Climbing the stairs to bed, I looked in on our two children, sleeping peacefully. They could not know that their mother’s life, and inevitably theirs too, was about to spin out of all our control. We could not begin to fathom what would happen next.
That night in bed I clung to Peter, who lay rigid with fear beside me. Each time I tried to close my eyes I was tormented with feelings of stark terror.
Neither of us slept a wink all night.
Still the refrain in my head: Living with cancer, dying from cancer, living with cancer, dying from cancer.
My body had been invaded – I had cancer.
The nightmare had started back in 1997 when I was pregnant with my second baby. I went to my GP in Shropshire and told him that I had a mole on my back that worried me. I thought it might be cancerous. I’d read the leaflets in the surgery and it seemed to me that I had the symptoms of malignant melanoma.
He said, ‘No, no, no, it’s only a mole. You’ve been reading too many women’s magazines.’
All the same, it was bothering me, I said, and suggested I should arrange to have it removed privately, but he said he would refer me to a local hospital in Stoke to have it removed on the NHS.
I was still waiting eighteen months later and when I went back to the surgery to check whether the referral had gone through, another doctor looked at my records on the computer and told me to go straight to hospital that day.
It was as if someone had punched me in the stomach. There was no delay this time and I knew then it must be pretty serious and could be skin cancer.
The biopsy was performed at Shrewsbury Hospital and the surgeon told me there was a fifty–fifty chance that it was malignant. That was the first real indication of a major crisis. The word ‘malignant’ was used rather than ‘cancer’.
After the hospital appointment I made my way to my husband’s office in Shrewsbury and he took me to lunch at the local fish and chip shop. Not surprisingly perhaps, my usual healthy appetite had deserted me and I couldn’t eat a thing. Peter was worried, though it didn’t stop him clearing his plate. Over our meal I told him that I thought the growth was malignant.
Knowing that doctors are not in the business of scaring you, I thought if he said fifty–fifty there was a good chance it was actually ninety–ten.
That was in late April 1999, just before the May bank holiday, and the four of us had rented the village hall where we had held Constance’s birthday party a few weeks before. We had taken it over again to bounce around on the trampoline and play with toys that were too big to be used in our house because work was going on building an extension and conservatory.
The test results would probably come at the end of that weekend and I thought, ‘What if this is the last carefree weekend of my entire life?’
My mind was filled with thoughts of how much I loved Peter and how lucky I was to have the children. I worried for all of them and wondered what it would mean to their lives if the mole had become malignant.
One of the worst times was when a dermatologist came to see me in my home. He told me the depth of the disease and said it was the worst case of malignant melanoma he had ever seen.
I put it to him straight: ‘Am I going to die?’
His answer was to ask: ‘Are you a religious person?’
I was so shocked that I just fainted away. I was standing up and he had to pick me up off the floor.
I finally managed: ‘If I’m going to die, how long do you think I’ve got?’ He turned his face away from me and didn’t answer.
My mind went into overdrive after he’d gone. If I’ve got three or four months, I should try and finish my contribution to The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, a monumental work I’d been involved with for several years.
My head is so full of clutter I can’t think straight. I should write to old friends I’ve lost touch with. Tell them I’m going to die.
I can’t seem to get things into proportion. The most important considerations are obviously my children and my husband, but also my work is important to me. My writing, my book, my students.
Should I spend the last twelve hours of my life reading Jane Austen or writing an essay or singing nursery rhymes to my children ?
The first operation was in North Staffordshire Hospital in Stoke. The surgeon had made one wide incision on my back, taking off a wide deep area of skin about six inches square where the original melanoma had struck. Some weeks later, another wide incision, though on a smaller area of my knee for a suspected melanoma which turned out to be non-malignant.
In the same hospital I underwent reconstructive surgery. They removed a large area of skin from my thigh and grafted it on to my back. This operation was not a success. Would they do it again?
At that time the next treatment was scheduled to be a course of chemotherapy along with Interferon and possibly an experimental drug treatment.
In January 2000 I reported to the Royal Marsden Hospital in London for post-operative treatment after my surgery in Stoke. I was confident I would be given the all-clear – the cancer seemed to be in remission and I’d never felt better.
Instead they dropped a bombshell – I now had secondary cancer and it had already spread to my lungs. I was in a state of shock.
Somehow a strange feeling of invincibility had convinced me that I would never have to face such devastating news. Now I replayed the conversation and the words the doctor had used again and again in my head: ‘Secondaries – lung cancer – very serious.’
They told me that chemotherapy was the only course of action. I would have to undergo a particularly aggressive treatment – they admitted they wouldn’t have tried the procedure on anyone who wasn’t young and fit. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
For most of the past year I had been taking part in clinical trials for a new form of non-invasive treatment based on a combination of drugs. Now I would need four weeks to allow these chemicals to be flushed from my system before the chemotherapy could be started.
I went home and began to put my affairs in order. There was a lot to be organised regarding the children, Oscar’s nursery and Constance’s school, as well as arrangements for someone to look after them while I was in hospital. Initially it was to be a period of five to seven days in hospital undergoing the chemotherapy and then two or three weeks at home before a second and possibly a third stay as an in-patient.
A review would be made after the second course of treatment around the end of March. If the results were not encouraging, it might be decided not to proceed with a third round of chemotherapy. At that stage no one could say what the effects or the results would be – but they were willing to try.
No one was quoting odds on the treatment working but I was reassured even by the fact that they were prepared to give me it at all.
As part of my regular on-going treatment to relieve stress, once a week I went for a massage. I had not been able to lie comfortably on my back because I got that sensation of panicking and not being able to breathe. These may