised with salad) get accosted by Sick Husband who is up, sweating and trying to rage about his boss, who he's just found out put him on Statutory Sick Pay after the first two weeks he was ill. Open fridge, swig from half-drunk bottle of wine I'm trying to abstain from until weekend. Clutch it fiercely to breast and intermittently slug while lighting cigarette and smoking outside back door (I know. I KNOW). Sick Husband looks at me with faint disgust and says, 'What's up with you?'
So there you have it. The truth is you don't really 'cope', you just have no choice. You just look like you're coping to the people who know you because if you're anything like me you don't fall to bits in front of them.
What would they prefer to see?
There are times I have wondered. How I've resisted self-harming - like carving Justify Your Bloody Salary on my torso and chaining myself to the roof of the doctor's surgery screaming for Watchdog - because I've felt so angry at the treatment of my husband by that one GP. Or gone so mad at a complete stranger, I wondered if I need locking up/sedating for the protection of the public. I've obsessed about someone who's pissed me off to the point of almost creating an internal ulcer, cried enough to make myself look like the Face of Boe (Dr Who again), talked to myself enough to wonder if it's too late - I've already gone mad and realisation is just as fleeting for me as moments of madness are for the normally sane.
Well, I'm a writer. And my coping mechanisms are whinging a lot (hence this blog) and being as mad as a box of badgers. Which pretty much fills the bill for writing a blog into cyberspace where no one will ever read it. If nothing else, it's an outlet for me, and I'm aware I need one. The most contradictory thing of all is that you'd think after all this, with good news (it's NOT cancer), you'd be skipping around with joy in your feet and sunlight in your heart.
Well, in one way you are. But in another way, all the adrenaline I've lived on for the past three months, all the worry and the waiting and the coping and the caring has taken its toll. Think of it like the mother whose heart stops at the sight of her child running out into a busy road. Does she grab that child when she realises its safe and cuddle it to her speaking calm, happy words of reassurance and delight?
Does she hell.
Anyway, I'd better introduce myself. Firstly, by way of explaining the name for this blog. I have joked throughout my adult life of wanting one of those lives that, in visual terms, would look like a hearbeat monitor flicking across a screen - straight line, little jolt up, little jolt down, straight line again - and what I've actually ended up with is the kind of display you'd get if you wired up a monitor to someone who'd just dropped an electric fire in their bath.
A little precis of my life as it stands, dripping forlornly in the rain with its broken umbrella, may help... . I love introductions almost as much as I love being asked to give myself some kind of 'witty' moniker at selling parties where someone gives you a name sticker and asks you to describe what kind of cook/reader/body lotion user you are. So, I'm going to do mine in the manner of Maximus the Gladiator: I am 39 and in my 40th year, Mother to a an Arthritic Son, Wife to a Recovering Husband, Loyal Servant to a Stroppy Pre-Schooler, Frustrated Writer and generally Woman on the Edge.
I shall begin with the start of 2007. Christmas was fine - in the way 'fine' can be quantified when your husband discovers he is to be made redundant in February, your arthritic son has taken a drop in dosage of his horrible-but-essential medication (its magical immuno-suppressant qualities being a touch too magical) and your 3 year old discovers early onset Attitude. However, such was the Walton-esque festive vibe in the house, that I was rather looking forward to a new year. We had been through a lot, we felt, what with Arthritic Son being diagnosed in 2005 and not stable until mid-2006, Husband having already been through one redunancy when Teenage Toddler was born in 2003, and 2004 taken up with minor problems like a spot of marital separation, attending Relate meetings and the like. Things were so good, in fact, I couldn't help wondering where the catch was.
Anyway, we'd been invited to Loaded Friends for a party to see in the new year. We're talking Bacchinalian feasting, rivers of quality alcohol, a bedroom with its own en-suite and the first morning of 2007 spent detoxing in the sauna and dipping in and out of the indoor pool... in short, for cap-doffers like us, a bit of a tip-top mini-break at no charge other than having to be Entertaining - which isn't exactly demanding in those circumstances. However, 24 hours before we were due to go, Husband ended up on a course of antibiotics for his window-rattling cough and Teenage Toddler had transmuted into King of Snot. Deciding to err on the side of caution, especially in light of Arthritic Son's compromised immunity, I spent New Year's Eve watching other people's fireworks through the haze of cheap fizz, not unhappily, and chiding myself for being such a glass-empty kind of psycho moan beast that I could even wonder about 'catches'. I resolutely determined to be more positive in 2007 - and therefore attract a more positive kind of luck.
It is now the beginning of April and since New Year, I have spent the equivalent of one month in and out of hospitals and surgeries, and probably another one just driving to and from them. People at my son's school are now starting to look at me as if I have Munchausen's by Proxy and the pharmacist in our local surgery has begun to seem really quite pleased there's a two-foot thick wall separating us.
The husband ended up with what is known as a 'pleural effusion', which is a lot of nasty fluid on the lungs. Thanks to spectacularly bad handling by a GP at our local surgery, he had six courses of antibiotics, a mis-read x-ray, none of the appropriate tests and had reached almost collapse point before this got diagnosed. At which point, during the February half-term, I phoned aforementioned GP for advice and got asked what I wanted to do. Thankfully, another GP referred him under BUPA cover (part of the work package) and we got onto the treadmill of What Caused It. One ultrasound scan, a mini-fluid drain, a CT scan, endless hassle with BUPA, a stay in Papworth Hospital, a full chest drain, four more x-rays and a couple of pleural biopsies later, we now know, as of the end of March, that it's not cancer. Thank God.
As well as having a Very Sick Husband (and, in fact, a husband at home for two months), dealing with the endless running around to and from appointments, the driving to and from hospitals in Cambridgeshire (we live in South Norfolk), the Dark Places you go to when you hear words like 'biopsy', there's also been the worry about Husband's job. In between being Sick and Very Sick, he'd attended an interview (complete with fake-tanned face and resolution not to take off suit jacket in order to try and hide new-look Concentration Camp physique), and somewhat miraculously, got the job. But of course, all things being equal, half an hour after he took the phone call being offered it, subject to references and a medical report from his doctor, he received a call from his surgeon to say he'd ordered a biopsy.
Given that while all of this is going on, I am still dealing with two full-on boys, my mother is away in Spain for 5 weeks, my sister is hospitalised with vomiting and my husband's family think that I'm over-dramatising a bit of a winter cold (oh, if I had a pound for every time someone asked me if he had man-flu), to say all of this - the not knowing, the waiting, the sheer physical and mental toll - has been stressful is a little like describing the Iraq War as a 'wee hiccup' in Tony Blair's career.
People I know ask me how I cope. Take this example.
It is the week after half-term. My parents are abroad, my in-laws are in Scotland. I have four days out of five planned with hospital visits, three with Sick Husband, one with Arthritic Son - an eye check-up, which he has every 6 months (alongside monthly blood tests, three-monthly clinic visits and physio sessions) as uveitis can be a side-effect of his type of arthritis. I have already spent my Saturday trying to scrounge childcare from women at school and playgroup - which I feel bad about as it's for the first day back and I know what it's like and I'm wondering if any of them are secretly thinking I might as well ask for a kidney donation while I'm at it.
I've spent my Sunday treating the kids to a visit to the car wash (which we had to go through twice as it didn't work properly first time and then we got stuck behind an old man whose driver's side window got stuck) and a trip to the park. Arthritic Son runs headlong towards the playground and stops short clutching both knees. This is the second time in a week he has told me his knee joints have started hurting again. The first time you put it down to something like the weather, the second time you just feel sick and start having visions of going back to the 'Tiny Tim' days.
On Monday, I take Sick Husband to Cambrige for an ultrasound and a supposedly straightforward chest drain. It does not go well. Words like 'complicated', 'not quite what we thought', 'something solid behind the fluid' are bandied about. Husband has smoked for years, so it's no mental quantum leap thinking about the difference between something being wrong with you and something being wrong with you because you smoke. (Yes, I know. I KNOW.)
On Tuesday, I take him for a CT scan - Cambridge again.
On Wednesday I take Arthritic Son to hospital. I'm driving round and round the car park trying to find a space when Son asks me if I remember the last time we came and I shouted at 'that woman'.
'What woman?' I am genuinely mystified.
'You remember. The lady in the car park who didn't have any children in her car.'
'Who?'
'The one who parked in that space you saw and you asked her if she minded if you had it 'cos you'd been driving around for ages and she said no, and then you a bit annoyed and then she said tough and something about boats, and then you argued for a bit because you said the car park was meant for kids, and then you got really cross and went all red and got out of the car and I thought you were going to hit her. That woman.'
I cringe so badly, I crick my neck.
'Oh, THAT woman,' I say brightly. 'Oh, I'd forgotten all about that. It was just a silly little-'
'No it wasn't mum, don't you remember? You shouted at her that people like her made you sick and I wondered if you were going to puke in the car park, like on your shoes or something.' Laughs in the way of 8 year old boy at mention of puke.
'Ah, ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!' I enjoin. 'Well, grown ups do do things they shouldn't sometimes when they're very, very tired. But it was wrong of mummy and you must never copy it. Never.' Rapid change of subject.
We then enter the hospital, in the wrong side because I'm so tired I've lost the plot, and walk for a mile before sitting for an hour in a waiting room full of children with TB who've weed on the radiators, or so it seems – a perfect place to contemplate what a nutter/failure of a mother I am. There's not even a Grazia to cheer myself up with (well, at least I'm not Paris Hilton). Son talks endlessly about Dr Who. Pre-eye test examination happens. His are fine, mine I realise, with ageing horror, are not. See consultant. Son's eyes are given the all-clear. We talk about his drugs and I realise how this once-foreign medical language now trips so easily off my tongue. Fight off sadness about that (at least he's better than he was thanks to Nasty Wonder Drug). Head for WRVS shop as is our way - it being formerly the best method to rid him of the impression hospitals were all about needles, pain, tests, physio regimes and cortico-steroid injections - to buy chocolate. Stand in queue at till. Son skitters off to check out toys. Woman in front and woman behind till have following conversation:
'How's your mother?'
'Oh, better than she was now she's had the breast off. I can't talk about it too much though, it upsets me.'
'Oh, I know. I had the lung out a year ago now. I know what it's like with the cancer. You give her my love and tell her I know what she's going through.'
At this point, watching customers on other till hurtling through, thinking how much I do not want to be listening to this, Son runs up and tugs my elbow.
'Mum! They've got Dr Who toys!'
'Have they? That's nice.'
'Can I have one?'
'No.'
'Just one?'
'No darling,' I say wearily. 'Not today. You've got Maltesers.' Unfair exchange I know, but you have to draw lines at times like this, coming here the amount we do.
'Oh-uh! Not fair! Why not?'
I look at him. The snap in my voice comes out much harder than I meant it to. 'Oh well why not have five! What do you think?'
The two women stop talking and look at me like I'm Satan's Bitch.
Drive home with the word 'cancer' buzzing round my head like a fly I can't swat, feeling my stomach trying to ingest my spleen. Have incessant Dr Who conversation about the merits of Christopher Eccleston vs David Tennant with Son. Drop Son off, go to collect Teenage Toddler from nursery who greets me with a bottom lip the size of Wales because I'm 'not daddy', and refuses to let me see the picture he's made because it's 'just for daddy'. Get home, load washing machine from gargantuan pile overtaking landing upstairs, cook pasta for kids, prepare supper for us for later (way too full of healthy veg, garlic and chilli for kids, plus accessorised with salad) get accosted by Sick Husband who is up, sweating and trying to rage about his boss, who he's just found out put him on Statutory Sick Pay after the first two weeks he was ill. Open fridge, swig from half-drunk bottle of wine I'm trying to abstain from until weekend. Clutch it fiercely to breast and intermittently slug while lighting cigarette and smoking outside back door (I know. I KNOW). Sick Husband looks at me with faint disgust and says, 'What's up with you?'
So there you have it. The truth is you don't really 'cope', you just have no choice. You just look like you're coping to the people who know you because if you're anything like me you don't fall to bits in front of them.
What would they prefer to see?
There are times I have wondered. How I've resisted self-harming - like carving Justify Your Bloody Salary on my torso and chaining myself to the roof of the doctor's surgery screaming for Watchdog - because I've felt so angry at the treatment of my husband by that one GP. Or gone so mad at a complete stranger, I wondered if I need locking up/sedating for the protection of the public. I've obsessed about someone who's pissed me off to the point of almost creating an internal ulcer, cried enough to make myself look like the Face of Boe (Dr Who again), talked to myself enough to wonder if it's too late - I've already gone mad and realisation is just as fleeting for me as moments of madness are for the normally sane.
Well, I'm a writer. And my coping mechanisms are whinging a lot (hence this blog) and being as mad as a box of badgers. Which pretty much fills the bill for writing a blog into cyberspace where no one will ever read it. If nothing else, it's an outlet for me, and I'm aware I need one. The most contradictory thing of all is that you'd think after all this, with good news (it's NOT cancer), you'd be skipping around with joy in your feet and sunlight in your heart.
Well, in one way you are. But in another way, all the adrenaline I've lived on for the past three months, all the worry and the waiting and the coping and the caring has taken its toll. Think of it like the mother whose heart stops at the sight of her child running out into a busy road. Does she grab that child when she realises its safe and cuddle it to her speaking calm, happy words of reassurance and delight?
Does she hell.
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