Chemotherapy is over. Officially since mid February. This means I am seven weeks post chemo. My hair is growing back. First my legs have tiny blonde hairs of only a few millimeters. I notice it here first around the tenth of March. I luxuriate in feeling for stubble and hold them up against the light … Read more

I feel like I’m in a cage. A cage with no key. There is no escape. I will always feel the bars. My sister visited. She is perhaps the only one who acknowledges that the odds aren’t good. Everyone else is buoyed with optimism. “You will beat it”, “The odds aren’t good” I say. “I’m … Read more

My hair is falling out. In drifts and tangles it comes away. Settling on my pillow, in my hair brush, on my collar, like autumn leaves. My head still has hair but it is frizzy and lifeless. The exodus cannot end well. Despite the dreaded cold cap, I am now succumbing. I have finished 12 … Read more

The surgeon is patient and kind. “We’ll sort out your breast cancer” he says. I am a bit perplexed thinking “but I don’t have breast cancer”. At least I didn’t this morning. We don’t have the cytology results, so I still cling to hope that all the Doctors so far are wrong. Let’s not forget … Read more

Two years ago exactly I was swollen and tired. Each night I’d arrange pillows around my body, huge and expectant with my long wished for second child. My body was ungainly. I was exhausted and grumpy. I was 20 kg heavier than now. And yet, I was so anxiously waiting for my new baby. I … Read more

What music do you choose when you are meeting your oncological surgeon to find out how bad things are? I sit in the waiting room and furiously google Ode to Joy. It seems curious to choose this piece. What joy is there to be had now, of all times? I find the piece of music … Read more

When I walk I hear it. A faint squeak squeak … reminding me I have unwelcome jewellery. A needle with attendant plastic tubing dangles from my portacath. This is the pathway to my veins, the pathway to my heart as it sits just near it, in the largest vessel returning blood from my body to … Read more

I go to sleep with breast cancer, I wake with it. As I arrange my pillows around an aching arm, I try hard not to remember when I last arranged my pillows so meticulously. It was the same Time of year only two years ago, when I was seven months pregnant. I arranged cocoons of … Read more

Week three of chemo is rough. I feel nauseous and hopeless. I cry when the catheter is placed as I feel so violated. Yet I must sit there. The nausea worsens, I hyperventilate and I vomit and then retch and retch.. “I just want to curl up on the floor and die.” I tell my partner.

You know things are bad when flowers arrive. After the diagnosis is confirmed bunches of flowers arrive at the door. More than when my babies were born. Busy couriers come and go to the door, parcels, cards, letters, hampers and gifts pile up. Chocolate arrives regularly, but I have no appetite. My weight dips back … Read more