Ep.43: The art of gingerbread

A year ago today I found the lump in my left breast.  The 14th December 2019.  Strange how your world can spin on one split second, a fraction of a point in time.  One moment I was one person, the next, another.  Just like that.  Like any moment which causes a seismic shift, a permanent jerk, lift and displacement of your tectonic plates, it remains crisp, sharp-edged and in focus. 

Just back from a cold December cycle and needing to warm up I jumped in the shower.  I can see myself through the glass, head tilted back into the spray, heat turned up as high as possible – high enough for David to complain when he gets in afterwards.  Sometimes I’m so cold after a winter cycle I get chilblains and my feet go bright pink then burn and itch but not on this day.  On this day I shampoo my hair then use the excess suds to soap up under my arms then down the left side of my body. I’m not thinking about anything in particular, drifting back over the club ride perhaps, forwards to the arrival of my parents and brother later the next week for Christmas, contemplating when and whether I’ll have the energy to do battle with the mountains of gingerbread required to make a house. In a nostalgic nod to my gran who made one each Christmas, I started the habit a few years back and now B says it’s her favourite festive tradition. I’m a sucker for this stuff, even though I rarely have the time and the kitchen turns blue with the effort. I’ve finally got to grips with the need to constantly warm the gingerbread to make it soft enough to roll, to place the softened dough between sheets of greaseproof paper to stop it sticking, I know to cut the bread for a second time against the template when it’s just out of the oven so the edges are sharp and line up, I’ve realised that only royal icing will set hard enough to glue the walls and roof fast, and that a hairdryer will help it go off sooner.  I even make stained glass boiled sweet windows. As with most things I’ve taken the idea and run with it, probably a pace or two too far.   I will be mentally writing a shopping list for ingredients along with thinking what to make myself for Christmas Dinner as the lone vegetarian, a decision I always find tedious.

All this is drifting through my mind as i wash, methodically, unthinkingly, routinely and then there it is. That’s the moment everything changes, just there, see it.  The first time I brush past it, it’s hardly there, just a hint of something, a suggestion, a glance, but as I watch I can see me pause, just fractionally, like I’ve snagged my hand on something.  And in a way I have, I’ve snagged it on a sense, a sense that all is not right.  It actually didn’t feel like a lump more like running your hand over bubble wrap.  Pressing into it, it felt bruised, tender.  I carry on washing the rest of my body but my mind and hand keep returning to the left side of my left breast, thoughts of gingerbread and Christmas displaced by the disquiet that rises up through my body. 

And if I carry on watching through the steam I’ll see that even as I stood in the shower, even before we knew anything of what was to come, I cried, tears diluted by the water overhead.  I think I knew, even then.  I called David into the bathroom, asked him if he could feel what I was feeling, he said he could. 

I’d stepped into that shower one person, I stepped out another.

‘How lucky you found it’, the response of friends and family, generally when they’re scratching around to find something positive to say, but I’m still wrong footed by the sense that something so life changingly shit can be associated with luck.  Everything which followed was a consequence of that luck.  Luck had me lurch from appointment to terrifying appointment, silently grinding my teeth with fear, luck had my breast removed and my body re-arranged, luck permanently scarred me inside and out, mind and body and now that luck leaves me with a residue of constantly wondering if or when its coming back.

But I can’t possibly regret finding that lump, can I?   Sometimes.  I think the grief for the loss of the before cancer me runs so deep I can’t help but wish I could pause at that precise moment everything changed.  Take stock.  Teeter. Savour the sweet taste of innocence and carefree invulnerability for just a little while longer. It’s not that I wish that I hadn’t found it, that would be daft, but I still long, passionately, not to have got cancer at all.  I don’t think that feeling will ever go away, not really, the feeling of wanting to crank back the clock but then isn’t that the same for all of life. 

I do feel lucky though.  Not because of that moment in the shower but because of how that moment has shone a spotlight on everything I have beyond and besides having had cancer.  I’m not sure it’s a life constructed out of luck, but I do feel lucky to be alive and well enough to appreciate just what I have.

So here I am, on the 14th December 2020, a year down the line, contemplating my brother arriving later next week for the festive break, tutting over what I should eat on Christmas Day as the lone vegetarian and mentally writing a shopping list for gingerbread...and maybe just a touch surprised that recalling that moment life changed beyond all imagining still brings me to tears when in some respects so little has changed at all.