Page 3 of While I’m Still Here

* * *

The answer, as it turns out, is a lot.

There were a lot of words about appointments, people whose job titles I have never previously had reason to know and would quite happily have continued to never know for the rest of my life.

By the time I leave the hospital, I have a folder.

An actual fucking folder—it’s pink, which feels a little on the nose if you ask me. Inside are leaflets about breast cancer, surgery, chemotherapy, fertility, wigs, support groups (no thanks), something called a breast care nurse, and approximately six thousand phone numbers I’m apparently supposed to call depending on which particular variety of crisis I’m having. There’s even the samaritans phone number, but I called them once, and they suggested a cup of tea and a warm bath…

I also apparently have a treatment plan. Sort of. The doctor explained it to me very carefully. Twice, actually, because the first time she got to the word mastectomy and my brain apparently pulled the emergency brake.

Surgery first, she said. They need to remove the breast. My left one… I know which one now—left tit has betrayed the family. There are more tests before then, because apparently cancer is the sort of houseguest who requires you to check whether it’s invited some weird friend you don’t want to the party. They need to know if it’s spread; they also need blood tests and another scan. They also need to look at my lymph nodes. Words like staging and grading have been explained to me, and I nodded along just like I did in school, but I don’t have a bloody clue about what she was talking about.

Then… surgery.

Then chemotherapy, most likely, depending on what they find after the surgery and what the rest of my results show. Possibly radiotherapy after that. There was also a conversation about hormone receptors and targeted treatments that I understood for approximately nine seconds before the information slid straight out of my brain.

I have dates — not the ones I’d like.

Appointments.

Names.

Numbers—I would prefer it to be for a man I could shag, but we can’t all be winners.

A nurse called Claire wrote things down for me when it became glaringly obvious I was no longer retaining any information, and I nearly told her that I loved her for it. Instead… I thanked her fourteen times like a complete idiot. Then she asked the question I had been dreading: “Is there someone you could call to talk about this?”

I apparently need support, and because apparently dignity packed its bags and fucked off roughly at the same time as I got my tits out, I laughed.

Not because it was funny, but because it wasn’t.

So, now I’m standing outside my flat with a pink folder tucked beneath one arm, my handbag hanging from the other and my keys in my hand, staring at my blue front door as though I’ve never seen the thing before.

I left this morning without cancer… technically, obviously, I did not. Cancer was already there. My left tit was already plotting my downfall while I stood in this exact spot wrestling with my umbrella and wondering whether the milk in the fridge would survive another day or if I had to pick up another on the way home. But I didn’t know, and there is something deeply offensive about the fact that everything looks exactly the same now that I do… including my left tit.

The neighbours’ green bin is still lying on its side because she never brings it in. Someone upstairs is playing music loudly enough that I can hear the bass through the walls, and there’s a takeaway menu sticking halfway out of my letterbox. My front-door mat still says, COME BACK WITH WINE, which I bought three years ago when I thought it was hilarious and have regretted ever since because delivery drivers seem to think it’s a great conversation starter when I open the door in my pyjamas, and my hair looks like a rat’s nest.

Everything is normal… except me.

I unlock the door. “Home,” I announce to absolutely nobody, and I’m greeted with silence like I am every day. What a wonderfully lonely existence, Beatrice, truly stupendous.

I close the door behind me, drop my handbag onto the floor and stand there holding the folder. I should do something.

What do people do when they get home after being diagnosed with cancer?

Google seems dangerous; it might tell me I’m dying or something. Calling my mother seems significantly more dangerous. Wine feels medically questionable, although nobody specifically told me I couldn’t drink wine today, and I feel like that sort of information really ought to be included in the folder of doom, as I’ve now dubbed it.

Maybe there’s a leaflet in there.

So You’ve Got Cancer: Can You Still Get Pissed?

I’d read that one.

I kick off my shoes and walk into the kitchen. The first thing I see is the bin calendar stuck to the fridge. I stare at it… Thursday. I look at the clock. 3:17 pm. Fuck.

I forgot to put the bins out.

For some reason, this is what nearly breaks me.