Lifesaving Poems: Julia Darling's 'Chemotherapy' vs 'Psalm 102'

I was astonished to find in an old diary today that by 8 March 2006, less than one month after I was diagnosed with cancer, I had already been given two infusions of chemotherapy. The speed of the cycles of my particular treatment was due to my successful volunteering to take part in a randomised control trial testing the efficacy of a cycle of 14 days against 21 days, or, in the jargon, 'CHOP-R 14 vs 21'.

It is odd what you remember. The twenty tiny cherry-red pills I had to swallow with milk during for five days after each infusion. (These were steroids. They were deeply un-fun, let me tell you). The Piriton chaser injection just ahead of the main infusion, 'to send you away with the fairies, my lover', as one nurse put it. She wasn't wrong. 

Most of all I remember the swathes of bright blue clothing every nurse had to wrap themselves in each time they began the course of injections. When I asked why this was necessary I was told it was because the chemicals were so poisonous they would burn through ordinary clothing if spilt. 'And to clean it up we would have to shut the whole ward down. For a day.'

Mostly I looked forward to being away with the fairies.

I had come across Julia Darling's marvellous poem 'Chemotherapy' nearly a year before I fully understood what she was talking about. There is not much I need to add to it, except to say I think 'the smallest things are gifts' sums up for me the entire universe of pain, gratitude, suffering, relief, anxiety and humour which the word 'cancer' registers in me.

Chemotherapy

 

I did not imagine being bald

at forty four. I didn’t have a plan.

Perhaps a scar or two from growing old,

hot flushes. I’d sit fluttering a fan.

 

But I am bald, and hardly ever walk

by day, I’m the invalid of these rooms.

stirring soups, awake in the half dark,

not answering the phone when it rings.

 

I never thought that life could get this small,

that I would care so much about a cup,

the taste of tea, the texture of a shawl,

and whether or not I should get up.

 

I’m not unhappy. I have learnt to drift

and sip. The smallest things are gifts.

 

from Sudden Collapses in Public Places  (Arc, 2003)

 

 

I did not come across Psalm 102 ('A prayer of an afflicted man. When he is faint and pours out his lament before the Lord') until some after my treatment had ended. Again, I do not think it needs much explication. My first reaction to it was -how did the psalmist know how to describe the bodily reaction to chemotherapy thousands of years before it was invented? 

 

Psalm 102

 

Hear my prayer, O Lord;

            let my cry for help come to you.

Do not hide your face from me

            when I am in distress.

Turn your ear to me;

            when I call, answer me quickly.

 

For my days vanish like smoke;

            my bones burn like glowing embers.

My heart is blighted and withered like grass;

            I forget to eat my food.

Because of my loud groaning

            I am reduced to skin and bones.

I am like a desert owl,

like an owl among the ruins.

I lie awake; I have become

            like a bird alone on a housetop.

 

(1-7)

 

Lifesaving Poems

On waiting to be diagnosed with cancer

Six years ago I began writing the journal which has become my forthcoming memoir of my experience of cancer. It is called Love for Now and will be published by Impress Books in September.

By this time in February, 2006 I had been in hospital three times, had had two ultrasound scans on different parts of my body, plus a CT scan. As I left the Radiography department after the latter I was informed that it would take two weeks to learn of the results. Twenty four hours later the phone rang. It was my GP, inviting me to see him that morning.

A day afterwards I underwent a biopsy under X-ray conditions. The pain I had woken up with on New Year's Day was on my side but the so-called 'abonormality' in my body could only be reached through my back. I was told it would take two weeks to find out my results, but that if I wanted to I could ring them on Friday afternoon in case they got them done before the weekend.

'At what point did you know?' my friends asked me, when I told them the news of my formal diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. The truth is I knew when I went to see my GP. That was the first time the possibility of Lymphoma was discussed. But it was not his use of the word (I only knew it meant 'bad') which frightened me, it was his eyes, a tiny flicker, not of doubt, but recognition.

Looking back at it now I think I knew even earlier in the process. It was another man's eyes, the radiographer who conducted my first ultrasound scan, which alerted me to the seriousness of my situation.

Long before he used the word 'abnormality' I saw them darting backwards and forwards with a kind of rapt wonderment in front of the screen (which I could not see) as his hand pushed the sensor around, not on my side, where I hurt, but on the lower right of my tummy, which felt fine.

Signed off temporarily from work so I could undergo these tests, I absolutely knew I would not be returning for a long time. Friends and colleagues, none of them doctors, reassured me with the mantra that it was 'probably nothing' and that the mass inside me was most likely a polyp, filled with liquid. 

The friends I looked forward speaking to the most were those who gave me advice in the forms of specific questions to ask or actions I could take, the best of which was to invest in a box-set of the American sitcom of my choice ASAP.

 

Tumour

 

You gave me time to notice –

apple blossom, hand movements,

the light taking leave of rooms.

I would like to claim

new attention to my children

but the truth is they grew up

whether I watched them or not.

Mostly I slept.

You began in midsummer.

It took till February to find you.

By then all I knew were symptoms:

insomnia, night sweats, a cough I could not shake off.

Because of you I revisited old Lps –

I did not want to die

not having fried onions to Grover,

made bubbles to This Mortal Coil.

The script writers of Frasier

helped me recover from you,

plus condensed milk and broccoli –

though not at the same time.

Eventually I drank coffee again.

You reacquainted me with my guilt –

the way I glared at S

after she’d poured out her heart

in the autumn of endless nights

with nothing but the wind for company.

I chose songs, having you,

and invented ceremonies by rivers.

(But I found no poetry in you.)

 

You saved me from talking about house prices.

You obliterated my craving for alcohol.

I would say I am grateful

but am not ready for that, just yet.

 

 

from Riddance (Worple Press, 2012)

 

 

In memory of Jorn Cann

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I was deeply saddened to hear ten days ago of the death of Jorn Cann, the ward doctor in the haematology unit where I was treated for lymphoma. He was a rare human being, and even rarer doctor: charming and objectionable, foul-mouthed yet compassionate. Nobody who met him -you usually heard him approaching before you actually saw him- will forget him. He was proof that Arsenal fans can have a sense of humour, and live testament to the hope of a cure for everyone he treated. The world is a smaller and much quieter place without him today.

 

Blood

in memory of Jörn Cann

 

 

The nurse announces the canula.

One Sharp scratch and you’re there,

 

vial after ochre vial,

unstoppable.

 

Cousin to tawny port

your sheen’s a glossy russet.

 

You do not gush, you seep,

but would soak

 

the world

if you could.

 

You’re not much to look at:

but, spun, you separate –

 

lymph, plasma

and marrow, the very core

 

of us, telling everything.

Famously salty

 

to the taste, you seem stable as mercury.

If only.

 

from Riddance (Worple, 2012)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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