Neutropenia, I’m neutropenic but not febrile, neutropenic but I wear make-up every day now ... I don’t even know what neutropenic means ... finished Vogue piece, lucky I’m up all night ... so constipated ... just tell the bloody doctors ...
2am. I’m in and out of sleep, words bothering my mind like predators of peace. Symptoms: infected finger and a mouth so full of ulcers that I haven’t been able to swallow for three days, and couldn’t speak to the teachers at parents’ evening, making do with just nodding and smiling instead. Most unnerving of all, a feeling as if every joint in my body has become fragile and will break if I move, like I’m on a string, and the puppet-master’s in a bad mood, and trying to smash me to bits.
Morning comes, and so do Tatiana and Milan. In a novel twist on the celebrity/cleaner axis, where the housekeepers of famous folk sell stories to the tabloids, the three-times-a-week help we have in this house is a couple from Croatia. Milan, immensely tall, one-time footballer in his home town, and Tatiana, Shakespearean beauty. Before they became refugees, they were a couple who never paid for their own drinks - neighbourhood heroes.
Tatiana’s hair fell out during the years in hiding; soft and curly now, but, she says, half the thickness it used to have. I can only imagine the magnetism they had in their home town, because glamour still shades their every move; like having Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn come in three times a week. To top it all, their teenage son is in the new Harry Potter movie - every piece of information about it is as interesting as it is forbidden by contract to be spread. Cancer has its complications, but stopping myself from spilling movie-set gossip is killing.
But having this help has been key during this illness. And more: Tatiana was the only non-family I let into the hospital.
Today is the first time I call the doctors for help. Peter Ostler, the oncologist, says he’ll see me this afternoon. My son comes too, the nurses trying to distract him, while one takes my blood. I say, through gritted teeth and mouth ulcers, “just let him see ...”. he’s too smart not to know there’s a reason for all these people doing comic turns.
My blood is 0.3, which, Dr Ostler says, means I should probably be admitted. “Out of the question,” I say, pointing at my son. Actually, I’m torn between that urge to fall back into a hospital bed, where time stops for a few days and nothing has to be done, because you just aren’t there to do it, and my other driving urge: being the one on whom everything depends.
“If you start running a temperature,” he says, “come straight back. I’m telling them to expect you.” But he’s also said that none of it’s too bad: reddish throat, infected finger, “but nothing to drain” and no thrush on the tongue. So part of me leaves hospital with that nice, yes, I’m genuinely ill sensation, and the other half is left with that less comfortable, er, making a fuss about nothing guilt trip.
Over the next few days, everything clears up, in time for the second dose of Taxotere. This time, 24 hours after the chemotherapy, I’m given an injection to boost white blood cells.
The liquid in the syringe is growth hormone. Highly recommended; for the first time in months, I feel strong, and not like I’m crossing Siberian plains with every step. This is lucky because Sunday morning Nina starts vomiting. Ten times by 8.30. By nine, we’re at Finchley Memorial A&E, where they keep us waiting just until she starts throwing up over the reception area, and then she is seen straight away. Useful tactic.
Not appendicitis, it’s stomach flu. I take one daughter to her keyboard exam, and Anthony, greenish tint round the edges, shepherds our son to a party. Back home, he barely climbs the stairs before he falls into bed. Our eldest, director of her school musical this year, comes down at 2 in the afternoon to say she’s going off for six hours’ rehearsing. I don’t even have to say anything, I just count to five, before she sinks on the bottom step: “I think I’m ill, Mum.”
I feel more than well. Fantastic, fantastic injection. Fortunate, really, that I feel that way about it, because the next two times, I’m going to self-inject. After a couple of practice shots on a heavy-duty, thick-skinned Jaffa orange.
This column appears fortnightly.
18 March 2021: this article has been edited to remove some personal information.
