12 March 2024: Poetry Special Mark 2!

It’s time for another poem, and it wasn’t difficult to settle on a theme…

To My Hair

Dear Hair,

I’m sorry.

I apologise for all the times I have spoken against you,

Which, let’s face it, is most of the time.

To be fair you haven’t made it easy:

You have always been thin, breakable,

Refusing to grow past my shoulders

Like a stubborn child,

Even though I have willed you,

Begged you.

When I was eight, the class teacher was talking us through arrangements for a special event,

I don’t know what, maybe a concert.

I put my hand up and asked if we would be allowed to wear our hair up for it.

Before the teacher could reply, a boy shouted out, laughing: ‘You don’t have enough hair to put up!’

Thus began our rocky relationship.

In my teenage years and early adulthood

You thought it would be amusing to make me look

Like a hippy, stubbornly refusing to part anywhere except the middle (you still do),

Your lank locks sitting close to my scalp

And pouring down my back like an oil spill,

Clinging to my flesh.

As I approached middle age, you changed tactic,

Shape-shifting into something resembling

The wire wool that Steve keeps in his tool store:

Dry, frizzy- and to add insult to injury

You began to sneak in strands of grey,

Subtly at first, and then you were having too much fun and could not resist

Polluting my entire nearly-blonde locks

With grey streaks

Like a bad artist’s work.

And then a surprise:

Somehow you befriended the last chemo,

Using its power to transform yourself into a fuller shape with gentle curls,

Making me happy just for once-

Or maybe there was evil underlying intent,

Maybe you knew your days were numbered,

And decided to taunt me with what might have been

So you could go out

In a blaze of glory,

Your final vicious act.

But I’m still sorry.

For I have realised that there is much about you

That I cherish.

You cover my head, you are warm.

I like being warm.

You fly behind me in the wind

When I am riding my bike

Or jumping on the trampoline.

But most of all, you are mine.

Mine since a baby, constantly growing and renewing

However slowly.

And now we are to be parted,

I may never see you again

Or if I do

You won’t be the same.

Your fledgling stubble will be entirely grey, wiry,

I will yearn for your honey-coloured blanket

Soft against my neck.

But I will fight back.

I will turn this around

Into something good,

Something better.

I will choose the hair I always wanted,

It will be longer than you ever managed to grow,

Shinier, bouncier, blonder.

It will be awesome.

But it won’t be mine.

I’m tucked up in bed at the Harley Street Clinic, listening to Karl Jenkins’ The Prayer, which I adore but it puts me in great danger of wallowing, and tears are near enough the surface as it is, so I’m thinking I should switch to the Eighties playlist asap… that’s better: Starship’s Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now. Who remembers Mannequin? What a great film, if very sad. Oh dear…

They have pulled out all the stops to start chemo today. Due to the short notice, the LOC chemo unit was full so they’ve popped me around the corner in the lovely Harley Street Clinic. I’m definitely not in Kansas (aka Harpenden) any more. Everything will be done in one day- I previously had to drive almost an hour’s round trip down the narrowest country lanes imaginable for a 5-minute blood test the day before chemo. Well, it should have been 5 minutes but the blood was always taken by the nurse with the shaking hand who would spend ages trying to will it out of one vein only to declare that she needed to try the other arm. Today, blood was taken straight from my port, magic – and instead of being couriered by motorbike to Addenbrookes and the result coming through hours later, it has already been rushed to the onsite lab. Of course the flip side of this is that you can make an early trip to London, fighting with the commuters for a seat, get all cosy, settled and geared up for treatment, only to be told that the bloods aren’t ok to go ahead… which is apparently more common on this new regime.

So I wait, and take solace in writing this. Definitely more enjoyable than my other task for the day, filling out the insanely complex business rates declaration for our Airbnb… I’m looking forward to Steve joining me for lunch, though; it is such a comfort to that he is working just a stone’s throw away.

I have learnt so much about cancer in these last few months, and one of my conclusions is that it is rubbish at being an illness. Most illnesses have symptoms which make you feel bad, so you take medicine to make you feel better. With cancer, it is the opposite: you can look and feel perfectly well despite what is wrong inside, and the medicine is the thing that makes you ill. Apart from the anxiety of having no treatment, I have loved these last 4 chemo-free weeks and have felt good most of the time, enjoying walks, riding my bike through the woods, eating some lovely food (but still struggling to reach the magic number 7 on the scales..)

Steve and I talked to Isaac on Saturday. I won’t go into the details, but the result was that we felt a burden lifted. We are all in this together. We would never put any expectation on him to lift us up, but that is exactly what he is doing. He is amazing: calm, thoughtful and accepting.

Mothers’ Day was lovely. The children bought me the most beautiful bunch of purple flowers I have ever seen, and an exquisite new vase to put them in. Roast ribeye of beef was on the menu, and I jolly well had some. It was tender and delicious, an absolute treat. I felt increasingly emotional as the day went on; that’s the problem with a diagnosis like this- everything has so much extra significance and weight. How will they handle Mothers’ Day when I’m no longer with them? I hope that they will do something lovely, and one day have their own children to focus on and to celebrate them (Lydia is ahead of the game there).

12.02 pm… bloods are good, phew! But no treatment has started yet: the pharmacy are busy mixing the cauldron. At this rate, check out time from this hotel will be approximately midnight…

14.14… still no sign of actual drugs although I’ve had all the pre-meds… on the plus side, they have said that they are happy to train Steve up today to remove my portable pump- we were originally told that we would have to come back to London on Thursday for that. This will be a step up in his medical training: so far he has only had to play doctor to give me an injection to boost my white blood cells three days after treatment. I’ve persuaded him to stop merrily declaring ‘Sharp scratch coming up!’ but it is still a tense moment when he plunges the needle into my thigh. The pump removal will take things to a whole new level; he will need to flush my port with saline before pulling out the needle in a carefully-choreographed manner. Then there’s the handling and disposal of the cytotoxic waste…

15.39: things have finally got interesting! Drug no.2, the new kid on the block, is cheerfully skipping into my veins; two more drugs and a final one for the road then I will be good to go. I have just been visited by my lovely personal nurse Kristine and we had such a good chat. She revealed that she and SuperProf were both surprised by how young I looked when I came to the consultation last week. I’ll take that as a compliment but I’m not sure what they were expecting: for me to stagger in with a zimmer frame? We chatted about everything: Kristine is so easy to talk to and has a great sense of humour. I feel so reassured all round that this has been the right move.

On that nice note I will leave you. How will Steve’s Doctor Boot Camp go? Will I be in a fit state to travel home on the train? And will the side effects in the ensuing days be as horrific as promised? Watch this space…

“Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are thee that weep now: for ye shall laugh.” Luke 6:21