Holly was diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2005. Holly has shared her experience through poems, written at different points of her experience with cancer. If you’ve not read Part 1 where Holly describes her diagnosis, you can read Part 1 on Community News.
In today’s blog, we’re sharing 5 poems which talk about Holly’s experience going through chemotherapy. Her poems also talk about coping with side effects from chemotherapy, such as hair loss. Holly also talks about her experiences of talking to family and friends about cancer.
This Community News blog is a little bit longer than our other blogs. If you would like to skip straight to Holly’s poems, please use the buttons below:
Holly describes her poems as representing “the hospital waiting room pool of knowledge” where many people get help and support from other people going through treatment. Here on the Online Community, we know how helpful it can be to find support from other people who know how you feel. We have supportive online forums including a Breast cancer forum. We also have an Express Yourself forum where members share how creativity helps them cope with their experiences.
Life is wonderful and I embrace it.
It tastes of chocolate, and I won’t waste it.
These poems are dedicated to all those who saved my life,
and to all those who have lost theirs to cancer.
I give them, with love and best wishes,
to anyone struggling with cancer,
or
trying to come to terms with
the loss of their
loved one.
I want to share a quick summary of what has brought us to part two of this collection of cancer survival memories in poetry. Poems have told the story of how I found a lump in my left breast, just before my 38th birthday in 2005, and then had surgery to remove it. A poem shared the news with friends and family, so I didn’t have to in person. Poems saved me from having to repeatedly go through the ordeal of receiving people’s well-meaning sympathy and determined enthusiasm for my recovery. The poems that follow are a bit grisly and gloomy. They describe the effects of my chemotherapy treatment, given by infusion every three weeks, for seven months. I’ll finish with a funny one though – something to look forward to.
I have found that most of the helpful information and worthwhile encouragement available to cancer victims is from fellow sufferers, shared while sitting in hospital waiting rooms. This is where you can find out that your side-effects are normal and will pass, only to be replaced with the next set, but they will pass also. These are the people who have been through the stage you are struggling with. They can give you empathy, benefits of their experiential wisdom and, possibly, symptom survival tips. Or they have not reached your stage yet but can benefit from your anecdotes and support as they sit, baffled and uncomfortable, like you did a few weeks or months ago.
I have put my collection of poems and notes together to recreate that hospital waiting room pool of knowledge. I hope that they help you to understand what you are going through at the moment, prepare you for what is coming (which helps, often, when you get there), or let you feel a sense of relief that what you have endured was normal and you are part of a club of cancer victims and treatment survivors – part of a family – not alone.
I’m going to time slip a bit and share an explanation of cancer which I wrote for my brother late one night. He was staying with my sons and me for the weekend. This was when I was five months into my chemo treatment. He had said during the Saturday evening that he was aware that I had cancer and was getting treatment, but asked ‘What is this cancer thing exactly?’ At breakfast time on the Sunday, I gave him the poem I had written as my answer.
(17/8/2005 – written for my brother, to explain this cancer thing)
Cancer!
A word that clenches every heart with fear –
The plague that makes the demon Death draw near.
It has no regard for age or class,
But will distort the cells of all within its grasp.
Cancer!
The dread disease touches every family.
It’s killed friends of mine, now it’s holding me.
I found a lump at the turn of the year –
To be lost to my children was my instant fear.
Cancer?
My first thought as I gently stroked
To know for sure, was “Cancer?”, and then I choked.
Terror twisted my heart and head –
“If this is cancer, then I’m as good as dead!”.
Cancer?!
The doctor was my first port of call –
“Tell me it’s not true, just a fatty ball.”
But no, it’s a funny shape, irregular, a risk –
Got to go to the hospital about this.
Cancer?!
King’s Lynn Breast Care unit, a bag of nerves,
A mammogram which flattened my female curves,
Then an ultrasound scan with sticky gel,
From those shadow pictures they could tell …
Cancer!
“I can’t be sure.”, a sample taken by a needle probe,
Four fine forays into the lump, so they could know.
A week of horror while I wait –
My darkest nightmares explored my fate.
Cancer!!
One week on and those gentle folk called me in
To tell me the results of the tissue probing.
“Sit down Holly, the news can’t wait,
It’s cancer I’m afraid.” … I began to faint.
Cancer!!!
My face went white and sheened with sweat,
I couldn’t look past that dread word yet.
I had to lie down, though I’m strong as an ox –
All I could see was me in a funeral box.
Cancer!!!
My Boys will have to be brought up by their Dad –
That was the strongest thought that I had.
“We won’t let that happen – you will live!”
Was the best assertion the doctor could give.
Cancer!!
Gently she told me what was to come.
Very soon a lumpectomy would be done.
After that chemotherapy, then radiotherapy too –
If necessary, hormone therapy on the list to do.
Cancer!!
Three weeks later I was under the knife –
Removing the cancerous tumour to save my life.
A radioactive trace done to seek out the lead lymph node,
Then a gory harvesting to remove the lymph load.
Cancer!!
Twenty-four lymph nodes was the surgeon’s haul,
Only three infected out of them all.
Three diseased drainpipes told of escape –
Terrorist cancer cells had set out to pillage and rape!
Cancer!!
‘Terrorists’ was how I’d explained to my children,
And the chemotherapy was ‘SAS soldiers’ sent out to kill them.
How do you explain the lymphatic channels?
Easy! They’re Suddam Hussein’s hide-out tunnels!
Cancer!
Five months on and I’m over half-way through.
There are four more chemo infusions to do.
Then three and a half weeks of daily treks
To Cambridge for radiotherapy – we joke of daily sunbeds.
Cancer!
I’ve reached a stage of quiet revulsion
For the cannulas that enable the chemo propulsion.
I have a ridiculous impulse to sweep them from my skin –
I hate the life-saving needle and pipes that are lodged in.
Cancer!
The wonderful, though tiresome, treatment is nearly at its end –
I couldn’t have endured it so well without my family and friends.
Without their endless love and support I’d fail,
And there’d be a different end to my cancer tale.
With them, and my God and Jesie-babes,
I’ve ridden the punches that cruel Fate gave.
With them I’ll finish the treatments that the hospitals give.
I’ll keep on laughing and, best of all … LIVE!!!
(31/3/2005)
I’m under siege
By well-meaning do-gooders
Who mean no harm
But raise my blood pressure
And clench my arm.
Their “Can you manage, Hol?”
And “Let me do that.”
Is sending me raving mad.
I’m not an invalid –
It’s you who’s feeling bad.
I’m out of control,
Almost, and losing my cool,
Held at bay by muscles drum taut.
It’s making me snappy –
Far ruder than I ought.
Just let me be normal
And I can relax.
Let me share the toil and the laughs,
Then, take my word for it, well-meaning all,
This time of trauma will pass.
It is frustrating when friends and family, with the best intentions, deprive you of your independence while you are having cancer treatment. Yes, you feel like a herd of elephants has just run over you and are turning around ready to run over you again, but you are still capable of putting some mats and cutlery on the table when you go to a friend’s house for tea. Helping out makes you feel worthwhile, still a valid person who is more than just someone who has cancer. Once you explain this to people, they are usually pretty good at letting you do the odd bit of light helping. They will forget and wrap you up in cotton wool again soon, but once you remind them, they might even let you wash up a couple of plates before your legs feel too weak and shaky to stand any longer, and you have to be generous to your host and let them take over.
(28/4/2005 – 4.30am, a sleepless night)
My head is looking rather bare –
Because my hair’s no longer there.
People may well stop and stare
But, honestly, I do not care (much).
I have to say it’s been a shock,
Every time I’ve had a wash,
To see my hands covered in locks –
There’s enough to fill a small shoebox!
The shedded tresses were predicted
As a symptom of my cancer chemo,
But regrowth is soon expected –
A full, gossamer-fine, curled(?) halo.
The loss bothers me far less than you,
Calm down, take a look at the other shoe –
Think what I’m saving on trims and shampoo!
Just admire my hats and we’ll get through.
Self-portrait
(2/5/2005)
.!!!!!!!!!!.
. .
. .
. .
. .
Slug-like shape and fluff-fringed head –
Guaranteed to kill all passion dead!
Greedy habits expanding my girth
In cake-filled teashops, site of social mirth.
If I continue in this way then, soon,
I’ll be the size and shape of a barrage balloon!
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{___________} {___________}
Losing my hair and watching my face turn into a bald, flushed ball was not easy. An interesting science experiment observation, but not easy. My sons would not let me wear a wig. I wore scarves and hats when out and about while I had no hair. After three days of baldness, I decided that at home I would go coverless. It was a shock to my sons, but they soon got used to it. I was well-known at their small, village Primary School because I had run the integral Playgroup for a few years and was always around the building. One day I thought it time to teach a lesson of my own – that a person is still the same whatever they look like, even suddenly hairless. A friend at the Playgroup drew a smiley face on the back of my bald head (the hardest thing she had ever done, she told me afterwards, which always brought a tear to our eyes and earned her another big hug whenever we reminisced about it). At picking up time, I waited in the playground with the other parents, chatting about this and that, my second smile hidden under my usual hat. Just as the school door opened, I whipped my hat off and turned around so the children could see the smiley face. The first reaction was shock, as you’d expect, and then they laughed with me. The parents laughed too. My sons were mortified with embarrassment, unfortunately, but recovered when I explained why I had done it. I didn’t always go hatless after that, but when I did the school children didn’t bother at all – I was just Holly.
(25/5/2005)
This constant nausea is horrible.
It brings me to my knees.
It’s just like being pregnant
So, I’ve done it all before –
I’ll have my babies at the end
But my guts are being gnawed.
My throat is tight and feels corrupt,
And threatens to explode
With vile regurgitation
Of my day’s intake of food.
It’s the constant threat of nausea,
Of vomiting, that wears –
It only lasts a few short days
But it brings me down to tears.
The baby blues,
My guard brought down,
Seven more months
To smile like a clown.
Seven more months of being brave –
But it’ll all be worth it when my life is saved.
This constant nausea is horrible,
It brings me to my knees.
It’s just like being pregnant,
Dear God, just stop it, please!
It’s just like being pregnant,
So, I’ve done it all before –
I’ll have my babies at the end
And that’s what I’m fighting for!
Bring on your treatments!
Bring on your sickness and your menopause!
I’ll have my babies at the end
And they are well worth suffering for!!!
My two wonderful sons were, and still are, the centre of my universe, and well worth enduring any hardship for. They are in their late twenties and look after their Mum now! Their enthusiasm for university life was infectious and, with their encouragement, I am taking my turn at uni and am having fun doing a degree myself, as a Mature Student. ‘You deserve it, Mum, for all you’ve been through.’ my Lads say. It tickles me to see the ticket inspectors squint at my 16-25 railcard (applicable for Mature Students), then look at this mid-fifties woman, and peer at the railcard again, just to make sure that it’s mine.
I promised a funny poem to finish. Having diah …diaree … diahori … the trots, was not fun, but plenty of laughter went on around it, just to help get through the couple of months when my gut was not at all happy with the toxic waste that was passing through it. Come to think about it, I wasn’t too happy about it either, but it saved my life! Humour, friendship, fun, food and poetry helped my family and me cope and, as with all the other stages of treatment responses, the side-effects passed, with a sigh of relief when I realised.
(14/8/2005 – WARNING! Do not read this poem if you are squeamish or offended by public reference to private bodily functions! It was inspired by an unfortunate side-effect of my chemotherapy treatment and follows a week of touring the ceramic seats of the Fens!)
I’ve got the trots!
I’ve got a mincing gait and, boy, I just can’t wait –
I’ve got the trots!
Clear from my path!
My guts are all a-surge, I’ve got a toilet urge –
I’ve got the trots!
I’m holding on!
I’m like a stream-lined goose, my stomach’s really loose –
I’ve got the trots!
It’s getting bad!
The pressure’s building really fast, I don’t think that I can last –
I’ve got the trots!
My stomach’s tight!
A taut barrage balloon, it seems to fill the room –
I’ve got the trots!
Open the gate!
A sprint across the grass, just move and let me pass –
I’ve got the trots!
Unlock the door!
At last I’m nearly there, dog! get off the bloomin’ stairs!
I’ve got the trots!
The last few yards!
I must clench all my bits or loose the evil squits –
I’ve got the trots!
Lift up the lid!
A dive and then a twist, oh heck! I nearly missed –
I’ve got the trots!
Oh, what release!
A blissful blast and sigh, I pierced the needle’s eye –
I’ve got the trots!
We’d like to thank Holly for sharing her poetry with us. If you’re looking for support around a breast cancer diagnosis, you’re not alone. Why not take a look at our Breast cancer forum?
If you’re going through chemotherapy, there’s lots of support available through Macmillan. If you’d like to talk or explore all your available support options, please remember you can contact our Support Line. Our support team are available 7 days a week, 8am-8pm on freephone 0808 808 00 00, email or live webchat.
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