And so RT (radiotherapy) was officially underway. The vibe in the RT basement continued to be one of joy and friendship. And despite all the extra appointments they kept wanting to throw at me, it was all going quite well, really. The mask kept fitting fine, and I was managing to survive the daily sessions with the help of my lovely Zappers, and Ma, Clarence, Lorazepam, The Beatles, and the hundreds of extra little coping strategies I have honed over the years, and employ if needed (inc. breathwork, reciting Robert Frost or Banjo Patterson poems, rubbing the tips of my thumb and first finger together, dancing along with Clarence while being very careful not to move my head at all, to name a few). Once or twice, they put on the Jen Eve album and I can add while lasers burned my insides as one of the weirder situations in which I’ve got to serenade myself through.

Mum lost a pair of her reading glasses somewhere along the way. We thought maybe in the bustle to get out of an Uber or something. It was a bit of a pain, but Ma did have a backup second pair. And although they’re prescription, she was able to pick up another cheapy from the chemist to fill in for them. We kind of just forgot about it, as you would.

RT was trundling along. Mum and I were still on our own, and doing our breathing exercises in the park a couple of days a week, organised around the weather and our ever inconsistent start times. We’d get the Uber to drop us at Tavistock Square, where Ma would read out a history board thing (which told a bit about the park and the area) while I got my stick out. Then we walked over to Gordon Square, to hang out with the ghosts of old writers while doing our breathing. On this particular occasion, we were a couple of weeks in, and as we walked over, I remarked on how we’d had the nice clean bench free for us every day other than that first day… As we rounded the corner and wandered into the park, Ma chuckled and said ‘well it appears not to be waiting for us today’. I groaned. I’d jinxed it, hadn’t I.

So we went to our backup bench for the first time in a couple of weeks. We faffed around a bit getting in place. Mum got up, for some reason, telling me to move over a bit more towards the middle divider arm thing. Then she suddenly said:
‘Jen, you won’t believe what is here…!’
My mind was blank, I had no idea what she was talking about.
‘It’s my glasses! They’re here!’

They were waiting for her all that time, watching us from across the park and wondering why we kept coming in and then leaving again, never taking them with us. Someone had hung them over the bench, where they sat, waiting for us. Reunited once again, the three of us trotted off to RT, thanking the backup seat for taking such good care of Ma’s glasses.

One day, a couple of weeks in, Ma and I were waiting to be called for RT, when I felt a weight against my boots. Before I could work out who/how to ask what it was, I heard a voice,
‘Hi, Sorry, not sure if you can see this, but Bruno has spotted you from a distance and decided he likes you and has been trying to sidle closer and closer to you.’
At that point, this ‘Bruno’ shifted again, and I felt a very fluffy body sitting across my feet, pushing up against my legs.
Overjoyed by the thought of a PUPPY, I leant down and we had a huge cuddle. I’d heard the concept of a dog in a hospital before, but had never actually come across one myself. Bruno came to visit around  once a week, and his owner told me that every time, as soon as he saw me, he started his efforts of trying to get to me. He never got to stay for long, but getting a cuddle with Bruno absolutely never failed to make me smile.

I had another pretty special visitor one day while I was waiting for my daily dose of zapping – another story straight from the underground network of Jen Friends. Another voice that felt familiar almost immediately, imprinted on my psyche. It was A, one of the nurses I first met in those hazy, crazy first days in ICU after my very first 16 hour surgery, back in March 2018 where they removed my top teeth and right upper jaw, reconstructing a new jaw and roof of my mouth out of the bone, skin, muscle and veins from my right shoulder, leaving me looking like a pretty poor artist’s rendition of a human face (for anyone who hasn’t seen those photos, click here). I couldn’t even speak at the time, a tracheostomy so rudely taking up residence in my neck, between my handy dandy notebook and her kind voice, we’d talked about a few different things, including the place she was born and the wine they make there. Warm memories fly above the trauma of that time.
Then, we met again as I was recovering from another later surgery, when her familiar voice helped to pull me out of the post-chopping haze (which I hate so very much, and I always. beg them not to give me Ketamine, but they just went and gave me a different type of sedative, and I realised that it was ‘sedation’ in general I needed to request they avoid giving me if at all possible). And so our paths crossed again as she popped over to say hi, and we clasped hands and I either nearly or actually cried as I told her ‘I remember’.

Through all the doom and gloom that underpins my reason for needing to spend so much time in the hospital, for all the admin fails, the people who neglect me, the staff who can’t seem to see or treat me as a human anymore, now that I’m blind, these stories, and the general vibe around those 6 weeks of RT, are all ones of love and joy. Catching up with old friends, chatting away about our weekends, singing along to The Beatles together. For the most part, it didn’t feel like a chore, it felt sociable and bubbly. And although I was glad when it came to an end, there was part of me that was sad to be leaving my friends. All the wonderful people who got me through all that deserve the Jen Medal of Absolute Kindness. And a pay rise.