Cervical Cancer: A Diary - Part 1

I have decided to journal my experience with cervical cancer. This is part 1 - much more to follow.

Sometime in June

My desk phone rings. It’s my gynae’s secretary informing me that Dr Olivier would like to speak to me. He tells me that the 2nd pap smear in 2 months has come back with ‘abnormal cells’ as a result and he would like to request a biopsy to be done in hospital. I agree not thinking this is anything to be afraid of just yet.

A while later I contact him to find out if this has anything to do with cancer and he assures me that this is to ‘rule out’ that possibility.

The appointment is set for six week’s time when I will have a biopsy and a colposcopy procedure done. This will remove any weird growth that has invaded me causing me to bleed intermittently. The day dawns and I go to the hospital. I am not prepared for all the waiting. My appointment was for 8am but I eventually only see the doctor at 10am. He first takes a look at my Pap smear pathology results and tells me in no uncertain terms that this is NOT cancer we are dealing with. I feel great relief. He examines me and informs me that due to the size of the growth, the removal thereof will have to be done in theatre. I get dressed and he makes another appointment for me to come back for the procedure. Great. I am happy that this is going to be taken care of quickly and efficiently. He also tells me that the final results of the biopsy will be ready in 6 weeks time.

Around the end of July, I get another phone call from my gynae’s office. He tells me that they have found cancerous cells in my biopsy test results and that I have to go and see the hospital as soon as possible to go through a number of tests. So from the 31st of July to about 4th of August I spend much of my time at the hospital undergoing various tests from blood through to cystoscopy (where they put a camera up your bladder – extremely uncomfortable!) They take about a litre of blood from me, they poke, prod and photograph my insides. I begin to feel a little like an alien having just landed on planet Earth. All the tests are to discover whether or not the cancer has spread and how far along it is. Throughout all of this I am very calm, numb even. I think I am in shock and not quite sure of how to deal with this. Once all the tests are over I am due to meet with the doctors for them to inform me of the way forward. That day dawns and I am extremely nervous. The doctors see me and once again perform an internal exam. They then say I need a further test called an MRI to determine how big the tumour is. The final test is scheduled for the following week and then I am due to meet with them in 2 weeks time. It feels like a lifetime away. I go for the final MRI test and it’s very trippy – a total out of body experience. You are placed in a tunnel apparatus with headphones on to try to drown out the noise of the machine. This doesn’t work and the constant bang-bang of the machine goes right through you. It’s extremely unpleasant.

I then go home and wait out the two weeks. During this time, I act normally. I go about the business of work, life, caring for my daughter. I see my friends – we have dinner parties, I go shopping. On the surface all is fairly normal. Underneath I am a seething mess of panic. I am praying that the cancer is not at an advanced stage and that the best result I can hope for is that this is operable and that no radiation or chemo is necessary.

It happens to other people

What do you do when you hear the words cervical and cancer in the same sentence and it's not someone else out there that they're talking about?
It's you.

You think of your seven year old daughter and just want to cry. You hold your head up and carry on with the day to day business of living. You just keep swimming. You breathe. Mostly you are ok but sometimes you are really not.

And then they make you wait. Wait for tests, wait for results, wait for 'final staging' meetings. You don't want to know all the ins and outs of this. You just want it over and out. Some days are good. Others you fall apart.

Tomorrow I see the doctors. They will tell me the way forward.
If you pray, pray. If you don't, think of me and hope for the best possible outcome.

The Moon and the Stars

Amidst all the noise, the haste, the manic, panicked stress of everyday life, I feel a change. It’s a slow unyielding shift almost imperceptible but very much there. Small things start to change. I see natural beauty way more clearly. The stars and moon in Roberston on Saturday night were so bright they almost moved me to tears with their awesome beauty. The moon played games with us through the clouds and my friend and I spoke and spoke. A rainbow followed us almost all the way home from Robertson to Cape Town. A promise. A gift.

This change has a sense of promise to it. Something is coming. Something is waiting in the wings and it’s waiting for me to be ready. I sometimes smile to myself as things are revealed to me that start to make sense, pieces start to fit together. Someone says something to me and it’s like a gift. I accept it and put it away to examine later.

Still around me the madness continues. For a few moments I block it out and write about what’s inside me.

Hey oh - Red Hot Chili Peppers - just 'cos

Come to decide that the things that I tried
Were in my life just to get high on.
When I sit alone, come get a little more known
But I need more than myself this time.
Step from the road to the sea to the sky,
And I do believe that we rely on
When I lay it on, come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice.

Hey oh...listen what I say oh
I got your hey oh, now listen what I say oh

When will I know that I really can't go
To the well one more time to decide on.
Well it's kiliing me, when will I really see,
All that I need to look inside.
Come to believe that I better not leave
Before I get my chance to ride,
Well it's killing me, what do I really need
All that I need to look inside.

Hey oh...listen what I say oh
Come back and hey oh, look at what I say oh

The more I see the less I know
The more I like to let it go - hey oh, whoa
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow,
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there's nowhere to go
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow,
Running through a field where all my tracks will
Be concealed and there's nowhere to go.

When to descend to amend for a friend
All the channels that have broken down.
Now you bring it up, I'm gonna ring it up
Just to hear you sing it out.
Step from the road to the sea to the sky,
And I do believe what we rely on,
When I lay it on, come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice

Hey oh...listen what I say oh
I got your hey oh...listen what I say oh

The more I see, the less I know
The more I like to let it go hey oh whoa.
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow.
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there's nowhere to go
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow
Running through the field where all my tracks will
Be concealed and there's nowhere to go.
I said hey hey yeah oh yeah, tell my love now.
Hey hey yeah oh yeah, tell my love now.
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow,
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there's nowhere to go.
Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow...
Running through the field where all my tracks will be concealed
And there's nowhere to go.

I said hey oh yeah oh yeah..tell my love now
Hey yeah yeah...oh yeah.

That which consumes me

There comes a point in the evening when I become aware of a hunger. Hunger for wine, food, cigarettes, conversation. For you. Most of all for you. This hunger haunts and tears at me. Makes me ache for more. So I push it down. I sleep. I wake. I go on with my life. Still it’s always there at the perimeter of everything I do. Waiting. Wanting. It will not be silenced completely. I can stifle but not quench it. It consumes me.

Rain drops on roses

BEEEP BEEEP. The digital clock next to my head awakens me rudely and as usual it’s dark and cold. Winter in Cape Town. Freezing cold mornings. Frosted up car windows. Kids bundled up looking like Eskimo’s. The ducks who live on top of ‘my’ windmill squawk wildly. My daughter wanders past my bedroom wearing a pink blanket wrapped around her. When I ask her why, she replies that she is practising to be a queen. She already has the regal, slow walk down pat. My cat cranes his neck as I open the bedroom curtain and makes a pitiful mewing noise.

The mad rush of the morning ensues. I do a fairly good impression of a movie on fast forward but the multi tasking version. As I paint my eyelashes, I am reaching for my handbag while screaming at the ‘Queen’ to brush her teeth or hair or both but preferably not with the same brush. I glance out at the grey day and sigh quietly to myself wondering why on earth we do this. Then I remember that pesky need to eat and provide shelter for one’s offspring.

Checking said offspring’s room, I notice that she’s half dressed and singing a little ditty while staring at herself in her dresser mirror. I count to ten before gently reminding her for the 10th time to get dressed. Idly I wonder what you are doing at this moment. Are you alone? Nearly tripping over the cat who is not so subtly asking to be fed, I am interrupted in my reverie. A very un-PG curse escapes my lips as I nearly fall facedown onto the passage carpet.

Finally we are all done. Dressed, fed, teeth gleaming, bags packed, it’s time to race to the car dodging rain drops (on roses) and cats (whiskers on kittens) as we go. I am anything BUT a Mary Poppins song at this moment but I can’t stop the constant stream of consciousness in my head incessantly playing a show tune or two.
Once in the car it’s always a small power struggle. Why do I have to remind offspring to put on her safety belt – why? Do I have to remind her to breathe also? We back out the driveway, tyres screeching and drive the three minutes to her school. I walk her to the gate, quick kiss and hug and it’s off to start my work day not that I’m in any way motivated mind you. I turn back and watch her hurrying with her bag on her back that looks way too big for her and my heart melts. I watch her until I can’t see her anymore and then I turn back to my car.

It is morning and I miss you.

The Big C

Ok, so I’ve been silent for a long time now. Sorry my faithful reader (Scott – are you out there?) I’ve been going about my business and doing the normal life thing: Work, eat, sleep etc. I am trying my very best to carry on with everything as normal.

See what happened is this. I went to the gynae for a check up as I’ve had some complications which I won’t go into here and now. He prescribed some meds for me. He then phoned me 2 days later to say they’d found atypical cells in my pap smear. He’s recommended that I go in for a ‘small procedure’ at a local hospital. The procedure (as far as I can surmise) will determine the nature of the atypical cells and if they can see them they will remove them then and there. The doc assures me this is ‘to rule out the possibility of cervical cancer.’ This doesn’t make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

So, going about my business all the while thinking ‘I may have cancer… I may actually die… I can’t leave my daughter all alone in this world’. Nice hey? I thought so too. I am up and down about this. Some days I feel it’s all going to be fine. Some days not so much. Most of all I feel very, very alone, no matter now much re-assurance I get.

My hospital date is set for 7am on 17th June. I need all the prayer and friendship I can get.