Onwards and Upwards

'Onwards and Upwards' was my grammar school's motto in London. Camden School for Girls. Established by the 19th century education pioneer Frances Mary Buss, it was an amazing place with a very strong feminist tradition.  We were told we can do anything we want, BECAUSE WE ARE WOMEN. Of course reality was somewhat different. Eight of us wanted to be doctors, but only one made it. You guessed - she came from a family of Old Boys at the medical school she attended. (I forget which, and I understand she was an outstanding doctor, who unfortunately passed away a number of years ago.) Nevertheless, I think you can tell a Camden Girl if you have met one. Most of us are forthright, creative, interesting and involved with our communities.

Why am I reminiscing about Camden? Maybe because today is a beautiful, in fact balmy, spring day. My garden is blooming, thanks to the minimal effort I put in - with some help from friends - to tame the jungle I inherited when I moved in here last year.

Gardening is very important to me. I am definitely NOT a great gardener. Nevertheless, I love to putter and dig the earth. Maybe it reminds me of my childhood when I was sent off to Felsőgöd to stay with my aunt Giza and uncle Ernő Fazekas for the summer. In those post-war years (we are talking 1950-1954) the quaint town of today was a third world village. The roads were damped down earth, with geese monopolising the centre. There was no electricity or running water. The well in the yard served our water needs and acted as the refrigerator as well.

Each house had a patch of land – maybe half an acre, perhaps more – where my uncle had at least 8-10 fruit trees, and he cultivated all of the fruits and vegetables the family needed: 8 varieties of Hungarian peppers, apples, pears, strawberries, rasberries, potatoes, lettuce, etc, etc. There was a mouser cat, whose litters were carefully drowned in the big bucket, and chicken for fresh eggs. I don't know if aunt Giza actually killed the chicken. It was probably uncle Ernő who had to do it. He worked from dawn to dusk as aunt Giza's favourite phrase to him was: Can you please cut some wood while you are having a break? Indeed, everything was done with wood – cooking and heating. So, uncle was always very busy. In the first couple of years of my stay I played with the village kids. We stole fruit from the neighbours, took the animals grazing in the communal farm lands around the village, and helped with the harvest. All this stopped in the third year of my summer visits. Evidently, it became known that we were Jewish and I was not welcome in some homes anymore. That split the village. The old folk took pity on me and invited me in to help myself to their fruit. This made me a traitor in the eyes of the other kids, which made my life confusing and very solitary. In the end, I spent most of my time helping uncle Ernő with the garden, cultivating my own veggies and playing pretend herding when I was done. No wonder I refused to be sent there after I turned 10.

Wow, I haven't thought about  Felsőgöd in decades. Maybe it's this cancer. Tunde has been urging me to write my memoir for years and now I find that I am beginning to worry that I may have left it too late. What if I don't have another 10 years? Indeed, what if?

So, back to the present. As I said, today is a beautiful day. My nose has stopped bleeding and my head is clear for hours at a time. I 'feel' energetic, but when I start moving, I tire easily. For the past couple of days I've been busy slowly cleaning my apartment, washing clothes and bedding and doing the everyday things that have been left undone for a week. All this very slowly, with long periods of TV watching, computer games, answering emails and checking Facebook. I guess that's what hip Camden School For Girls grandmas do when they tune out from having to deal with nasty nasty Big C and its' medications side effects. I can see the light at the end of this tunnel, and so I fall back on the old school motto: Onwards and Upwards.

Doing the Limbo dance

I just posted something I wrote earlier this year. Why now? Because I forgot to post it and things have been pretty hectic since then.

Yes, things have progressed pretty well so far this year.

First of all, I am back at my temping job on a regular basis, although I have still not managed a full six hour shift.  I do phone interviewing for the NSW government's Population Health Survey. I've been doing it for 10 years now. It has very flexible hours and the people are great. It's an interesting mix of students, professionals between jobs or in the throws of career change, housewives with small children and grandmothers with various health issues like me. Originally I started to work here when I was working on my never-to-be-completed documentary, just to make sure that I have some income coming in while I spend all my money on research and development and writing a sci-fi screenplay. When the documentary fell through, and the screenplay got only a 2.5 star from a Hollywood reader, I continued 'until I re-establish' my freelance writing business. Well, the proverbial sh...t hit the fan with my first cancer encounter in 2006. I stopped working and the lovely people at NSW Health received me with open arms when I returned a year and a half later. Their support and the knowledge that I can go back any time, has been really helpful in not losing my link to the real world during all my travails. So, I am back. I try to work three 5 hour shifts a week, but I don't always make it, but every bit helps.

And while we are on the job front, I also have a freelance editing assignment, so I think I can safely say that I am back in the saddle as far as work is concerned.

On the health front, I am still madly doing my brain training exercises and I am happy to report that, according to Lumosity, I am in the 99th percentile in brain performance for my age group, so it seems that my brain is back from the chemo fog for good.

On the not too optimistic front, it seems that, while the cancer is improving - meaning that the abnormal level of the cancer marker in the blood is lower - it has not gone back to normal, and my understanding now is that the doctors are not expecting it to go back to normal. I got this not from the Professor, but his stand-in during my last visit, when the Prof was incommunicado due to a knee replacement.  I am going to see him in two weeks, when I will double check. In any case, the current prognosis seems to be that the Exemestane is controlling the cancer for now. If it stops doing that, then I will have to have more chemotherapy. And this on and off chemo may be for the rest of my life, which can be anyone's guess how long. As I've said somewhere before, I am told that people live like this for decades. And can I get the abdominal port out please? No! Apparently that can stay in for more than a decade also, and while it was easy to put in, it may be tricky to take out.  I'll have to check that one too. Having talked with the new oncologist, I am not sure whether they want me to keep it in because it's complicated to take out, or because they expect me to have more ascites down the line. Neither possibility is very comforting.

In fact, this whole bloody cancer 'journey' (I hate that expression - a journey is a joy, this is a nightmare) is not very comfortable. Unfortunately, it looks like it isn't going away, so a couple of months ago I decided to do some things differently to be able to cope. As a result, I enrolled myself to get help for my post traumatic stress disorder that I had acquired way back when, as a child refugee and other various places. The reason being that I want to clear my head from past garbage to be able to focus on dealing with the cancer in the future. Three weeks ago I started the evaluation process with STARTTS, so I am in the best hands for both my physical and mental health. It's a pretty cool feeling, I must say, and feel I can dance the limbo for as long as it takes (remind me I said this when I start complaining again!)