Well, here is a bit more of a taste of my book. This is draft 6 - there's still some work to do. Would love to hear your thoughts. You'll notice a note to my Nan in italics. This happens throughout the book. Jodie x
Chapter
1
The
Diagnosis
I had an awesome
day at work playing the X-Box with an eight-year-old patient, trying to
distract him. I laughed out loud when he
said, “You know the more you keep trying
to trick me into talking to you, the more I’m going to beat you?”
I loved my job.
The Children’s Cancer hospital where I worked
never had any phone reception. It drove me particularly crazy this day during
Easter 2010, as I’d been waiting for a call back from my doctor to give me the
results from the biopsy on my breast lump.
He’d promised to rush the results through before the public holidays, in
two days time. I’d booked a flight home
to visit my family for the long weekend.
When I booked the flight, life was different.
I expected my
results to be unremarkable. I’d had breast lumps before that
turned out to be nothing, just cysts or fatty tissue. I called for them, because that’s what you do
when you have a test. Just a formality. Ticking a box.
Never one to
rest on my laurels, I had to rush that day from the hospital to my private
practice. While crossing the busy road
in front of the ambulance station, I came back into range and my phone beeped
telling me I had a message. I called the
message bank as I walked to my car thinking I could tick off another ‘to-do’ list item on my way to
work. Nothing could’ve prepared me for
the voice-mail I heard.
“Hi Jodie, it’s Dr Bullock.
I’ve scheduled an appointment for you to come in tomorrow morning to
talk about your results. See you at
11am.”
With eyes and
mouth wide open, I could hear my heart that now felt like it was in a
tightening vice. I walked towards my car
as if sinking in quicksand. What did
that mean? Do I have cancer? Fucking fuck.
I have cancer. I am going to
die. Who the frick leaves a message like
that? I called the clinic. Answering machine. Oh God.
Please do not be on holidays already.
Do not shit me. My head felt
heavy as my peripheral vision blurred, leaving only a small tunnel of
focus. I needed answers. Frantic, I called my husband. I wanted to throw up.
FUCK.
“Baby, I can’t breathe.
I have cancer. There’s a message
on my phone!”
“What? What did they
say?” Dave joined me at the panic station.
“They’re not fucking answering the phone. Dr Bullock said I have to go in at 11am
tomorrow to discuss my results and I can’t get a hold of them, it goes straight
to the answering machine! What the
hell? I’m supposed to fly home
tomorrow... Where are they? Oh my God, what are we going to do?”
“You just try to stay calm.
I’ll call the clinic and I will call you back. Okay?”
Dave took charge of the situation, as I was left reeling in the vastness
of the hospital car-park. It had only
been eight years earlier that Dave had his own cancer diagnosis, from the same
doctor.
They’d be expecting me at private
practice. Dave told me he would take
care of it. He’ll take care of it. I have cancer. I have breast cancer. But breast cancer doesn’t happen to young
women. My doctor told me that. Liar.
No family history. I’m too young. Breast cancer doesn’t happen to me. I’m supposed to help other people with
cancer. Who’s going to help me?
I called Rachel
the receptionist at my private practice, who knew I’d had the scans.
“Hi Rach, it’s me.” I
started crying. “I can’t come to
work. I think I have cancer.”
“Oh honey! Don’t you
worry about a thing. You take care of
you and I’ll deal with everything else.
We’re thinking of you.” What else
could she say? Relief. One less thing to worry about. As if I could sit with someone else and
listen to their problems right now.
Nan,
it’s amazing to me as I think about those moment that felt
like hours, how my body replays the physical symptoms perfectly, as if it’s
happening again.
As I sat in the
car-park waiting for Dave to call, I thought about Nicole, Siandra and a young
woman I’d met on my psycho-oncology
placement five years earlier. People who
gave me the privilege of inviting me into the end of their lives. People who taught me about living.
Dave’s phone call snapped me back to the
present. “Okay, Dr Bullock is with
another patient but he’s going to call you as soon as he’s finished. They promised.”
The fear of
every person I’d ever
worked with who’d received the news I was about to engulfed me. Now I truly understood them. Why did it take this to do it? I’m going to die.
My chest
strangled my breath as I wondered who would love me if I didn’t have any breasts? What if the cancer has spread
everywhere? Am I going to die? What if it comes back? I shook and my head spun as nausea wreaked
havoc in my stomach. So surreal. Unbelievable.
At that moment, I couldn’t comprehend a thing.
On autopilot, I drove home in peak hour
traffic to where Dave and I waited for that phone call together. It came at 5.35pm.
“It’s Dr Bullock. You
have a ductal carcinoma.” He sounded so
distant and clinical.
“Is that...?”
“Yes, that’s cancer.
It means the cancer is in the milk duct.
They’re very common. Go on your
holiday. We’ll schedule you to see a
surgeon when you get back. A few days
won’t make a difference.”
I didn’t believe him.
“How do you know that?
How do you know it’s not everywhere throughout my body?” I asked head in
hand, wondering what on Earth was happening to my life.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Dr Bullock explained. “These things move slowly.”
One hand shielded my eyes from the world. I couldn’t take in any more information, not even seeing what was in
front of me. Dave maintained a safe
distance standing in the kitchen but as I hung up the phone, joined me in
silence on the couch.
“We’ll get through this together,” he offered. Promised.
Vowed. He held my hand so tight I
thought it might break. Like my heart.
Dave hugged me
and we cried together. He brought me a
cup of tea and some tissues. I felt
closer to him than ever when he picked up the phone to call my parents.
“Hi Elaine, listen, the test results weren’t what we’d hoped
for.”
Numb and
detached, I mumbled to myself, “They
didn’t even know there was a test.” I
never wanted my parents to worry about me if they didn’t have to.
What a long
night. I lay still, barely breathing,
awake, staring into the blackness asking myself how we knew the cancer wasn’t already throughout my entire
body. What if waiting a single day could
make all the difference? Was I going to
die? Had I somehow done this to myself? Sleep did not come to me the day I was told I
had breast cancer.
I wondered how
many nights I would have left in this bed.
In this room. This house. This building. This city.
How long would I live? My life
wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’d worked so hard for a career in psychology
that had really only just started. I’d
waited so long for my husband, the love of my life. I’d only just thought about becoming a mum
for fuck’s sake. What if I never slept
again? Dave lay still but wasn’t snoring
so I couldn’t really tell if he was sleeping.
It always annoyed me that he could fall asleep as soon as his head hit
the pillow. But tonight part of me
wanted him to sleep so that I could stop worrying about keeping him awake.
I gently started
to feel the lump on my breast. I wanted
it to be my friend. We had to get
through this together and I didn’t want it doing anything rash like spreading around my body
and killing me. Would Dave be there with
me at the end? I did everything I was
supposed to do. I had the love of my
life. I ate well and exercised and never
smoked.
But now I had
cancer.
Dear Rocky,
