surgery

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Island Blog – The Past Perfect

Blustery, and the garden is dishevelled. Blown this way and that, snatched at and barely returned, the long legged blooms bend and sway, but do not break. Well, some do, and that’s my fault. I planted them late, the Spring flowers, asking them to do what they find tough. To be asked to bloom strongly in the wrong season is definitely an ask. I can relate. But just look at them, yellow, blue, red, beautiful, the whole fricken lot of them. They cut my sky, leaping up into the cloud talk, which, they well may hear. They offer a safety to the wee birds on the feeders, protection from a sparrowhawk. She is ferocious, fast as light and accurate. I don’t begrudge her need for lunch, but I don’t want to hand out a plateful of robins, finches, sparrows or blackbirds. It is a tricky kill for her, what with all my late planted, big ass stemmed blooms. A canopy. I wish I had had one of those in my time.

Today I called The Hub. I love The Hub. T’is a new thing. Heretofore, I called an answerphone with a lengthy tiddleypom of a preamble, finalising in press 1 for this, 2 for that, and so on until my arm grew weary. Not now. It seems, after I questioned this change, that it was deemed more reassuring for those of us with cancer, to have faster access to a human voice. So spot on with that. Instead of having to stand up once the automatic voice clicks into life, I feel heard and cared for, and so will all the others with cancer surgery and treatment ahead of them like a stop. I can speak to Adam, or Karen, after no waiting at all, ask my questions and have promise of connection and response. thank You Edinburgh Cancer Hub.

I asked my questions, was confounded at a few. Now I am here, in this wonderful Autumn wildness, with candles lit and a baked potato baking. The crazy west coast light is outside of me, and yet it is not. I watch it through my windows, can connect with it as I walk out onto the colding grass, and I feel alive. This is my home. My roots are here, even though I didn’t know. And those roots are strong. Planted late, growing, regardless of that, holding sway against the winds of time. Yes.

Ps. Can you still say ‘had had’? Is that the past perfect? I was such a grammar girl, once.

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Island Blog – Window Clown

I am home again after a weird but wonderful weekend. My eldest granddaughter turned 16, all excitement and hormones and friends over. I arrived on Thursday, driving Miss Pixty Forkov (feisty daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Palaver) who is throaty and fast around corners, holding the road like she owned every inch of it and refusing to let go. I am always anxious about journeys, for no good reason. I know the road, so does Pixty, and the drive is lovely as long as I can bumble along, not that my car does ‘bumble’ very happily, preferring, instead, to roar past everyone like an Arab filly. I hold her back.

On Friday I travelled by train to the hospital, grabbed a delicious pesto wrap for lunch and marched out to find a smiley taxi driver. No distance, and I was in and settled when my sister arrived, she who knows about breast cancer and has more than ‘survived’ it. We met June, a ward orderly who remembered my sister and hopes I am in Ward 6 when I go for the chop. I hope so too. We reminded her (and I think she remembered) years back, when I had asked her who cleaned the windows. They were filthy. She said, Not Me, and so I asked for a bucket and water and a cloth, climbing onto the wide sills and bringing in the light for all those brave women in rows, in beds, survivors, I hoped. On a high now, and literally, I moved along all the wards. Hallo, I am the Window Cleaner, I announced, all smiles and bucket, receiving welcome smiles from pale faces that still could lift one. As I consider my own possible time in that ward, I hope there will be a window clown for my stay.

Needles. Loads of them. Anaesthetics then biopsies, then two more markers as another dark patch, a possible cancer lump, and joined to the other one. Then a mammogram to photograph the markers. I am titanium woman now. There’s a song in there, somewhere. I await results next week, and, hopefully, a decision or, at least a suggestion as to surgery. The original lump has grown a tiny bit, and, in truth, the lump itself is barely visible to the naked eye, but because of the proximity to a nipple, and if a lumpectomy might leave me with the Ochil Hills, all ups and downs and a right frickin mess, I may choose, or they may recommend, a mastectomy. Ectomy. What does that mean?? Sometimes the fanciness of word endings makes me laugh. So much pomp and dictionary when most ordinary people just want plain language.

It is glorious to be home. To walk in the Fairy Woods, to watch the leaves fall, to notice foot tracks on the narrow track, human, male heavy, woman dance-foot, deer, dog, all of them leaving their marks on this wonderful Earth. Hazel nuts and acorns scatter the ground but no conkers, no conkers, no shiny balls of smash and clash for children. My husband, canny as you like, would soak conkers in vinegar overnight to make them hard as iron. He always won, or so he said, back in the days when there was no such thing as a ‘device’ to lure a child into a world he, or she, had no real understanding of.

The 16th party was wonderful, even as I was too tired to join in, watching through the window. The fire pit lit the night, as did the lights strung through trees. Snacks and dips were laid out as the 16s arrived, the boys and girls on the cusp of adulthood, beautiful, gangly, brazen and funny. I said hallo, then disappeared upstairs. I heard them singing together, playing rounders with a luminous ball, dashing off to hide and to seek in the big harvested field, returning for pizzas and fire poi, trying their hands at what is way more of a skill than they realised. At 11 they left, bar the girls, who slept over. Slept? No. No slepting at all. I reckon they chatted and laughed till 3 am and it reminded me of my own 16 when life was laid out like an endless and beautiful carpet, riddled with rips and tears but still laid out. I saw the ease with which my daughter and her husband talked and laughed with the 16s, having known them since toddlerhood. I remember that ease with my own kids.

Ah…… the memory of time passed is a beautiful thing. All those parties, all that confidence, all those rips and tears, all that colour, dance and light! A view from the window, now, but I will always be the clown, breasts or no breasts.

Trust me.

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Island Blog – And……Rest

Ok, so I am tired of all this resting, now. Extremely tired of it. Since June 27th, when I first had cause and orders, to rest, I have read around 15 books, a record, even for me with my fast eyes and my ability to take in a huge amount of info at a speedy glance. Of course, I retain none of it for long, hence the mesolithic Scots ending up in a cafe with the litigation lawyers, somewhere in D.C. It doesn’t seem to matter in the end of the end, not that I can recall the endings of those stories but I do remember the ‘wowser’ as the twist twisted itself into a bunch of snakes on the penultimate page. I felt as if I was falling off the end of the story into some empty crevasse, quite devoid of wordage or footholds. I just found another book, another tale, another winding path to wander down, resting, resting resting, resting so much that my mid section is no longer a section, more a spread of blubber and fold, gravitation led. My tee-shirt needs to be a small marquee and I will be having words with those medics who said I was too skinny for surgery, or words to that effect. It had better go, along with whatever else gets removed, or there might be a conversation ahead.

Spending hours, sometimes days doing this resting thing has not been unpleasant. I love to read and read and read but I do wonder if I am, unconsciously, immersing myself in any story but my own. I don’t think so, but there’s a ‘maybe’ skittering about inside my mind. How much and how often do we respond to a big impact in our lives by hiding in the wings? A lot, I guess. I have spent many hours in the wings, literally, whilst the action was played out on stage, watching it, a peek through the curtains, breath held, no moving, silent, waiting for my cue. Whether lead or chorus, the wings are safe, short term, but in that tension, lines can be lost, sweats can shine a face (and ‘make-up’ has a fit) and corsets can pop. I remember that. Anyway, I digress.

So, in theory, I am fatly prepared for whatever surgery lies ahead. I am thankful for the resting and for all the stories that merge and muddle, flit and fold inside my soul. They enhance me. I have wrestled with lynx, been burned at the stake, or almost, fought legal battles in L.A courtrooms, ridden a wild horse bareback, fought a waterfall, and won, and danced with fairies in a magical forest where dragonflies sang soprano and all the goblins were banned for life. I have been welcomed, cooked for, wonderfully, cared for, wonderfully. Celebrated, in fact. My scan is on Tuesday, I return to my beloved island on Wednesday and then I will pick up my ordinary domestic tasks in order to redraw my body map. I will also relocate my clothes drawers, having left home with a couple of thisses and thats, all of which bored of I am. In fact, they are so washed as to be considerably thinner than when any of us set sail for my future.

Which is a lot more than I can say for me.

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Island Blog – Walking On

I was supposed to have my shingles jag today, but the nurse said I was too run down. I know it. So tired all the time. Part recovery from being nearly dead and the long climb back up from the mud and sludge of that Old Gripper, part fear of what may lie ahead. This is a time I could wish, as I did way back in school, for a less brilliant and inventive imagination. ‘Judith (cringe) has too much imagination’. Quote from a school report. And it wasn’t just once. It seemed to me that an imagination was something to be deeply ashamed of, something, perhaps, that might require surgery or therapy long term, at the very least. It got me into no end of scrapes, and, I might add, out of them too. An imagination is, by its very nature, flexi-intelligent, dynamic, able to work both ways on most things and in most situations, and two faced. There is the light side, the fun side and there is the dark side, the backside, the backslide. However, I am in control, mostly, of this imagination of mine, even though right now it is showing way too much sass. I suspect this is because it is also an opportunist and in the face of my looking smaller, aka, run down, it is rising above it’s pay grade. Well Hoo and Ha to that! We need to work together, I tell it, not against each other. When you show me dark, let the fear of wotwot court a dalliance with said dark, I go off you. We have worked together for decades, you and I, much as in a long term and bumpy marriage, agreed, but we did find a synergy of sorts and it benefitted us both. I got to keep the mischief and the inventive thinking and you got to keep me. Actually, I think you owe me. Without me, you would be foof in the wind.

Although I didn’t have the jag, I had the nurse, the one who flagged up a few weeks ago that I was looking like the nearly dead. She told the doctor and I had the chance to thank her, the nurse. She, Cara, has bright eyes, a beautiful and unlined face and looks about 16. She isn’t. Then I got to see the doctor to thank her for her quick and intelligent decision to send me off to hospital. She, Dr Jackie, is a lovely woman. I thanked her and we hugged. The new doctors on the island, this end of it, are a warm and welcoming couple and we are so very lucky to have them now. Actually the whole staff are so friendly, efficient and intelligent, I wonder how we islanders came to be that lucky. I am only thankful.

I came home with the damn imagination. I need distractions. Radio Four Extra is a wonderful discovery. I am knitting something. For now it is a long line of knit-ness. It entertains my fingers which is enough in small doses. I walk the wee dog but oh my, how wearily i walk, how weak I feel! I can do little and often. It’s the same with gardening jobs. A wee bit of weeding, a little pruning of the currant bush which isn’t/ wasn’t a bush but more a blanking out of the sky. It looks a bit weedy now, but I encouraged it to stop whining and to get back its mojo for next Spring, as I intend to do. I gave it a backward glance, having hefted huge long branches into the neighbours garden (she won’t notice). Stop focussing on what’s gone, I said. Look at the opportunity. I swear she quipped ‘Right back at you, lady’. Maybe I imagined that.

I feed the birds. We have swarms of sparrows here, unlike many other places, Englandshire in particular, and I have masterminded my feeders beyond the dive of our prolific sparrowhawk population. There’s a fence in the way, three wheelies and a mini. It seems to work. I watch the tidal dance, listen to the gulls screeching at the sea-eagles and hear their yipping response. It floats across the sea-loch as something unseen yet believed. I know the sea-eagles are there. I cannot see them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there. A lesson in that, for the learning.

I fanny about with what to take when I leave this beloved home on Monday and head into the unknown. A couple of frocks, a jumper, cardy, (tweezers this time), nighties, leggings, a jacket, my purse, phone, laptop, chargers, underpinnings. How long will I be away? Will the consultation lead straight into surgery, or will there be weeks of waiting? Will I come home or stay away with my very limited clothing options? What surgery do I face? Lumpectomy (day job) or a single or double mastectomy? I don’t know yet but my imagination is already having a field day, whatever that means. Because I am high risk, many in my family having had breast cancer and with my great grandmother coming from Orkney, I may opt for those breasts to go. They fed five children and not many can say that. I thank them. Sometimes I look at them, old now, paps really, and marvel at the work they have done, the lives they have sustained. I can let them go, if that is what I and the consultant decide. To think I may leave with breasts and return with none is quite a thought. Some might say, Don’t talk that one up! I ask Why Not? I am a realist, a woman of age, a strong and vital life force and honest and open to a fault. (why is is called a fault? Does it refer to a fault line or is it a somebody’s ‘fault’? It thinks me)

I will keep writing. I will keep blogging although my arms might feel a bit dodge for a while after surgery. But we are not at that point yet. This is just the beginning. Rather exciting when you look at it that way, don’t you think? A world I have never walked in before, a newbie, wide eyed, scared, yes, but walking on. Always walking on.