I did not tell my oncologist what I was doing to help myself â somehow I felt he would pooh-pooh most of it as faddy, unsubstantiated nonsense. I realized that his special area of expertise was the medical treatment of cancer and, like all medically trained doctors, he would have had less training in nutrition than the average weight-loss counsellor. This was borne out to me that October. I remember it well because it was the day he told me I was to start radiation.
Across the road from the hospital was a little health shop which I often popped into if I had some time to kill before appointments. They had a nice range of products, and ran courses on yoga, reiki and so on. I had picked up their monthly newsletter that day â as always, I read anything I could get my hands on â and was still reading it when my name was called.
âYou're doing well, Bernadette,' stated my oncologist, looking at the results of that day's blood test. He could see too that I was not losing much weight, and although my hair was much thinner it wasn't falling out in chunks like some people's did. I thought this was because of the digestive enzymes and the juicing â I was retaining many more of the nutrients my body needed than I otherwise would have been able to do. But I said nothing. âI think we can start you on the radiation a week on Monday. You'll be in every weekday for five weeks, and of course the chemo will still continue every third Thursday.'
âIs there anything I should know before I start?' I ventured to ask.
âNot really. Your appointments will be in the mornings, so if I were you I'd plan to give yourself plenty of rest afterwards. You'll be feeling quite tired.' Jesus, if he warned me that I'd be tired that meant I'd be totally bloody exhausted.
I inadvertently left the newsletter on my chair as I got up to leave. He seized it and waved it scornfully at me, reading out the headline:
Shock News: Anti-perspirants and deodorants may cause cancer.
âChrist Almighty, some of us have to get PhDs before we can advise people suffering from cancer and this guy just sets himself up over the road. None of this is proven.' I knew he was wrong, but did not have the facts at my fingertips â as I do now.
I was very nervous when I went in for the first radiation session, not knowing what to expect. Nurse Angie tattooed some tiny black marks around my breast, pinpointing the area where the radiation would be applied. She showed me where to lie, directly underneath the huge machine, and then she left me alone in the room. âDon't move,' she warned. Dear God, I thought, how on earth do they get children to lie still for this? The machine was lowered by an invisible operator until it was a few centimetres above me. The actual radiation itself lasted for a few minutes and at first I felt nothing. Then, after a few days of this, I saw I had what looked like sunburn. A week later I was very, very burnt â and I wasn't even half-way through the treatment. I would go round the house with a soft T-shirt on, no bra underneath. One Sunday lunch I was so sore I said to Richard, âWould you mind if I took my shirt off? It's so painful; the chafing of the material is agony.'
âOh Mum, no!'
âPlease, please,' I begged him. âAt least let me unbutton it. You don't have to look.'
âOK, but you can pay for the therapy later,' he grumbled. Fair enough, I realize now as I write this: at eighteen you don't really need to get an eyeful of your mum's breasts. But at that point â sick with the chemo, worn out by the radiation â I was too sore to worry about his sensibilities.
Some people get sick with radiation. It didn't hit me that way, but the oncologist was right about the tiredness: it totally floored me. It sapped every last ounce of energy. Each morning I'd drop Julie off at school if I had enough time before my appointment, or if not, Sarah would take her in. There would always be a wait of around half an hour, then with luck I'd be home by around 11am. I'd go straight to bed and set the alarm for 1.00pm, so I could wake and go to fetch Julie at 1.30. I knew I couldn't opt out of her life for five weeks â it was important for us both that I carried on as best as I could. At least I had no trouble sleeping during the radiation.
âMama, are we going trick or treating next week?' asked Julie one morning. My heart sank â of course she'd want to do this, as it was something we always did together. There aren't many kids down our way, but the neighbours always laugh at what Julie and I turn up wearing, and make sure they have a little treat for her. I was determined that she wasn't going to miss out that year, so I got us both kitted out as Morticia and Wednesday Addams. As I checked my thin, wasted reflection in the hall mirror before we left, Julie clutching her goodie bag, I thought ruefully that I would have made quite a realistic ghost.
I started to learn visualization techniques, so that when I was lying under that terrible machine I could imagine myself elsewhere. Starting with my relaxation exercise, I would end by taking myself to a cool green forest where I would hear birdsong and the rushing of waterfalls. Inside my head I had my own private paradise: it was simple, but it did help me cope with the fear and the worry, and it made me feel that I had some control over what was being done to me. I felt that this, at that point, would help me more than prayer.
There were times during the treatment, particularly when I had the radiation and chemo simultaneously, that I felt like giving in. It was so hard, I felt so low and worn out, I looked wretched, a useless shell of a person. I was learning to support myself physically â a process I now think of as âchanging over' â but mentally I felt I was falling apart. Gerard and the kids were fantastic throughout, and I used to lie in bed listening to their noise and chatter downstairs and wish more than anything that I could be down there with them. I was so grateful, too, for the support of friends and neighbours who were always dropping round or calling to find out if there was anything they could get for me, or anywhere they could drive me to. Throughout that year I was constantly being reminded of how much women help each other in times of need: they just get stuck in and do whatever it takes. In particular, Patricia, Grace and Sharon were unwavering and totally unselfish in their help and I don't know if I could have got through it without them.
Patricia lives some way from my house, in a village just outside a town called Swords. It's real country out there â she grows her own vegetables and has a cow and a horse. I bumped into her at the supermarket just after I had been diagnosed the second time.
âI don't suppose you know anywhere I can find organic fruit and vegetables?' I asked her, thinking that with her countryside connections she might well know. I was starting to worry that the pesticides and fertilizer residues in ânormal' fruit and veg would be getting through to me in higher doses because of juicing. She didn't â in those days (only five years ago!) it was hard to find organic produce â but as soon as she realized I was sick she promised to help me. The supplier we found was quite a drive away, so Patricia would go shopping for me on the days I was laid low with chemo, bringing me all the supplies I needed for my juicer.
Grace was with me for several of my appointments, and often took me to the hospital when I was too weak to drive myself. I don't know how she managed to keep me smiling, but she did. What we went through together cemented what was already a good friendship. Sharon is my sister-in-law, married to Ger's brother Paul. These days I don't see her much, but that year she was there, almost miraculously, whenever I needed her. She would appear on the Saturdays after my chemo and just get stuck in to whatever needed to be done â she walked the dog, cleaned the bathrooms, did the shopping, and â best of all â played with Julie. Sometimes she would go home looking like a dog's dinner, with her hair all over the place after Julie had been playing hairdressers with her; other times she would drive off with her face painted with wild squiggles and zigzags. She would just shrug her shoulders and grin. When I talk to her on the phone I always end by saying, âI love you.' She was embarrassed at first, but now she's used to it and tells me she loves me too. She is eight years younger than me, but our birthdays are on the same day, and I always add her name to my cake.
It may sound corny, but I have learnt that you have to take the opportunities to tell people you love them. Life is precarious, and we have a choice as to how we deal with the knowledge that people we care about may not be here next year, next month, or even tomorrow. I believe it is up to us to give out as much love as we can. During my illness I decided never to be one of those people who say uselessly, âBut I never told him how much I loved him.' I had made this mistake with my father, and I regretted it bitterly.
Despite all this help and support with which I was surrounded, one terrible day I was on my own in the house when Richard walked through the door. He had been in an accident. His face was white, and he seemed to be having difficulty breathing. I was on the sofa recovering from the morning's radiation â having struggled to get there in the first place â and quite unable to get up. I gave a little cry when I saw him. âWhat on earth has happened?'
âMum. I'm OK, don't fuss, but we drove into the back of a car.'
âWhat? How?'
âThe car in front crashed into another car, and we couldn't stop in time. I was in the back, but I'd only just got in and was taking off my jacket before buckling my seatbelt. So I was thrown forwards.'
âWhere does it hurt?'
âMy chest. And my back is sore.' Jesus, I thought. He might have broken a rib, or done some damage to his spine or neck. I had to get him to hospital, but how? I hated the cancer more than ever then, for preventing me from taking proper care of my child. I knew, of course, that Gerard would have come immediately, or anyone I chose to call. But I felt it was my job to go with him, and I wept as I saw him get into the back of a taxi, cursing this feeling of utter helplessness.
Richard was fine, as it turned out, but a few days later I received a call from Aquinas. âMum's had another stroke.'
âOh no, no more.' I couldn't deal with this â yet another blow to deal with when I was already on my knees.
âThe doctors don't think she'll make it this time. I've been told to get hold of all the family.' I perked up a little: that meant I'd be seeing Jimmy, my favourite brother. He lived in England, and my world had collapsed when, in his early twenties, he had moved away from home. I called him to tell him about the summons to the hospital.
âBernie, how are you doing? Are you bearing up?' He knew I was sick â my sisters had told him when I'd got the diagnosis. âWhat about Gerard and the kids, are they OK?' I told him how things were, and I broke the news about our mother. âListen,' he said. âShe's at the end of her life. You're only in the middle of yours. I can't wait to see you.'
âI look like shit,' I said.
It was her 89th birthday the following week, and we all congregated in her hospital room, taking photos, believing this was the last we would see of our dear little mum. Bless her, her mind had gone, and she didn't really know who we were, although I felt she knew at some level that her time was limited. How I longed to put my arms around her and tell her all my problems like I used to do as a child. I thought of Marti Caine, who had suffered greatly with cancer a few years earlier. (I had followed her progress, which sadly was downhill, with great interest and empathy, as you do when high-profile public figures are going through a similar experience to your own.) Something she said had stuck in my mind. That her mother, who had many failings later in life, gave her enough love in her first seven years to enable her to withstand all the hard knocks life was to deal her. This is how I felt about my own mother, and as I stroked her pale cheek I reflected that it was probably a good thing that she would never know that I, her baby, had cancer. I sat and put my arms around her, trying to comfort her and draw what strength I could from her frail body. I remembered how, as a child, we used to sit cosily together, before the big ones got back from school, in front of
Watch with Mother
. She would be in her pinny and there would always be a smell of baking in the house. If I shut my eyes I could almost imagine the smell of her scones and brown bread.
Gerard was talking to Jimmy, Aquinas, and her husband Pat, and Sarah and Julie were in a corner with Deirdre, Terence and Frank. Richard was next to me, and I knew how shaken he was to see someone so near death â she looked even worse than I did, and that was saying something. As I sat hugging her, lost in my own memories, he put an arm around me, saying quietly, âIt's all right, Mum, it's all right.' The poor lad could see I needed my own mother, and in his inarticulate way he was doing his best to show me that he could be my support, now that she no longer could be. Eventually he led me out, but I so wanted to stay with her. I had spent days by my father's bedside when he was dying but I never said goodbye to him and I hadn't been with him when he died. I did not want to leave my mother by herself now.
The fact that, a week later, my mother was sitting up in bed as if nothing had happened did not take away the sharp sense that, although I was going through my own private hell, life â and death â was still going on around me. I couldn't put it on hold and ask it to wait until I was feeling more able to deal with it. And in some ways I did not want to: one strange upside to all this, I noticed, was that my senses were heightened. Food tasted of itself once more â or was it my new diet? Smells were richer and stronger, landscapes more beautiful, people kinder, music more evocative, more sensual ⦠and Ger's touch, or the feel of Julie's hand in mine, was like I had never felt before. In the middle of all the horror I was discovering how precious life was. Suddenly I became highly observant, and had a new, acute appreciation of my world. It was a primal instinct, a visceral desire to keep going. This, I realized, was a privilege. A privilege offered only to those living on the edge.