Re-entry from orbit

Back to earth with pure joy - a message from the other side of chemo

I made it to France! The long-awaited, much-hoped for, not-daring-to-dream retreat to the beautiful Chez Castillon in France came true.

It has been the most intense of joys, as well as rather disorientating.

And as I enjoyed the weightlessness of my first swim since having my PICC line out (my last swim was in December during a shell-shocked night away we booked the day after diagnosis), I realised what it felt like…

Re-entry to earth after seven months in orbit.

Like poor Laika the Russian space dog, I’ve been cut off from normal life. Not literally orbiting miles above the earth, but at times I might as well have been - watching the familiar from a distance, unable to participate myself.

Perhaps I could have been less reclusive, but my biopsy was taken as November darkened the skies. My diagnosis and first treatment came as dusk set on the shortest days. Daylight and normality faded away.

Unlike Laika¹, I had my partner and friends at my side, with readers like you supporting me, too. Yet ultimately every cancer patient is on their own with their symptoms, emotions and fears.

That disconnection can be abrupt. Thoughts change, routines are jettisoned: dare I plan for tomorrow, next week, next month? What can I eat? Should I impose my own personal lockdown, sell those gig tickets, cancel that restaurant booking?

Must I buy a wig, shave my head, try cold-capping? Tell the nurses about every symptom or be stoic? Celebrate the treatment or ask questions about the downsides?

As you make decisions you're not remotely qualified for, you’re still watching from your chemo bubble, tethered to a machine that promises to cure and poison you. Hooked up to another that freezes your scalp and makes you look like a retro astronaut.

And everything you never appreciated about your life plays out below. The planned months of chemo seem like a sentence for a crime you didn’t even know you committed, yet also - just bad luck.

This will never end…

Then it does.

And the end begins with your doctor saying you’re fit to fly, and then a scramble for travel insurance with more questions than an A Level paper, several refusals and an eye-watering bill that soon seems like a bargain.

And packing when you’ve forgotten how to travel but also have so many things that MIGHT GO WRONG that end up with a case twice as heavy as usual.

And a lift to the airport from the partner who will miss you but not miss sharing hypervigilance for a few days. And the overwhelm of Gatwick and security, and the worry about your passport photo matching the new nearly-hairless version, but also the comfort of good friends who want to take care of you.

Then take off: skies and the Channel and the horizon.

A broadening and a grounding.

My French Duolingo (I kept my streak going through all my days in hospital) has been giving me the word ‘land’ all the time recently - atterrir. Coming down to earth.

Janie and Mickey who run Chez Castillon are the best hosts I know.

Being here, with outstanding food, like-minded people, wonderful hosts, no pressures, and a very reassuring French pharmacy around the corner, has been such a high. I’ve been overwhelmed at times, and quite tired, because I arrived only two weeks after being discharged from hospital.

And I got to be with two of my very dearest writing friends, Rowan and Julie, whose support and kindness kept me going in the darkest times. Being back in the light with them was priceless.

The pure joy of it is hard to describe. And the physical recovery has been staggering, too: my hair growing, my eyebrows almost back to what they were, and although swimming made unused muscles ache, it was a good ache.

Wonderful memories of a joyful week

The mega-dose steroids are still coursing around my system, swelling my chipmunk cheeks, which aren’t broken up by hair yet.

And I’m hyper and sleepless and mercurial. But it's good recovery energy.

A message of hope from the other side…

So if you’re in your chemo journey or supporting someone else, tell them it does end. No one would have this treatment without a threat to life. But the contrast when you have a break, or the chemo ends, feels like a miracle. I don’t know how long it’ll last. But I want to hold onto this feeling when the normal becomes mundane again and to visualise these moments as I recover from my surgery later this month.

It’s so good to be back on earth.

1. I almost took the reference to Laika out because lonely dogs are a trigger for me but wasn’t she beautiful?