After flirting with my old friend Neutropenic Sepsis over New Year’s, and being so close to having to go into A&E, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be so lucky the next cycle. The trauma of my previous incarceration still feeling too raw, too fresh, to even consider the possibility for a moment. But as my parents and I filed in to my Oncologist’s clinic room on Monday, 8th January, ready for my pre-chemo chat, I had no idea that was the least of my problems…

He asked me how I was, how I had been. I told him about my nearly-temperature, how I’d been struggling a bit with the exhaustion, my fragile mouth, the pain which had started threatening to return but had receded again after we stepped up my Oxycodone slightly, and after I had my third round of chemo, which felt like a good sign.
He nodded, listening, and when I finished talking, he said:
‘Well, your scan shows the chemo isn’t working, so we’ll stop it.’

His words hung there as my brain peered at them, not comprehending.
‘What?’ I finally managed to answer. I couldn’t make any sense of it. Once again, my I’m-sure-it-will-all-be-fine  attitude was being rigorously put to the test.
He continued, telling me there was no point in continuing something that was not helping, and was slowly killing me in the process.
I agreed, of course, but more than anything, I just wanted not to be having this conversation. I became acutely aware of all the times I had sat in that damn little room, with its artificial light, its bed in the corner, its view out the window which showed only a brick wall a few metres away, and my Oncologist sitting behind his computer surprising me so many times with the bad news I hadn’t been expecting. I never expected any of it. How had I allowed myself to get caught off guard so many times?  I felt like a fool.
He had gone on to say we were pretty much out of options.

‘But…’ I heard myself saying, ‘What about radiotherapy…?’
Surely I could still have radio again? My lifeline, my radiotherapy Onc, Dr A, had told me that although every one of his colleagues were not in agreement, he would treat me again if I needed it. If I was willing to go through it again, so was he.

‘Yes,’  Onc said, I will refer you over.’

And so it was, on 12^th January, a mere 4 days later, I found myself sitting once again across from Dr. A, the man who said he would never underestimate me again.
He gave me all the usual warnings – that it historically doesn’t work, though I had of course already defied those odds once. That if it does miraculously work again, it won’t work as well the second time around. That the best he expected it’d give me is 3-6 months. That if it doesn’t work, I will have spent 6 of the last weeks of my life going into hospital every day and dealing with side effects etc. He certainly doesn’t mince his words or hold anything back…
‘Jen, you are stable now,’ he said. ‘Either you take advantage of that and fly back to Australia now and get comfortable and ride out how many days or weeks you have left, surrounded by your family. Or I give you this last chance of radiotherapy and you might get a couple more months. But you can never get this 6 weeks of your life back, if you even end up getting that long at all.’

It put us rather on the spot, I suppose. I know Ma and Da would much rather be back at home in Australia rather than forced to live indefinitely on the sofa in my one-bedroom flat. But how could I turn down the chance of getting more life? How could anything be more important than that? Could my parents deal with knowing they signed my death warrant just because they were a bit uncomfortable in the current situation? I couldn’t imagine so…

At the moment, I can’t picture anything I want less than death. I can’t imagine anything more scary, anything that I wouldn’t choose over dying. Perhaps at some point that will change. Friends before me have made peace with it, and I have watched them, wondering how on earth they become so seemingly resigned to their fate. But it’s just not me, not yet, anyway. If I let my mind think about my death for even a moment, I’m nearly consumed with a paralysing terror. I want to avoid it for as long as I possibly can.

So I said I wanted the radiotherapy. Give me all you’ve got.  Only, he was going away for a few weeks and as none of his colleagues would touch me in his absence, I would have to wait. Not for the first time, I sent a silent prayer to whatever gods were listening, that the wait for treatment wouldn’t kill me first.

He said he was happy to give me quite a high strength of a very targeted type of radiotherapy – the same one he had given me 18 months earlier – though he would have to give a weaker amount in the area where the tumour was pushing into my brain. I nodded, feeling uneasy about lessening the strength, but knowing that protecting my brain was incredibly important to me. He also mentioned that it was a good thing that I was now blind, so he didn’t have to worry about damaging my eye with the strength of radiotherapy he wanted to give me, or compromise on the amount in that area. I know they all made it very clear I would never see again, but I tend not to listen when they talk in absolutes, and prefer to hope for miracles. But hearing my poor eye was going to potentially get damaged in the treatment felt like a bit of a blow. But I’ll just need to keep working on holding tightly to hope in the face of their constant reassurances that everything is absolutely always totally completely dire.

And so I had about 5 weeks to recover from chemo, catch up with friends, and…publish my novel!  Woohoo!
Rebel Rebel by Jen Eve Taylor!
No time like the present, or no rest for the wicked, or something along those lines…