I’d thought these lows were all behind me. After the wounds healed from my double mastectomy and immediate reconstruction, I practised living in the room. What I meant by this was that when thoughts frightened me – of dying from cancer, or Celso’s future and mine as a full-time carer – I drew my mind back to what was in front of me. For three months, post-chemotherapy, I’d consciously done this. The positive effect was noticeable.
Celso was in the corner holding up a toy, and stamping his feet in joy as a good-morning hello. B had just brought in cucumbers, basil, asparagus and lettuce from our formal vegetable garden. I had half an hour with my white tea indulgence and an Isabel Dalhousie novel before my son required plugging in to feed.
The immediate reality was almost always better than my dark future imaginings. Things were generally okay. I had hope.
It took two days of nausea and bad diarrhoea to put me back on the elevator heading south. It didn’t happen like that before breast cancer or before my high-needs baby arrived. Back then, nausea was from a good meal turned bad or in my first trimester of pregnancy, and it evaporated under the warm, hopeful thoughts of the joy I’d get from my bright, sparkling baby to be.
But now I’d picked up Celso’s stomach bug, so for two days I was ill and running to the toilet all the time.
B and I walked to the local organic markets on Sundays with Celso in the buggy, which took 15 minutes. To the right of the bike path the tidal Breakfast Creek flowed out through the mangroves, which lined both sides of the river and were several trees deep. I often superimposed a crocodile’s head popping up near the water’s edge, though without the ticking clock. To the left were large playing fields and a dog off-leash area, with a couple of Welsh terriers and a golden retriever sallying about. The sun was out, it wasn’t too hot and we had money in our pockets for breakfast. It was really quite lovely – externally.
I found deep truth in this throwaway line: if you have your (full) health you have everything. Often during the intense illness phase of chemotherapy I could not imagine happiness returning to my life.
I pulled through the sick stuff knowing it would end. In the throes of a particularly bad night I understood how chronically ill people acknowledged they wanted out – they wanted death.
These two days surprised me in how suddenly a deluge of sadness rushed in when there was nausea. The queasiness was a body memory, triggering my dark days on chemotherapy. I was haunted by the chemicals.
We did the normal Sunday-market buying of bread and a coffee for B, chai for me, and saying hello to regulars we bumped into every week while Celso played in the sandpit. Our exchanges with people left me flat. Usually I was animated with people and enjoyed others’ company, but not during these two nauseous days. The hard-won enjoyment of food after chemotherapy deserted me again. I couldn’t fill up with good feeling from anything, not even my family. Celso likely made me smile at something or I’d give him a hug on the spur of the moment because I loved him, but the spark was smote.
When the nausea abated I got sudden buzzes of great feeling: I was alive. The simple truth of this exhilarated me. The adrenaline of dodging a bullet. In May 2009 I had aggressive breast cancer. A year on, I didn’t. I feared challenging the gods with the assuredness that I was a cancer-free person; that might jinx me.
The minutiae of everyday living didn’t seem so everyday. I’d spent a lot of time at home over the last few years: caring for my mother, supporting my partner while he worked and studied, studying for my MA, caring for Celso, and then recuperating from breast cancer while caring for Celso. At times cabin fever reached boiling temperature and I wanted to run screaming, not for the hills but for intellectual stimulation. This had quietened down after chemotherapy.
After my master’s panel interview, before Celso was born, where I presented my thesis and argued its worth, a fellow candidate said I had a bit of the obsessive about me. I’d planned all my slides meticulously. She was right; I did, hidden somewhere deep.
In late adolescence I’d pass objects like a handrail or doorknob and if I didn’t touch it the right way I’d go back and touch it again, for example running my hand along the full length of a shiny, wooden handrail. I also disliked people talking in abbreviations. I tended to use the full term or name before moving on in the conversation, for example if someone asked me, Could you buy some tommies? I’d likely respond, How many tomatoes do you want?
At 19, when I was studying and living in Lismore, I confessed my obsessive-type touch-retouch thing to the GP I was involved with; he said I was just wanting to get things right or feel my way in the world. It clicked instantly, and I stopped going back to hold the doorknob the right way, and other oddities. It was a similar light-bulb ‘got it’ when Mum took me for a long drive to tell me she loved me after she’d guessed that I was still drug-affected after a rave at 16 years of age. I stopped experimenting with drugs that instant: point blank.
A cancer diagnosis made me stop and look closely at how I was living: did I do anything to bring this on? I was ready to change anything, right away.
The first questions my breast surgeon asked were: Do you smoke? (No.) Do you get regular exercise? (Yes.) Do you
