Today is International Women’s Day and I begin my phased back return to work.
I’ve been thinking about the word ‘Brave’. My last blog was a little bleak, and I wanted to make this one lighter, funnier and positive. Let’s see.
I had my review with the radiotherapy team and they said, two weeks after radiotherapy that I am at the peak of the side effects, and next week everything will ease. So I begin this week, knowing and feeling like I am turning a corner. Radiotherapy for early stage breast cancer is now given in one week, a higher dose but shorter time with the same outcome as given over three weeks. During the first week my breast was hot, big and little tender. Week two, I’m sore with what feels like a shower of needles thrown from within, taking me by surprise, sore and then gone. Still tender but cooling down. Though things are moving forward, I’m a little low. This could be the pandemic and lockdown three, but it is tiring recovering, wears you down a bit. I’m feeling disconnected with work, my friends and family, not unlike everyone else at this time. I’m missing sparkle, sitting round tables and drinking, treats and freedom.
Last week, whilst we lay in our New York bedroom, titled this as my wife put up red fairy lights to match the red hearts opposite, something I had wanted, and she created when I came home from my operation. The red glow reminded us of our time in New York with Key Change, Open Clasp off Broadway, us in the East Village. During the pandemic and lockdown, we have, like others, created spaces and moments that take us to other places. As we lay and my wife wiped my tears (still crying but not as much) she said I was brave. This she has said in other moments, and this word used to describe me felt unfamiliar.
Over the past two decades I have worked with brave, courageous, and resilient women. I know the importance of identifying and naming this for women, as it values and empowers. I asked her why brave and she said because of what I was doing, going through, doing it despite my fears.
I had my back to work chat, how this was going to happen, a few hours a day to see and no pressure. My stay at home office, zoom and trying to talk can trigger tears still, and I try not to apologise, asking others to bear with me. Now as I write this, I remember when working with groups we ask that we don’t feel the need to rescue women who cry, we acknowledge it and support the woman to continue if she needs to get through her tears and tell the story. I guess that’s what I’m asking for or doing now.
In 1992 my mum died from bowel cancer, three months from diagnosis, I was 29, our son and his sister to another mother where just babes in arms. I see that moment in two phases, the first full of fear, flowers and recovery, the second brief, quick and in just two weeks of return to hospital and Edna died. She had a phobia of hospitals and I spent both phases next to her. Now when I reflect back I remember walking into an MRI and helping her off the table, being with her when she was examined, intrusive and painful. Walking with her as she was wheeled through long hospital corridors, washing her false teeth and tired body. I remember seeing her take her last breath.
I have been searching my brain to find a moment when I told her she was brave, and I know I didn’t. I kept diaries afterwards, wrote about it all and I know if I went into the attic, I would see I took care of her, but I wish I had told her she was brave.
It’s International Women’s Day and a time to celebrate all that has been achieved in the face of discrimination and oppression. Women Open Clasp work with show such courage, and they are brave, they feel fear but step forward anyway. Being told you are brave made me feel strong, it values what you have been through, reframes the narrative in your own head, can do. It’s a quality you can own and today I want to remember all those brave women who have gone before us, and those yet to come.
After writing this blog, I went for a walk with our dog and thought how I wanted to lift myself and the tone of the blog. Then I remembered the Girl in the Pink Jumper and the short story I had written, below is the second attempt to blog. I read both to my wife over the weekend, she said the first was honest, the second (also honest) but the second made her laugh and I love hearing her laugh, and laughter is like medicine, so if you are still with me, here is my second, lighter in tone blog.
The Girl in the Pink Jumper, Breast Cancer and Me
Its International Women’s Day 2021 #ChooseToChallenge theme. My personal challenge is this blog, as I’ve had another hard week, not like the radiotherapy week, I’ve just felt a little blue, not a nice blue, but a cold and heavy blue, tinged with grey. I was also aware that my last blog was vivid and bleak, the images painted may have left me, our dog and my wife a little broken. To update. The dog is doing fine, all healed and mostly recovered. The wife is back at work, also recovered. I have had my review with the radiotherapy team and as of Friday last week, this is the peak of the side effects, nothing will get worse, and it will all ease from here on in.
Post Radiotherapy – (I had three weeks treatment in one week, larger doses over shorter time, same outcome). I read that you should think of Cancer as if a glass has smashed on the floor, the operation picks up the pieces and the radiotherapy acts like the hoover. In the first week my breast grew in size and temperature each afternoon. In week two, the breast started to cool but now I have stabbing pains that attack a few times a day, like little people armed with needles or swords fighting from within to get out, or the other way round. Swords and Hoovers going on. I can get tired in the afternoons, and another challenge is to not start drinking Gin at 4pm.
I have had my back to work chat and have planned a phased return starting today, International Women’s Day. This feels the right time to return and I am going to pick up the projects I was working on in December. I made a list for the meeting about what I’m nervous about, also what I am excited to return to, and as always, the best bits of working with Open Clasp is the women, then writing the scripts.
I love writing and I spend most of my time writing in response to the women I work with. The Girl in the Pink Jumper (mentioned in my first blog) was something I did outside of Open Clasp, the short stories allowed me to process the pandemic and I started in the first lockdown and continued on. The Girl walks with her dog, observes the community in which she lives, and they in turn observe her, the Girl in the Pink Jumper is me and also a work of fiction. I haven’t been able to return to the stories, as the blogs took over. This week I returned to the Girl in the Pink Jumper (she now has had breast cancer) and I wrote a story about a man who was bothering her. Every morning she would hear him abusing his dog as he walked on the field at the back of her house. The story isn’t something I can share via Open Clasp, as it has elements that jar with the company’s charitable aims, but it was a great story to write, and at the end I wrote Happy International Women’s Day.
Writing makes me feel good and I haven’t been feeling great. I was feeling the need for sparkle, freedom and felt unnerved by having Breast Cancer and the Pandemic, thinking ‘what the fuck is going on’. This is why this blog was a challenge. Then I remembered about the Girl in Pink, how good it feels to write, the writing women created in the groups and my excitement at returning to work and create new productions when I return.
Catrina
