Diary

I’m sorry you’ve lost your mother: they make it sound like I’ve left her in another room

February 15, 2020 by Mo Fanning 2 Comments

My mother has passed away. At 1.30 this morning, I woke. My husband, too. He trailed downstairs to her temporary bedroom, and I listened for the rattle of laboured breathing. Seconds later, he appeared and asked me to stay calm.

Storm Dennis is due in her part of the country any time now, already raindrops ricochet off the industrial-strength window shutters I always judged OTT. My mother lived for the seven-day weather forecast. To know her death coincided with headline-making winds would bring tickled pink pleasure.

First the 2am district nurses, and then a funeral director who carried out low-key choreographed manoeuvres under cover of night offered sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve lost your mother,’ they each said and made it sound like I’d left her in another room.

Loss doesn’t cover what I feel, even though this death came after two months of decline. Nursing her through the last four weeks of her illness was so intense, it’s overwhelming to suddenly find her gone.

What have I lost?

Until today, whenever something monumental happened in my life, I told her. For once, she was aware of the shifting sands before I was. Who do I tell stuff now?

Having lived with the soundtrack of her favourite radio phone-in shows, I’d expected to find relief in silence. The tumbling away of the ground was unexpected.

Without pain

Together with my wonderful, patient and caring husband, I brought my mother home, and obeyed a series of often irrational demands. A bigger television even though she was blind, new garden furniture and a 42-point master service of the car she hasn’t driven in a year.

She died without pain or anxiety (thanks to class A drugs) and with dignity (thanks to Damart thermal nightwear).

She was too fond of jam, French fancies, Lucozade and supermarket whisky. A bag of sugar with a bus pass. My mother had reached that glorious age where social norms no longer mattered. She’d cheerfully point out someone fat in a voice too loud, slam her front door in the face of anyone with a clipboard, and openly bought the Daily Mail.

I’ve been with the same man for 22 years. She still thought it a phase; like selfies, fidget-spinners and casual racism. It took until last year for her to accept that when answering the phone, it was no longer the law to recite her number.

All of this I have lost, but I will never lose the woman who somehow scraped together money to make up a shortfall in the deposit on our first house, who accepted my husband like another son and who spent her last days repeating how sorry she was not to found not at her best.

Nothing good comes from the death of someone adored, but the scale and bottomless pain I feel surely signals shared love. This I haven’t lost. This I never will.

Rest in peace, Pauline. I love you.

Death: Don’t try this at home

February 8, 2020 by Mo Fanning 3 Comments

My mother has been dying for 47 days and yet everyone who visits insists she looks better. They hover by her bedside and make impossible promises about things they’ll do together when she’s back on her feet.

Sometimes she manages a smile. Sometimes I do too. We both know we’re lying.

In the early years of the 20th century, 85% of people died in their home, surrounded by their family. Today, most find death in a hospital, care home or hospice. When I learned my mother wouldn’t get better, the hope for dying well became important. I made a deal with myself. She’ll end her days with dignity and in as much comfort as her catalogue of illness allows.

Most people get money in Christmas cards. Ten years ago, my mother slipped a copy of her living will into mine. This is what she wants.

Change

She’s always hated change. The Jif to Cif transition years were hell. Despite being confined to a hired hospital bed, she keeps control of the heating. I’m living in a sauna with scatter cushions.

On days when a nurse comes to change her dressings, my mother moans in pain. Afterwards, her mind melts, and sends her to wander through a mumbling, muttering maze as it mends.

Living out of a suitcase in a box room has taken its toll. Most mornings, the person staring back from the mirror looks like something the dog slept on. On the plus side, she’s now blind, and no longer knows for sure when I put on weight. It doesn’t stop the jibes.

My mother won’t get better. These are her final days and weeks. Each day, someone else dressed in blue arrives to remind us of this and hand over death-themed permission slips. When the time comes, a trained medical professional gets to dip into a stash of powerful drugs with a street value twice that of our car. Another signed document lets the same person pronounce her dead, freeing us of the need to ring around for a rare-as-hens-teeth out-of-hours doctor.

The unspoken rules of death

As this grim circus plays out , we ignore the elephant that’s not such in the room, as juggling balls and doing tricks for money.

An unspoken rule insists the living avoid saying the wrong thing to the dying. Like her visiting friends with their cards and flowers, those closet to my mother speak in positive terms, and never dare show frustration or exhaustion.

I sit next to her bed and drink tea, listening for any change in her breathing and trying to make sense of the words she cries as she drifts in and out of sleep. Late into the night, I watch TV and marvel at the self-confidence of the young and chiselled gods who populate reality shows.

Death forces you to reflect on what matters. I think it might be sex with 25-year-olds.

My mother how she should be remembered in death — Riding a camel in the 1980s, as you do

Testicular cancer: Few dinner parties pass without me tossing my scrotum into the conversation

February 6, 2020 by Mo Fanning 1 Comment

Last year, around 2,300 British men were told they had testicular cancer. That’s more than six every day. The number of cases diagnosed has doubled since the mid-1970s with 70 men dying each year from the disease. 1 in 250 men will get testicular cancer. With those numbers, it’s only a matter of time before Moonpig does a card.

Despite being one of the most treatable cancers, there remain many misconceptions around testicular cancer.

As a notorious homosexual and a big fan of manscaping, I was no stranger to self-examination and judged myself low risk. Testicular cancer mainly affects men aged between 15 and 49, with those aged under 35 the most vulnerable. I was 52: a time for allotments and escorted cruises down the Rhine.

Instead, I sat through a scrotal ultrasound (as much fun as it sounds), trying to read the expression on my consultant’s face. She sent me to sit in a different part of the hospital where another doctor came to tell me I had cancer. He explained the operation (in and out within the day, literally) and what might happen afterwards. I may be anxious, suffer mood swings and feel tired. I joked about how this suggested I must have had cancer since the age of fifteen. He didn’t laugh.

Have a feel

A study by cancer charity, Orchid discovered that 67% of British men don’t know how to check their balls. Once a month, have a feel. Ideally after a bath or shower. The most typical symptom is a painless swelling or small pea-sized lump in one ball. If one of your balls seems firmer, or looks different to the other, if there’s a dull ache or sharp pain or a sense of heaviness–even if not constant–you need to get yourself checked out. Most lumps or swellings are not a sign of cancer, but they should never be ignored.

And if it is cancer, trust me, the fear of becoming a uniballer is more daunting than the reality. Few dinner parties pass without me tossing my scrotum into the conversation. 80% of cases are cured completely, that rises to 98% if caught early.

Fast forward, and I’m about to mark two cancer-free years. Unless Mooonpig gets its act into gear, I won’t celebrate, but it’s a milestone I’m relieved to reach. Losing one ball is no big deal. I’ve been with the same bloke for over twenty years, so it was largely decorative. Most men of my age don’t so much have a scrotum as a windsock, so the nip and tuck of surgery has given me that much-sought-after youthful look.

Under surveillance

Men who’ve had testicular cancer once are 12 times more likely to get it again. The NHS has me covered. For ten years, I’ll be ‘under surveillance’ and not just by Cambridge Analytica. For the first few years, every three months, there’s a blood test, every six a scan. It sounds intrusive, but I see this as insurance. The rest of you bounce from one credit card bill to the next, not knowing what’s going on inside your bodies. I get a regular MoT.

My life changed after cancer. In a good way. As soon as I knew I wasn’t going to die right away, I returned to writing – after years of putting it off ‘until tomorrow’. I went from knowing next to nothing about the subject, to talking about testicular cancer to everyone. Online and in the office … anyone willing to listen. I summoned up the nerve to try stand-up comedy – turns out that’s even scarier than losing a ball.

Most people suffer poor mental health post-trauma and I can’t deny there are days when anxiety wins. I no longer drink and that leaves me with little in the way of release when the world grows big and scary. I’ve reached the age when the people from Saga Insurance stalk me with junk mail and Facebook suggests male incontinence pants. But last year, I got married to a man I met 22 years earlier. I told jokes on stage in front of 200 people and finished work on my next book.

Cancer doesn’t need to be an end. In almost every case, it’s the beginning.

Gloom: hope died, but it’s Christmas …

December 15, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

First up, forgive the gloom and somewhat downbeat nature of my news this month. I’ve not been well. If you need better news, skip to the end. I’m going to do the misery first. The idea being my three ghosts of Christmas are all Christmas present and at the end I’ll skip through the front door with cries of ‘God bless us everyone one’.

The first winter chill descended on the Fanning household last weekend. After days of complaining of backache and a bit of a cold, I found myself wrapped in a blanket with chattering teeth and a bucket. I want to call it flu, but these days people say this about the slightest sniffle. Over the course of a week, I threw up daily and had to be helped to a chair in Lidl. Lidl, I tell you, not even Waitrose. It didn’t help that Mr Fanning ran in my shadow, falling sick just 24 hours behind me. We sat in a grumpy bed, resenting each other and snapping at the slightest provocation. Having a dog to walk didn’t help. I woke near a bus stop with him licking my chin as concerned faces loomed to ask if they should call an ambulance. Dignity be gone.

I’m better now, thanks for asking.

And this came after a week of feeling like the world was playing a cruel trick. For almost a year, Mother Fanning has suffered with AMD and needs injections in one eye. Being a typical Fanning, she hates the idea and needs a general anaesthetic to cope. At her advanced age, this knocks her around so the doctors ration what should be a monthly treatment. Guess what. She’s gone blind, and not just in the eye that they now tell us is ulcerated beyond repair. The hurt of seeing someone you once thought of as a fighter struggle to even find her way from one room to another is enormous. Worse yet is the bond of hope she makes with me it will get better. Finding the right time to break away and head back to Brighton after putting in place care was close on impossible and I’m still not sure we did the right thing.

And finally, the triple gloom whammy. In 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union. A decision I was sure we would overturn. Last week, all hope died. The election result forced me to accept that the vote wasn’t a one-off choice made on the back of misinformation. Britain wants to Brexit. For three and a half years, there’s been a small sign in the window of my neighbour, an elderly French woman who long since scored a British passport. A laminated sheet of A4 paper on which she printed ‘I demand a second vote on the terms of Brexit’. Nothing more. It never moved from the window through all the turmoil and government paralysis. She added no other poster, badge or proclamation, just this simple demand. On Friday morning, it vanished, and that caught in my throat more than any other image from that dreadful dark morning.

Right, I’m done with the gloom

Christmas lurks around the corner, and much as I’ve sulked in bed, insisting I’m cancelling the turkey, not getting a tree and looking into the return policy for a range of online stores, I’ve loosened the Scrooge switch today and we’re heading for a garden centre to buy a tree. Gloom be gone!

Look out for my many postings where I moan about needle drop, and remember, this is a sign of healing. If that’s all I can find to moan about, the Fanning life is getting better.

My short story collection, ‘Five Gold Rings‘ is the perfect companion for this time of the year – and it’s remarkably cheerful and upbeat in parts (there are dead bodies, but only what you might expect). It’s FREE for Kindle for the next week (starting late on the 15th and running for five days).

If you’re alone this Christmas

Sarah Millican does something wonderful at this time of year. The #joinin campaign is for anyone who needs to chat. Sarah encourages people to use the hashtag and link with one another so as not to feel lonely. People from around the world have already tweeted with their experiences.

“The main rule is to be kind. We’re all here for each other.”

Ban the office party – My first act as leader

September 18, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

This week, I’ve spent more time than feels right researching the Peaky Blinders look. If I want to go full Peaky, I need to trawl charity shops for a frusty coat and gain a love of senseless violence.

Why does this matter?

Because my employer has requested the pleasure of my company at a two-day conference. The evening between the days is Peaky Blinder themed. An office party. We’ll have such fun. (Please apply sarcastic inner voice to that last sentence). The minimum dress code specifies a flat cap.

One of my first acts as leader will be to ban ‘enforced work social events’ – or as they are sometimes whimsically known, office parties.

I’m no killjoy. Despite being largely sober these days, I’ll happily go for a drink after work. But I choose who I drink with. The organisation of any works social event where absence is deemed an act of party pooping should be punishable by a large fine and community service. Add an enforced theme to the office party, and I’ll up the punishment to life imprisonment or a spell ‘on the wall’.

What is work, anyway?

Nobody works because they want to. If they did, what we do between clocking on and off wouldn’t be called ‘work‘. We’d find some other term like ‘fun‘ or ‘happiness‘ or ‘the less soul-crushing part of the day between being jolted awake and drinking yourself to sleep‘.

Many of us spend our working hours in open-plan hangers, exposed to communicable diseases and forced to mix with fellow wage slaves. We form pacts with anyone who displays similar signs of horror. These are ‘work friends‘. Some become real friends. Most remain the kind of person you cross the street to avoid during out-of-office hours.

For me, being made to spend three (or more) unpaid hours with such awful people ranks alongside the 8am root canal on the morning of my San Francisco wedding.

It’s not just the office party that needs to go. I will also outlaw ‘Leaving drinks’. Why go to a packed pub to celebrate someone’s flock freedom? Whatever you wrote in the big card someone failed to hide as it did the rounds of the office, you know you’ll never see Bob from Accounts again. He did a lovely little speech about how he’s sad to go and it’s the people not the place he’ll miss. Bob even emailed asking you fabulous peeps to stay in touch. By Monday morning, we’ll struggle to remember his name.

Why put your liver through it? Chances are you’ll end up talking shop with someone you hate. You’re not being paid. Go home.

The office party goes big

The biggest crime is the Office Christmas Party (OCP). Much as those who hold the company purse strings like to insist the OCP is a massive perk, everyone knows better. It’s a production-line dinner with limited caustic wine and a chance to watch Sonia from Sales snog her manager. You’ll find yourself locked in the basement of a Premier Inn while a DJ plays ‘Last Christmas’. At some point, you’ll hear the words ‘Come on, dance. You don’t look like you’re having fun’. Because you’re not.

My first act as leader will bring an immediate end to office parties.

But I’m not a total ogre. I’ll allow in-hours office kitchen bitching. I may even bend the rules for a ‘team’ lunch, but all other enforced socialisation with people you’d cheerfully throw from a very high window must stop.

In the words of Mumsnet, am I being unreasonable?