Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t call earlier. I’m so glad I called today, because …
And my breast care nurse explained that she would arrange some private funding from the breast clinic for a nanny. The very weekend before calling me she’d met some women she knew (I never found out their names) who’d put on a successful fundraiser and wanted to give a portion of money directly to a woman with breast cancer in a difficult situation. Well, all us cancer patients were. But I was officially on a tricky, muddy tightrope of a path with a son whose path was just as tricky and muddy, so they donated the money to us. B and I were able to juggle B’s relatives and our friends around professional nannies so that for the first week of each chemotherapy round, when I was immersed in my toxic haze, B could work if he wished to and I could rest.
I did, after all, have some guardian angels.
After years of hard work, Celso’s path did end up smoothing out. I tried all the occupational therapists, dieticians, speech therapists and the evidence-based desensitisation tricks of their trades. Only physiotherapists’ advice helped. That treatment, plus commencing the Son-Rise process, meant that, after three-and-a-half years of not eating and in the midst of somehow getting salmonella poisoning, Celso pointed to the bottle of electrolyte hooked onto the mobile IV pole that followed him everywhere.
You want some of this, darling? I asked.
Celso pointed. I quickly put some into a sippy cup. The salty taste caused him to cough, but he appeared keen. I replaced the green fluorescent liquid with water and he allowed some into his mouth, then dribbled the rest down his chin.
Within half an hour he’d tried a baby’s squeeze tube of organic mushed-up food. He had a bath to cool his temperature down, sitting on a stool because his bottom was sore from diarrhoea. His pale face and the dark shadows under his eyes made his lips appear lipstick red. Once out of the bath and wrapped up in a towel he dared tasting more on a spoon – tongue darting out.
He had eaten and drunk nothing since he was seven weeks old, when the nasogastric tube went in, but in 24 hours he was nibbling a soft Anzac biscuit, sipping water (albeit with his tongue positioned out the side of the cup), and squeezing baby food into his mouth. To reinforce this he searched hungrily for food words in his books, getting me to say out loud all their names: tomato, sandwich, ice cream.
My son and I followed parallel paths through the medical system: me to treat a known cancer and him to find out what to treat.
The fourth round was on 28 August.
Nausea. How I hated nausea. It destabilised me like nothing else. It came on and I was lost in Bass Strait, clinging to a life raft, praying for a passing ship to lift me off and away from the wet, cold ordeal.
Friday was chemotherapy day. I had a routine. I’d walk up to the day oncology unit, sign myself in at the front desk then walk around to the nurse, a kind woman who could be stern when required. I let her know I was there waiting for my oncologist appointment then chemotherapy. Before either of these things happened I’d get my bloods taken via my portacath to check if I had enough oxygen in my red blood cells and if my white cell count was keeping up, among other things. My Fridays started around 7 a.m. and finished late afternoon. I enjoyed these days – not for the snake oil shunted into my heart but for having a day completely to myself, knowing my son was well cared for by someone else. Invariably I wasn’t sick yet so could revel in the time alone: I wasn’t a mother, I wasn’t a partner, I was my other self – a woman going through breast cancer treatment with an internal life.
Once, when I was waiting to see my oncologist before going in to receive treatment, I sat in front of a low table with outdated women’s magazines and peered around the packed waiting room. I had Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture in my hand. He was a computer science lecturer at a prestigious American university and delivered a talk to his students on living that turned into a book. I wanted to read his take on setting goals to achieve your childhood dreams. But I didn’t have the space in my head to read or take in the words. A woman in her late 50s was brought into the waiting room in a wheelchair. It appeared she’d come straight down from the oncology ward. She was shaking. Her arms and legs were thin. And she had the unmistakeable grey soft curls of hair growing back after chemotherapy. She was vulnerable and ill. All really sick cancer patients reminded the rest of us who walked into the day unit how cancer could suck the body in and leave it deathly. It was scary to behold, but also humbling. She reminded me of my mother in her final days at the John Flynn Private Hospital on the Gold Coast.
My mother had her own room and bathroom at John Flynn. Near her end, when I stayed close by, I returned in the evenings to put her to bed. Part of her nightly routine was to clean her teeth properly, have an English bath, pat on some talcum powder and likely attempt the toilet. During these occasions she’d rest her head on my stomach from her position on the toilet seat and we’d talk. Her hair was grey with soft curls. Her arms and legs were thin and shaky. She was ill and dying. In fact, we didn’t know she was so close to death then.
In the first week or so she said, I
