She muttered something about being melodramatic and sent me off to be x-rayed and blood tested. The next day I got a call from her secretary, asking in a very sympathetic voice for me to come in as soon as possible for my test results. When I walked into the surgery, I could tell it was something really bad from the way everyone was looking at me, and when the doctor put a box of tissues next to me, I felt quite sick.
When I got to the tram stop to catch my tram home, my husband Michael was already there. He knew something was wrong, and I couldn’t help blurting out “I’ve got cancer”. It wouldn’t be the only time over the next couple of days. When I rang to tell my parents, I told my seventeen year old brother first. The next day my mother flew over, I went to see the specialist, and then went into hospital.
The upshot of the whole thing was five months of chemo, which was meant to be six, but I got better sooner than anyone expected. I think my specialist was almost annoyed at me for my speedy recovery, but we’d never really got along. He was gorgeous, but I found his elitist, cold bedside manner slightly hard to deal with. When I asked “will I be able to have children after having chemotherapy?” his reply was “do you want to have children, or do you want to die?”. I didn’t really have an acceptable answer to that. I’ve met other people who’ve dealt with him, and according to their reports, he hasn’t changed since I met him.
Luckily, I had awesome nurses who took fantastic care of me. And there was a dose of intravenous valium before I had a bone marrow biopsy, which was something I will never forget. I was so happy, they could’ve cut my legs off and it wouldn’t have mattered. Sadly, at the next biopsy all I got was a local anaesthetic, which wasn’t nearly as pleasant. Chemotherapy started two days later, and from there it was a crazy rollercoaster of blood tests, sachets of toxic chemicals being injected into me, vomiting, feeling better … repeat. I still can’t go anywhere near Box Hill Hospital without getting nauseous, like a human version of one of Pavlov’s Dogs.
I was surrounded by wonderful people, at work, and at home, who made my life as easy as it could have been. I kept working, except for Fridays when I had chemotherapy, and I’d recover over the weekend. Towards the end it got harder and I wasn’t always recovered by Monday, but at no time was there any problem working around my crazy drug therapies. When my hair started to fall out, Guy Pearce (name dropping, sorry, but he lived with a friend of mine) told me I should shave it all off and be like Ripley from Alien. So I did. It was much better than finding huge clumps of my hair everywhere, but in the very few photos that exist from that time, I look like I’d just escaped from a concentration camp. I weighed forty nine kilograms, and now I weigh sixty three.
When it came time to get my final tests done, I went to a church and prayed for the first time in my life. I’m pretty certain I felt like a hypocrite, but it seemed like the thing to do. Luckily, someone was on my side because the tests were all clear. It was strange to relinquish the world of being a cancer sufferer, and after coping fairly well mentally during the crisis, I found it hard to work out how to be a normal person after recovering. I rang the Cancer Council to ask about counselling, but they told me there was nothing for survivors, which I still think is terrible.
I realise the person I am now has been shaped enormously by that experience. And I like this me much more than the previous one. In my last couple of years at Blue Heelers, one of the characters was given my illness, and a fairly similar journey to mine, so I got to be “cancer advisor” (Molly, if you ever read this, I apologise unreservedly for being such a total bitch!) and watch the whole thing happen to someone else - very bizarre. The actress and I were interviewed by the Women’s Weekly, a day after I’d come home from America and was totally jet lagged. Which I like to use as an explanation for the quote I gave them. I was asked what the best thing about getting better was, and replied “seeing the sun set, and cats, playing in the wind”. Yeah, I don’t really know what I meant, either.
So there’s my cancer story. Which I’d like to dedicate to Joey Ramone, Jackie Onassis, Amanda from Melrose Place, the guy from Aaron Spelling’s religious show, anyone else who has had Lymphoma, and the people who love them.
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