New Start

2/8/11

I wanted to say nothing in this new blog about cancer – but that seems impossible.
I got the results of my last blood test on Monday 25th at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital. That was after a dash from Chelsea & Westminster where they are planning to treat the Carpal Tunnel problem in my worn out left hand – I am falling apart, bits are decaying fast!
The doctor at Charlotte’s was very pally. The result was fine, but she said that although following a good diet will help you to avoid cancer in the first place, it can’t stop an old one coming back. So that area of control I had has gone. Eating good food and trying to help myself with every mouthful had become my hobby but now that is over.
She also said that the test itself, the CA125 is not reliable – and we all cling to that for hope. Felt very deflated and after that rather depressed.
Despite the queue of other clients waiting, she wanted to spend time with me, and asked about how I feel psychologically. I didn’t feel like going into it at that moment but I feel like a child after a bad dream, afraid to sleep again. Someone who has had a bad burglary and now wants to move away and forget it but can’t.
On top of this I’ve got that middle aged thing, feeling that my life has gone all wrong. This going wrong did start very early, at the moment I was conceived in fact, somewhere in Wales.
My mother who was 18 and unmarried seemed to think she could get away with going on holiday with an older man with a flash car, and come out of it virgin pure. She couldn’t and when she found she was pregnant she went into a kind of wild hysterical melt-down, refusing food but taking to drink and cigarettes.
Not long after I was born very small and shrivelled, she gave me away. When I met her she told me she had regretted it, but only later. After handing me over she put it out of her mind but six months later she was coming home on the bus from her job in a Dinky toy factory in Charlton, when she suddenly realised that she’d got rid of me and collapsed.
When you adopt a child the mother can change her mind up to six months – she was hit by realisation just after that date passed. Her mind allowed her to do it by blotting it out until it was effectively too late.
After that I was dead to her though I think, that was the moment I died for her. When I appeared in adult life it was like a nuisance ghost returning, or a poltergeist even, as I messed up her tranquil life for awhile.
My original London family had photos taken of me before I was adopted, all done up in fine white linen as if I was being laid out for burial. She gave me those photos. My adoptive mother and I had never seen pictures of me when I was that young. How perplexed and sad I looked, and I still am.
I've got to shake this off - buck up, pull my socks up, get on with it, as God said to Samuel, "Fill thy horn with oil, and go!"