Cancer

Grief: A visit to the museum

June 2, 2020 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

My mother died in February. At the time, the virus that now traps us in our homes was little more than a rumble. Second or third story on the news, rendered insignificant by reports of heavy rain or Boris Johnson’s latest infidelity. We were lucky in many ways. We had the funeral she planned, she left us surrounded by the people she loved. For a week or two, I lingered and tried to turn her silent house back into a home, finally admitting defeat and driving back to Brighton.

Then came lock-down.

Grief cannot be neatly portioned into two weeks or one month. It comes and goes.

Mine was placed on hold.

This weekend, I’ll return to the Midlands – with written police permission – to turn her museum into something new. I’ll buy three rolls of bin bags and fill them with precious photographs, ornaments, perfumes, Tupperware boxes, handbags and headscarves.

In the days and weeks that carried us through to her passing away, my temper often frayed. I grew frustrated and angry not just at her illness, but at those around me trying to help. If a cup found its way into the wrong cupboard or someone dared vacuum a rug, I lashed out. Listening for any unexpected sounds, I lay awake, knowing that calling 999 was no longer an option. All my go-to numbers were mobile phones, people trained to deal with death.

I’m unsure how seeing her home again will change me. It would be easy to settle back to the grieving process.

I know what she’d rather happened, and plan to do everything in my power to bring life back to a too-long empty house.

Getting help

Grief is a natural response to losing someone you care about. There’s no right or wrong way to grieve. Everyone’s experiences of grief are individual. The important thing is to do what feels right for you. I would have struggled without the support of Marie Curie nurses. In the memory of my mother, we asked that there be no flowers at her funeral, rather donation to the organisation.

Read: Grieving in your own way

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 1 Comment

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.

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.

Happy cancer-versary to me

February 22, 2019 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Exactly one year ago, a well-spoken doctor snapped rubber gloves, handed me a tissue and explained how she’d been without power since early morning. It’s a nightmare making porridge when you’ve only a camping stove and a billycan, apparently. She also said I had cancer. Determined to give this bombshell time to process, I focussed my attention on her domestic woes.

Thirty minutes later, a nurse weighed and measured me and asked if I was free on Wednesday. For surgery. I felt relief.

Ten days earlier, I went to see my GP. Or rather a locum. From Spain. A guy I’ve never seen again.

He put me on a ‘two-week fast track’.

‘Does that mean I have cancer?’ I said.

‘You have symptoms.’

‘Cancer symptoms?’

‘It could be many things.’

Doctors talk like politicians when it comes to straight answers.

When the rubber glove porridge lady admitted I had an actual disease, she handed me a way to cope. I no longer had ‘symptoms’. Rather than fall apart, I snapped into coping mode. My brain needed to understand everything. I filed away complex information and memorised dates. I left the worry and the fear to my partner. He let me be selfish.

One year later

In the year since surgery, chemotherapy, recovery and surveillance, I’ve had good and bad weeks. Sometimes, I focus only on survival. But there are darker days mired in ‘why me’.

I’ve spoken to others with lives rebooted by this horrible disease and their story is the same. ‘You’ve got cancer’ isn’t the end-it-all bombshell. The words signal that your life without cancer is over. Now is the time to get well. You don’t battle or fight. You take medicine and wait. There’s a lot of waiting.

Moving on is a process of learning to say no, of putting yourself first. And that’s hard because everybody wants to help. Rarely do we face cancer truly alone.

If you have doubts or fears, see a doctor now. If you’re not checking yourself over, start today.

The sooner you know, the sooner it’s over.The sooner you get on with life.

That was the year that was

December 24, 2018 by Mo Fanning Leave a Comment

Around about this time last year, I decided to scratch a personal itch – and that does indeed sound like something best discussed with a doctor.

2018 was to be different. It would be my year of saying yes.

I reckoned without my Valentine’s Day discovery. Chances are, I’m not the first to find something untoward about a scrotum whilst in the Premier Inn, Warrington. It kicked off a roller-coaster month confirming how important it is to defend the NHS. Two weeks after calling my GP and trying to describe my malformed testes, someone wheeled me into an operating theatre. Three weeks later, I experienced my first session of chemotherapy. Nine months later, I’m in recovery. And – frankly – boring the arse off anyone who’ll listen about how important it is to self examine. Be it breasts or balls, you’ll save yourself an awful lot of nastiness by spending a few minutes every few weeks checking for lumps, bumps and unwelcome hardness.

I reckoned without finding myself unable to write another word of a book I hoped to see on many a Christmas wish list by now. I’d managed a first draft – enough to elicit a decent structural edit, but that was where I stopped. Three or four attempts to resurrect the flow failed, but I know I’m not done with the story. The focus has changed. It feels darker and that calls for a different approach. 2019 will be my year of writing. ‘The Toast of Brighton’ will appear.

I reckoned without Jill Edwards and a bunch of people I now consider friends. Twelve stand-up comedy classes opened my eyes to a whole new world. Standing on stage in front of over 200 people was a rush. When they laughed … and even clapped … it felt incredible to talk about Stourbridge, my mother and feeling like the wide-headed square peg in a hipster round hole. After much hesitation, I signed up up for Jill’s ‘advanced workshops’. I’ve met some wonderful people. If you ever think of doing this, don’t think twice.

I reckoned without falling back in love with New York. After years of doing a job that involved too much travel, I decided to avoid airports. The odd trip home to Amsterdam, sure, but that would be it. And then this year, Mr Fanning suggested we bite the bullet and fly to New York. I’d forgotten how much I love the place. How the atmosphere is so very different to that in any European city. People don’t stare only at smart phones. They walk and talk. The streets are dirty enough to feel real. It makes no concession to tourists. Even in these troubled times of Trump, New York radiates hope. Ten years ago, I’d pack a bag and move there.