Ep.5: Wonder Woman
I’m naked from the waist up, lying on my back, slightly on one side with my left arm up over my head. Naked from the waist up apart from a course strip of paper covering my chest – the staff in the ultrasound suite clearly think my breasts should be afforded more dignity than I’m now giving them in my head. I’m so un-chuffed with my breasts I’ve disowned them. I don’t care what happens to them, they’ve let me down. Naked from the waist up apart from a course strip of paper covering my chest and a filthy Wonder Woman lanyard wrapped tightly round and round my left wrist. They don’t comment on the heavily soiled piece of cloth and I don’t offer up an explanation. The mystery feels appealing to me. A personal preserve.
I’m back in the ultrasound suite because the MRI found more and now they want to see if the ultrasound backs it up with evidence. If they find anything they’ll do more biopsies. I’m broken hearted. I’ve been holding out for a discussion and decision on how to move forward, how to rid my body of its unwelcome invader but the call I get is more bad news and it tips me off balance. I’ve spent the two weeks since hearing that I have cancer delicately teetering on the edge of ok and very not ok. We heard I have cancer. We broke and wept then breathed and re-set and adjusted. We adjusted and said ‘ok, this is just going to be one patch and we’ll hold out for a lumpectomy and radio therapy and that will be just grand’. It’s not one patch and I’m not ready to find more. My mind lurches and races with images of what else they might find. I’ve tried hard not to pull chemotherapy into my picture of recovery but it keeps edging into my peripheral vision and I’m feeling so fucking scared.
3 weeks ago when they did biopsies I wept and they let me have David with me to keep me from fainting. He held me with his gaze and whispered ‘you’re ok’ and I clung to him with my eyes, sitting there across from me. This time I’ve decided that if they say they need to biopsy, Wonder Woman and me are going to do this alone. He’s sitting outside waiting to be called if I need him but I need to rise to this challenge. Wonder Woman and me, we have this. They do want biopsies. Shit. Shit. Shit.
I plug headphones in and my hands shake as I find some music on my phone. Rag and Bone Man. The doctor asks me what I’m listening to. I’ve no idea I tell him. I can’t remember. I close my eyes and try to separate myself from what’s happening. It hurts. I take myself back to two days ago when my good friend Lee came to see me. We talk and I tell her that cancer gives you a gift to go with the fear and the pain. I tell her that cancer’s gift is the instant ability to know what matters most in life, to realise that so much you thought of as important yesterday is not important today. All that matters is the people you love and how much they love you. The rest is white noise. And Lee reaches into her pocket and says ‘I have a gift for you too’ and she hands over the Wonder Woman lanyard. My heart leaps. This lanyard has been with some of the toughest women I know on the toughest journeys of their lives. Lee's an endurance cyclist and Wonder Woman rode with her on the iconic Tour Divide then it travelled the world with another cyclist friend, Jenny, as she claimed an astonishing world record. Now Lee’s given it to me for the toughest journey of my life. I’m deeply honoured. ‘It’s very dirty she says, carries rather a lot of our DNA’.
But I can’t think of better DNA to have wrapped around my left wrist as I climb this next pass. I know the view from the other side of this mountain will be fucking awesome. I’m just not sure how many false tops I’ll have to haul myself over before I get there.