So, I guess it had to come.
Went to have my CT scan today. CT scans are fine. They don�t hurt and there isn�t really anything scary about them either. I guess that makes it even more remarkable that I chose a CT Scan Appointment as an appropriate time to have a massive and uncontrollable meltdown.
Id been teetering on the brink of tears for 24 hours or so beforehand but had studiously been ignoring the signs in order to a) function as a human being and b) to avoid killing L, which was becoming ever more likely with every passing second. I might elaborate on b) a bit later on, or I might not as Ive been reading Nancy Mitford and it always makes me feel a bit vulgar if I do things afterwards like slag off my husband. Suffice it to say he has been a most beastly counter-Hon and may learn a new and exciting meaning for the term 'Boxing Day' if my sister gets hold of him on Monday.
I make no apology either for occasional lapses into the jargon of my teens for the duration of this entry. Mostly because I have been reading Mitford, obviously, but also because it�s a bally site easier to write about tricky stuff if one retains one�s stiff upper lip.
I parked the car at my mum and dads and walked up to the hospital, thinking that if I still felt a bit tearful I could have a little blub in the street and blame the watery eyes on the cold wind blowing or some such. I mustve looked particularly pathetic as the watery eyes were blurring my vision to the extent that I wasn�t really able to walk straight along the path and there was a real and present danger of me careening into the path of passing cars. Also I was wearing an anorak, which is a garment which ought always to inspire pathos, generally in the wearer.
At the CT scan department, they didn�t have me on their list, even though I had a letter with the appointment time on it, so I just plonked myself down until they decided what to do with me. There was a faint but unmistakable smell of dog-pooh where I was sitting. It wasn�t me � I checked my shoes � but I was already feeling too dejected to get up and move seats, and that would have also meant having to choose someone to sit next to as every other spare seat was next to someone waiting for a scan, or the person they had brought with them. I was on my own, having felt too wretched and/or murderous to have taken either L or my mother.
After a few minutes a very fat nurse (who stank of cigarettes) came over, checked my name and asked me if Id like �orange, lemon or blackcurrant�? I was fairly certain I didn�t really understand the question but I said �lemon� anyway and she went away, apparently satisfied that this was a suitable response. When she came back, she had a jug of squash with her and a plastic cup, into which was folded a paper napkin. She said �drink that over the next hour but save a cupful for when I come back and get you�, with not a flicker of expression in her voice. I said, �Im sorry. What is this for?� and she said �its for your scan didn�t you read the information?�.
I don�t really like squash. Or �health care professionals� who stink of cigarettes. Or waiting room seats that smell of dog pooh. I said �Yes. No. I don�t know. Probably. I cant remember.� Then she got up and left. I poured a plastic cup of squash, the big furry collar of my ugly anorak puffed up around my face and two big fat tears formed themselves in my blank eyes and rolled down my face. When they�d been joined by a few more and I still hadn�t sipped the squash at all, a lady got up from the other side of the room where she�d been sitting with her husband and sat down beside me. She gave me a tissue and rubbed my shoulder and said �Are you alright?�, which I clearly wasn�t, but I said I was anyway.
She asked me if I was on my own, and when I said that I was, a little ripple of tutting went around the room as everyone was joining in with the �being kind� now and I didn�t dare to look up because I knew everyone was looking a me; crying, in an anorak, holding a cup of squash and a balled-up tissue. I could hear little mutters of �Oh. On her own� and �Oh. She�s crying.� and �Oh, it�s a shame� and lots of other things that all seemed to start with �Oh.� and I sank right down in my seat and tried to drink the horrid squash as it seemed to be so important that I did. Everyone else had squash, too, and they were all drinking theirs. I fixed my eyes on a turquoise artificial Christmas tree someone had set up opposite my smelly seat and tried to make myself as small as possible, as I�d tried �invisible� and it didn�t seem to be working.
After a while someone came and called my name and they collected me and the last little bit of squash that I hadn�t drunk and took me into another room. They said �You seem a bit anxious. Are you alright?� which seemed not to need an answer as they just carried on anyway and stuck a cannula in my arm.
The radiologist said �Don�t you know why you�re here?� and because I didn�t, really, I said �No� and she started to explain that Ive got breast cancer, which was the one bit that I DID already know, thanks very much and I was quite rude and weary and said �please can you do whatever it is you need to do so that I can go home�. So she said �Sit here. Lie there. Do this. Do that. Put your hand here.� and all the while tears were dripping off my face and onto the horrid crinkly blue paper that they love so much in hospitals for getting people to lie on. And I just started at the ceiling, which had a little camera in it, and did what I was told.
When it was all finished, she said �Sit up� so I did, and manners got the better of me and I said �Im so sorry I was rude. Im not feeling very grown up today.�
Then I guessed that the radiologist mustve been able to see me on the little camera as she came and sat on the side of the bed thingy and gave me another tissue and asked �do you have somebody to talk to?�, so I said �No�, because that was true. She said �who�s your specialist nurse?� but I said I didn�t think I had one so she said �come on� and helped me get my coat and my stuff, then she walked me round to The M@cMillan Centre and said �This is Stepfie and she needs to talk to someone� and then I cried and cried and cried. A teeny tiny elderly lady got me a cup of tea and sat with me for the longest time while I cried, and she didn�t seem to mind at all even though I was mortified about all the crying and that was making me cry even more.
When Id drunk my tea and was starting to think maybe I ought to just go home and stop being such a bother, the radiologist came back and said �come on� again and walked me all through little corridors of the hospital that you probably aren�t allowed to go down if you don�t work there and all at once I was in the Chemo department and she was handing me over to a chemo nurse who was barging into my Consultants office and saying �she�s here�.
Ive done my consultant a disservice, I think. Every time I have to go and see him I have to wait for hours and hours and Im impatient and grouchy by the time I see him, or else Ive been mucking about with my mum and the nurses and Im flippant and a bit disrespectful. But he keeps me waiting because he�s dealing with people like me, who have reached the end of that particular day�s tether and are dangling over a precipice of misery and doubt and fear and worry and are just exhausted with having �Dealing with Cancer� strapped to their backs. There wasn�t anyone in the Chemo department because they�d all gone home but I sat in the consultants office and he held onto my knee while he was talking to me, which seemed silly at the time but actually did quite a good job in not making me bolt for the door.
He knew everything I was going to say, just before I said it, and sometimes said it for me � even the bit about �and then you think you�re going to die and THEN what will happen to everyone?� which was a bit I hadn�t even thought Id been thinking about at the time, until he said it and I realised Id been thinking about it quite a lot, actually, and it was a relief for someone else to say it. Especially when he said that its unlikely that I AM going to die, which is about the best thing a doctor can say to you. He didn�t say �unlikely�, by the way, I just cant remember what he DID say, but the implication was pretty specific. I know doctors cant say �you wont die� because they just cant give out guarantees like that but he did seem to think it was a fairly preposterous idea, which is good enough for me at the moment.
Anyway, the upshot seems to be that I need to be a bit more feeble, because all this �coping� isn�t doing me any good at all. I am allowed to be utterly fed up with the whole business and to really not want to take off my clothes in front of any more strangers, thank you very much � which is something I never thought I would hear myself say! I am allowed as many meltdowns as I choose to have and my consultant said �everyone else can just bugger off�, which sounded so funny coming from him as he�s normally so po-faced and sensible but it WAS hot on the heels of me saying about taking off my clothes so perhaps he was feeling just a little bit more daring than usual.
Later
s
x
PS The squash has some kind of noxious chemicals in it, which show up on a CT scan. Apparently.
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