Out With a Bang

Here at Sommers Bay the year is going out in style. There are no streetlights to pollute our view across the bay and the distant sound beyond. Often the water glows softly green in the moonlight but tonight is overcast so the stars and the full, blue moon are occluded. The blue moon, I learn, is when there are two full moons in a month. Iris says the blue moon is also known as the ‘goals moon’, it’s an opportunity to set out clearly what one wants for the future. I am pretty clear about my goals for this year, I’ve said it often enough in my Sankalpa: “I am healthy, I am happy, I am whole, I am sexy, I am prosperous, I am loving, I am loved, I am free”. Beyond that it all gets a bit vague.

Sommers Bay is a small settlement. The nearest shop is at Murdunna, a crossroad about six kilometres distant. It’s a general store that sells life’s staples: groceries; a few local vegetables; newspapers and petrol as well as surprising delicacies such as fresh oysters and smoked octopus. Many of the houses here are holiday homes. Since it is the holidays, most of the owners are in occupation.

As I looked out the panoramic view from Mum’s front windows today I saw maybe twenty bodies frolicking on the beach, some playing cricket, others kayaking or jumping about in the water.

Over Dinner Aunty Noni and her friend Denise tut-tut. “I’ve never seen so many people here,” they both remark. Mum cooks up a feast: roast chicken with balsamic gravy; Tasmanian pink-eye potatoes and home grown green salad.

Now, as we gather on the front verandah, the neighbours start exploding sky-rockets. “Ohh,” we all exclaim and “aaah.” I wonder if they are going to start an out of control bush fire. In my mind I plan my escape route to the beach. Whizz, wheee go the fireworks and then CRAAAKABOOOOM the sky simply explodes. Huge orange sheets shoot across the horizon. Molten white daggers strike the opposite Tasman peninsula again and again. Piercing jagged branches arc horizontally from one side of the sky to the other above our heads. It’s a lightning storm of gargantuan might and magnificence. With each flash the bay lights up, bathed with a blue-green luminescence as if it’s a giant swimming pool lit from below. The show is at once mesmerising and terrifying. The neighbours continue letting off their fireworks against this backdrop of majestic splendour. The effect is comical.

As the lightning advances around the bay towards us mum and I rush into the house to unplug all the computers and phones. We hear shrieks at the door. Cousin Fay with her friend Simon and Noni's step-son Derek have bowled up. They crack open a bottle of champagne, popping the cork off the balcony and into the jaws of the storm.

Goodbye cork! Goodbye cancer! Goodbye Nick!

It’s an exhilarating finale to a strange and pivotal year for me.

Sommers Bay Beach Fashion

In Tasmania it is thirty-six degrees. Unheard of! All around mum’s house grow spiky sand-grasses called ‘Sags.’ I know from experience that I am allergic to Sags. They bring my feet out in an angry, itchy rash. So on the way through from the airport we stopped off in Sorrell to pick up a pair of knee length socks. Teamed with the rashie, Crocs and a pair of 1970’s boy’s swimming shorts I think this outfit represents a new frontier in beach Chemo Chic.

Oops

I am back in the arms of my first true love – cigarettes. In order to maintain a semblance of chic I am smoking Sobranie Cocktails: those rainbow coloured sticks with gold filters. I’m sure they don’t count.

Buying a Rashie

“Remember, you must keep your chest completely covered up. No sun whatsoever.” Dr Coulter’s words follow me into a surf shop in Bondi Junction. Nick brought me here to buy a rash vest or, as they call it in Aus, a rashie. A rashie is a lycra t-shirt that surfers wear with or without a wetsuit to prevent the nasty chest rash caused when bare flesh rubs against a surfboard. They have the added advantage of being UV resistant claiming an SPF of 50+. They are light enough to swim in. So what’s the down side? Rashies are universally covered with hideous logos. ROXY screams one, BILLABONG exclaims another amidst a crude swirly wave pattern. I crinkle my nose. Nick turns to the surfer-girl sales assistant, “Do you have any rashies without logos?” She gapes at us with a disdainful shake of her head. In my emotionally unhinged mind I imagine she’s thinking “Why does an old woman like her want to go to the beach anyway?”

We do a few circuits of Westfield Shopping Plaza looking at similar but more expensive rashies before returning to the first shop. There is a different, more mature, sales assistant on duty. She directs us upstairs to the menswear department. Here we find a dark pewter coloured rashie with the single word 'O’Neill' subtly inscribed in almost-invisible black lettering. It’s on sale – 20% off. I take it.

Oh You Cruel Fool

Contrary to my expectations it is chilly and raining in Sydney. Contrary to my expectations Nick is not at the airport to meet me. Bewildered, I call him. Twenty minutes later he arrives.

We go out for delicious yum-cha (Chinese dumplings and all that, served from roaming trolleys) and then to the cinema to watch Avatar. This 3-D spectacular is the perfect entertainment for a jet-lagged body and mind. It is beautiful to watch and not complicated or difficult to understand. Unlike real life. Back at Nick’s flat Nick has an announcement: “Lily, I'm seeing someone else. I’m not in love with you.”

So, contrary to my expectations we will not be going on holiday in a camper van, nor driving up to Noosa to meet his parents, camping along the way nor any of the other lovely things that Nick had planned for us just recently when he was in love with me.

You make sense of it. I can’t. If there is anything I can learn from the situation it might be this: don’t have expectations.

So What's Your Problem?

I got upgraded to first class on the flight. It is heavenly. I slept and slept most of the way to Sydney. Only problem is, now I never want to travel any other way.

Farewell but not Goodbye

I nearly left without saying goodbye. My head is full of visions of Love in a Camper Van and other forthcoming sitcoms starring Lily and Nick. The suitcases are zipped shut. The fridge is clean. Jamie is on his way over to lug the cases and drive me off to Heathrow.

I feel as though I’m wrapping up my year of cancer too. On Tuesday I had my final appointment with Dr Coulter. To make her day I wore a Bella Freud knitted dress with ‘GIRL’ written across the front. “Yes well, we won’t forget what you are, Lily,” said Dr Coulter, dry as ever. Yesterday I saw Mr Hadjiminas for the last time this year. “Your DNA test shows that you have both the pairs of genes that indicate that Tamoxifen will be good for you,”* he announced, beaming.

I already have the Tamoxifen in my suitcase. Dr Coulter suggested that I start taking it two weeks after I get to Australia. “At least have a bit of a holiday first,” she kindly advised. I intend to.

Mr Hadjiminas then drained some bloody fluid out of my back. “Bring a pot Honoria,” he cried, “there’s plenty here.” I tried not to wince. Mr H squirted the liquid into the pot. “At least a quarter of a pint. Terrific,” he pronounced with a satisfied tone. “I’ve read Your Life in Your Hands’ by Jane Plant, I told him. “I’m giving up dairy. What do you think about that?” “I’m the wrong person to ask,” Mr H replied, “I like cheese.” “What should I do if my back swells up again?” I asked. “Nothing. Don’t let anyone touch it,” shot back Mr H. “If it’s really bad you must see a plastic surgeon. Your chest wall is about this far from your lung,” he held his forefinger and thumb very close together.

I went around the hospital distributing Christmas cards. Bess and Karen gave me big hugs and showered good wishes on my head. So it just leaves me to wish you a very peaceful, happy Christmas and a spectacular year in 2010. This year was interesting but I'm not ready for another one like it. Thank you for being with me through the last few months.

I had always thought that when the chemo ended, so Chemo Chic would end too. But now I realise that the story is much longer. Chemo Chic is not just the tale of getting through cancer it’s about living life after cancer.

What happens next?

*I neglected to tell you about the DNA test that I had last week. Maybe I will catch up some missing parts of the story as I’m lying on the beach.

Good News

People with cancer won't get Alzheimer's disease.

Colour me Beautiful

“Hmmm,” I peer at my reflection in the salon mirror, “I don’t think this is quite the effect I was after.” Malvina, a young colourist at Kell Skott Haircare, looks at me with a deflated and slightly puzzled air. My hair is a kind of cat’s-pee yellow with grey spots. “Shall I do it again?” Malvina offers.

On arrival I asked Malvina to colour my hair with vegetable dye. “OK,” she replied, “it contains no peroxide so it will last one or two washes.” I did a fast cost-ratio calculation, weighing up the pros and cons of vegetable dye. On the con side is the prospect of having to fork out for hairdressing every two weeks. On the pro side is the fact that vegetable dyes do not contain harmful chemicals, I think, though didn’t I read somewhere that they contain metals? And are the chemicals in hair dye harmful? At that precise moment I could not recall any specific information. I made a mental note to do proper research about the hazards of hair colours. “I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “We can do a semi-permanent with one per-cent peroxide,” Malvina suggested, “it won’t last as long but I think it will be safer to make it weak.”

Now, as I study the blotchy, bilious result, I do feel sympathy for her. Following chemotherapy baldness my hair is about an inch long all over but it is uneven in distribution, colour and texture. It is thick at the back and thin at the front, silver on the tips and dark underneath, quite wiry on top but soft as velvet on the sides. I guess it is a hair colourist’s nightmare.

Lottie, the admirably practical sister on the chemo unit, told me that when my hair grows to about three inches long I should have it all cut off again. “The first growth will be rubbish,” she informed me making decisive snapping scissor gestures with her fingers.

But for now, it’s all I’ve got and I intend to work it. “Why don’t you try it with more peroxide?” I instruct Malvina.

After another forty-five minutes of dyeing and washing and a lot of checking on the part of the colourist, I emerge from the salon with a chic, sleek head of dark, shiny chestnut brown.

I buzz home. Just as I’ve put the kettle on Issy is a-knockin at my door. She’s come for the latest instalment in a series of photos that she is taking as I progress through my chemo odyssey. “Oh my god!” exclaims Issy. “What?!” say I. “You hair. It’s beautiful.” “Really?” I reply, fishing, “you don’t think I look like Mr Spock?”

From her bag, Issy produces skull-print scarves in a range of vogueish colours. "I'm following your lead," she says, "everyone is getting skull scarves for Christmas." I accept the implied compliment like a hypocrite. I haven't bought one single skull scarf for anybody for Christmas.

Issy takes the photographs in the same manner every time – against a blank background, first with a bare face and then with make-up. Today I try to reproduce the dramatic eye make-up that the lovely make-up artist at the Made For Life day showed me how to do. I start with a peachy pink base then layer on a smoky brown, dark chocolate liner and then, hallelujah... mascara! My eyelashes are back. They’re short. They’re stumpy. But they are real and they are mine.

Issy tells me that I will be able to see all the photos at her MA degree show in March. In the beginning, when my hair was falling out, my confidence was at its nadir and I imagined myself being judged by friends and strangers, I was very hesitant about being photographed at all. Now I feel an interested and pleasant anticipation at the prospect of revisiting my whole journey through the medium of Issy’s photographs.

After Issy leaves I realise that I was so involved with admiring my painted lashes that I forgot to apply the pink lipstick. I pray that Issy will not fail her MA on account of this.

The next arrival on my doorstep is Justin. You may recall that Justin has had his magpie eye on my red skull scarf for some months. This morning I washed it and hung it on the radiator to dry. “This is for you Justin, happy Christmas,” I say, handing him the crumpled scarf. That skull scarf had become emblematic of everything that this blog is about. It was the totem of Chemo Chicness. I had considered buying an identical scarf at the Indian shop and palming Justin off with the duplicate. But now I see the error of that thinking. Justin positively beams at me. “Lily, are you sure? Wow. I’m made up!” he exclaims. The skull scarf has done its service with me. It feels right to pass it on.

A Treasured Possession

The ‘phone rings:

“Hello Lily, it’s Meg. How are you?”

“When are you going to Australia?”

“You must be so excited!”

A pause...

“Whilst you’re away, who is going to look after your eagle's feather?”

Thank heavens she called. In all the turmoil and excitement of preparing for my trip I hadn’t even thought about organising a feather sitter.