Mo Fanning - British writer and comic

Cancer

2020: That was the year that was

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2020 - a view from my writing room
A view from my writing room

So, how’s about that 2020, then? It’s been a LONG twelve months. I’m going to avoid the elephant doing tricks on a beach ball in the corner of my writing room and stick to events non-Covid.

Why am I even bothering to tell you this? Because 2020 is a year I want to file away and not always for the worst of reasons – though let’s start with that. Things can only get better.

New Year’s Eve 2019 brought a phone call from The Royal Sussex Hospital for Mr Fanning. Something about how his previous test results somehow ‘got lost’, and would he come in urgently as the doctors spotted precancerous cells in his throat. If ever there came a clue as to the year that would follow… He’s now on every kind of medicine and in a ‘wait and worry’ non-critical state, but the fear sits in my mind, waiting to pounce.

A week earlier another hospital had called to say they’d admitted my mother. But not to fret, she’d be fine. On 15 February, my world suffered a huge blow as she passed away. On the bright side, she got great palliative care once free of the undignified horrors inflicted by Russells Hall Hospital; something she would never have received if Covid moved faster.

My regular cancer check-ups continued, and the powers that be decided my likely benign brain tumour could stay as it is. I’m still not sure I’ve dealt with this.

Big Girl Small Town - 2020 Book of the Year2020 Reading

Reading remained a constant pleasure. I devoured some great books in 2020. Jane Fallon always features on my year-end list. ‘Queen Bee’ was no exception. I got through it in days and revisited the story twice more. Kirsten Johnson’s ‘Guts’ turned into a gripping read and helped me sort out the mind of the lead character in my next novel. Richard Osman delighted me with ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ and if you haven’t already dipped your toe, can I recommend Lesley Manville’s Audible reading. A special mention for ‘The Wrong Knickers’ by Bryony Gordon and my absolute novel of the year (if not decade) ‘Big Girl, Small Town’ by Michelle Gallen.

2020 Writing

I Zoomed my way into two writing workshops this year. One from sitcom supremo Bennett Arron and the other my God of Comedy Logan Murray. I made online friends with some brilliant writers from the latter, and although I’ve been incredibly lazy about staying in touch, I plan to do more on that front. Their talent leaves me in awe.

Rebuilding Alexandra SmallRebuilding Alexandra Small by Mo Fanning finally came together after years of dithering under different titles and my putting writing off until my head was ready. I’m still not sure it is, but I need to move on. So many new ideas are clamouring for air. I might do a Kate Bush and stun you with two in one year in 2021. Though I probably won’t. Don’t hold your breath. It’s bad for you.

Standup took a backseat and is likely to remain thus. With Tier 4 looking set to settle awhile, pubs and clubs are shut, and as a novice, the online world provides nothing useful in the way of feedback. You can’t feel how well a joke lands in a virtual comedy show, given the audience are mostly other comics waiting to do their bit. I haven’t closed the door on this forever and am recording jokes for future use, but I know that if I revive things, it has to be a cold start. I must treat stand-up comedy like I’m a total newcomer with zero stage experience if I’m to get this right.

2020 Vision

And that’s been my year. I’ve moved from Brighton to the Black Country, though not fully. I gained a garden and a dedicated writing room. All my books came out in new covers and (to my surprise) sold well despite their age. Coming soon ‘Rebuilding Alexandra Small’ and if you’re up for reading advance chapters and special offers, please join my mailing list.

The first TEN people to sign up will be sent a Kindle version of ‘The Armchair Bride’ absolutely FREE.

Rebuilding Alexandra Small will be published in 2021. The Armchair Bride is now available now from all good websites and bookstores. If you’d like to support my work, consider using Patreon.

Grief: A visit to the museum

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My Mother

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.

Marie CurieGetting 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

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Farewell Mother

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

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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.

How to check for Testicular Cancer
How to check for Testicular Cancer

Happy cancer-versary to me

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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.

 

How to check for Testicular Cancer
How to check for Testicular Cancer