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I found the above photo on James Worrad’s blog (click on the photo to visit). This is utterly and endearingly brilliant.

Sir Terry Pratchett is an example of someone who developed his talent and used it to leave his part of the world better than he found it.

Obviously Sir Terry’s books succeeded because they are so entertaining. But they are so entertaining because the spirit of the man himself is in all of them––and his spirit had a profound love for humankind, warts and all. If that weren’t true, we wouldn’t be seeing this outpouring of grief.

There is one privilege we all get and it is this: life. What are you doing with yours? No one expects you to cure cancer or Alzheimer’s or bring peace to the Middle East; if you can, great, please do so (especially the cancer part). 

But if you’re like the rest of us––and if you’re readng this, you almost certainly are––you can honour Sir Terry’s memory by doing what you can to leave your little corner of the world better than you found it, with whatever your particular gifts may be––writing, art, dance, understanding, teaching, organising, nurturing, healing, exploring. And, always, loving.

Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about a shirt for myself.

GIBSON’S BUSY

STERLING SAID FUCK OFF

SHIRLEY’S BOOKED TILL 2050

I’M PAT CADIGAN––DEAL WITH IT

I got a little crazy even for me yesterday during chemo. I decided to have a Chemo Dance Party.

First, I did a little pole dancing:

Then I moved on to the Twist:

Chemo, Chemo––Cha-Cha-Cha!

Followed by the Bump–�

Mambo Italiiano–�

“All you Calabrese do the Mambo like-a crazy…�

It’s Just A Jump To The Left, And Then A Step To the Right–�

Put Your Hands On Your Hips And Bring Your Knees In Tight–�

Hey, Macarena!

And partway through this post, the edit-photo utility fell over and died––probably overwhelmed by Dance Party Excess––so the last photos are a bit in-your-face large. No, don’t explain how I can fix it, you’ll only confuse me. Software baffles me. I’m a hardware girl––I can build a pc but I know just enough to tell you whether you have a hardware problem or a software problem. If it’s a software problem, I can’t help you.

And those photos sure are in-your-face large. I hope they haven’t sent anyone running into the streets screaming in terror. Because that’s a whole lot of cancer patient filling up the screen. I’ve never been this heavy in my life.

This was me some twenty-odd years ago, at a science-fiction convention in Texas::

which, at my age, is not that long ago. I had hopes of preserving that jawline. Well, we all get older and sometimes the things that happen to the body are things we have no control over––no matter what you’re told by all those magazine articles and skinny young people who think “I’d never let myself go like that.�

Yeah, I’m a little defensive about being heavy. I was too heavy before I developed cancer and the form my cancer took made me even heavier. (What, you thought all cancer patients looked tragically thin and wasted? Ha!) The good news about how well the chemo is working on diminishing the cancer cells does not mean my body will automatically rebound to its pre-cancer state––I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me after chemo. Not that I think I’m going to restore myself to that younger woman in the above photo. I have to get myself in condition to walk a block without needing to rest my back, so I can put on my clothes without being so winded that I have to sit down. So I can just run out to a shop on Green Lanes when I want something instead of asking Chris. So I can go shopping with my friends and not bug out and taking a cab home so I can lie down. No doubt my appearance will improve but I’m in my 60s and I’m not Madonna. Anyone who thinks I’m hard to look at can stop staring and look at something else, thank you so much, I’m sure.

Yeah, a little defensive. Just a little.

Women are judged on their looks. We know it; we all do it, no matter how we ourselves look. And men aren’t immune. A plus-sized man at a club/concert was enjoying the music and gettin� down with his bad self when some wretched bastards put a stop to his enjoyment by making fun of him. That got him to stop enjoying himself––how dare he feel like dancing in a body like that? No, he wasn’t bothering them or hitting on them––they just objected to his appearance. Fortunately, a group of women decided to make it up to him by inviting him to a dance party in his honour, where they would all dance with him. (Google this; I’m too lazy to do it but it should be easy to find.)

That’s a wonderful thing to do. But I don’t think we’ll see the opposite––men giving a party for a plus-sized woman––any time real soon.

When a fat woman walks down the street, no one thinks, Poor thing is probably so busy working a job and taking care of her family that she has no time to eat right or get enough exercise. It’s usually more like, God, didn’t anyone tell her women her size shouldn’t wear such loud prints and Christ, look at all that cellulite.

And if she dares to eat in public, it gets worse. I was at Heathrow one night waiting for a friend to arrive and I was eating an ice cream bar, the first food I’d had since breakfast. An older man came up to me and said, “A minute on the lips, a life-time on the hips!� Being me, I replied, “That may be true, but it’s tacky to point it out.�

Judging from the look on his face, it was the first time a fat woman had dared talk back to him.

It’s rough for us out there. It’s rough for any woman; even most women who aren’t fat are sure they’re too heavy. People talk about obesity as an epidemic, like it’s a disease. If so it’s a rara avis–�a lot of people will blame you for catching it. It’s your own fault for sitting around eating so much.

Right. Because everything tastes so good that we’d rather be fat than stop.

Lots of things put weight on people. Antidepressants are notorious for weight-gain. Ironically, they can also reduce appetite. So you get a lot of people who aren’t that hungry suddenly packing on the pounds. That’s right, there are drugs that reduce appetite and cause weight gain, and they’re prescribed to people who feel like killing themselves. What’s wrong with this picture? If they’d just figure out how to switch that around––increased appetite and weight loss––they wouldn’t even have to put in the anti-depressant part.

I’ve been taking antidepressants for twenty years; it’s how I got fat. I can deal with the weight better than the depression. It’s hard to lose weight but not totally impossible. Depression, on the other hand, is just�No.

Antidepressants aren’t the only things that have this effect. Various illnesses will put weight on you. So will plain old misfortune. If you’re over 40 and you’re in a car accident in which you break your leg badly enough to land you in traction, you’re not going to like what you see when the cast finally comes off. Or all that time you set aside for the gym and personal training may have to go to caring for an elderly parent, an ailing spouse, or a child who develops leukemia or some other nightmare of a problem.

It doesn’t even take a disaster. Sometimes it’s just getting older and the body you’ve worked so hard to take care of suddenly turns on you––the ungrateful bastard––and decides to blow up like a zeppelin. Bastard.

So what does any of this have to with the Chemo Dance Party, which is pretty damned silly?

Well, it’s not really meant to be an apologia/excuse for my Reubenesque proportions. It’s more to do with having cancer, one with a prognosis that more often not doesn’t end in smiles all round.

Chemo Dance Party is about living while you can––not just living but Living, with everything you’ve got. Chemo Dance Party is don’t wait to live. Don’t wait till your hair grows back; don’t wait till you lose weight; don’t wait till you get everything arranged the way you’d like it to be.

Don’t wait to live till it’s perfect. Live in such a way that makes life turn perfect. Don’t wait for the sun to shine––dance your heart out in the rain. (Hey, didn’t someone even write a song about how great it is to do that?)

Don’t wait to live. And don’t let anyone try to shame you out of it.

If I can’t have Chemo Dance Party, the terrorists win.

I’m sitting in the cafe of the Macmillan Cancer Centre while Chris picks up a prescription for me back at UCLH, processing what I’ve just been told: halfway through chemo, a lot of my cancer has been killed off.

Processing isn’t usually my style. I didn’t process my original Diagnosis of Doom, I just heard it and went from there. But today calls for processing.

I have that song by the Black Crowes in my head, particularly the chorus which talks about leading horse to water but faith being another matter: “Sometimes salvation, in the eye of the storm.� I wrote a vampire story for Barbara Hambly once, called “Sometimes Salvation.� That’s different. Of course, you could think of cancer as a sort of vampire. But I digress.

Right after I was diagnosed, I told some friends: “There’s really only one privilege and it is: your life.� Perhaps there are some people who would disagree with me or think that’s easy for me to say because I’m white. But where there’s life, there’s hope––I know, it’s an old chestnut but don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s trite. 

When you get a Diagnosis of Doom, you can’t buy your way out of it, you can’t bribe your way out of it, you can’t get your friends to get together to throw it out on the street. Cancer is no respecter of colour, origin, sexual persuasion, or religious faith. If you could see the waiting area at the Macmillan clinic, you would see people who have all become the same colour, the same age, the same family. We all have the same expression on our faces: hope mixed with pain. And when one of us comes out of a doctor’s office smiling, we all smile back. We are together; we wish each other well.

Sometimes salvation, in the eye of the storm.

Woke up this morning––Ha! In your face again, mortality!––only to realise I didn’t feel well at all. Took my temperature: 38.4ºC. Not good. When you see that as a chemo patient, you get dressed and go to A&E, stat. So Chris and I took a cab to UCLH, where they hooked me up to some intravenous antibiotics. Fever came right down but they’re keeping me overnight anyway, even though the fever is most definitely gone. I think maybe I caught a cold or something.

Nonetheless, I’m going to be all right. I’ll be taking it easy for the next week, and I’m not sure I’m on schedule for chemo this week––they’ll tell me tomorrow, I guess.

But it’s okay because I hit a milestone anyway: I finished a piece of short fiction last week in about five days. I had to beg off from a few anthologies simply because I didn’t have enough energy to do the research those stories demanded. This one required no research. It’s called “Cancer Dancer� and I’ve cut pretty close to the bone by making use of my own situation. It was also a bit cathartic; I got to use bad language. Today, I got word that the editor in question likes it and he’ll be taking it.

It’s reassuring to know that yes, I can still do what I want to do. Maybe everybody else knew that but sometimes you need empirical proof.

Also, if I can’t profit from my own damned cancer, the terrorists win.

It’s a real problem, exercise. If you thought it was hard to get motivated to get off the sofa under normal circumstances, chemo makes it Mission Impossible.

Never mind that you know exercise will probably help chemo work better. Maybe you’re like me and you’ve been physically active one way or another all your life and you know those endorphins are just what you need. Just thinking about getting up and moving around makes you breathless, Hell, merely putting on your clothes has you panting like 15 minutes of brisk walking at 6 mph, which you can’t do. You can’t even amble for 15 minutes. 

Maybe like me, you’ve been wanting a recumbent exercise bike so you can get those back muscles into shape in front of the TV but the expense is beyond you right now. Everyone has told you yoga is just the thing, especially hot yoga, which releases endorphins like nothing else. But you’d have to leave the house for that, which means wearing yourself out getting dressed. And if you spend money on a yoga class, you’re dipping into your recumbent exercise bike fund. Why is life is so freakin� hard?

I bought myself 3 sets of dumbbells–�2 kg, 3 kg, 4 kg. You need next to no room to use dumbbells. You can even use them sitting down. I have this book by Rosemary Conley which is full of exercises with dumbbells. I’ve misplaced the book but I remember my favourite pyramiding sequence.

Pyramiding, for those who don’t know, is doing the same set of exercises with progressively heavier weights: 12 reps with 2 kg, 10 reps with 3 kg, 8 reps with 4 kg. I encourage everyone, even you healthy folks, to look up Rosemary Conley’s workout books. Rosemary is an older woman who has the body of a 25-year-old and does not show off––i.e., you will be able to do all the exercises, (or you will be able to work your way up to them). There’s no super-bendy stuff that only the double-jointed can achieve and if you follow her instructions for progression, you won’t hurt yourself. 

And no, I have no connection to Rosemary Conley. I will not profit if you buy her books.

Now, lifting weights is not aerobic exercise like walking––i.e., technically. I maintain that any exercise is aerobic for as long as you do it. So, for example, sixty seconds of squats is the aerobic equivalent of sixty seconds of walking, even if you do the squats slowly. In fact, you’re better off doing them slowly instead of popping up and down swinging your arms. I use the weights: when I squat, I lift my arms in front to shoulder level, and lower them as I straighten up again. You can do that with or without weights. Doing squats or lunges first is best, as you are exercising the biggest muscles in the body. According to my favourite aerobics instructor, you’re better off moving from the largest muscles to the smallest. (This is the same aerobics instructor who took me out drinking in Chicago one weekend and caused me to experience my first––and hopefully last––hangover the next day. She’s also the reason I’m unafraid of karaoke, but I digress.)

Starting with the lower body is especially wise for women because that’s where our body strength is concentrated, while men’s strength is above the waist. Men can punch like a kangaroo, we can kick like a mule; it’s a child-bearing thing.

Anyway, your heart-rate will increase more when you raise your arms so don’t wear yourself out too soon. Warm up with squats and lunges. If you have knee problems, or if your knees hurt when you do the standard lunge, don’t lunge forward. Step back instead and dip, keeping your posture straight so you go straight down and straight up again.

And whether squatting or lunging, be sure to keep your knees directly over your toes––don’t bend your legs so that your knees go forward or you really will have knee trouble. Squatting should be a movement as if you are about to sit down in a chair without looking behind you––you stick your butt out. It feels like it looks funny and it does, so if someone in your house makes fun of you, smack ‘em with a wet towel and tell them that’s from me.

Anyway, after you’ve warmed up with squats and lunges, which don’t need much space, move on to upper body exercises with the dumbbells, which need even less space. (Yes, you can use soup cans or bottles of water but you’re better off tightening your belt, biting the bullet, and buying yourself some dumbbells in cheerful colours––you’re more likely to continue doing the exercises and you won’t get caught short if someone else in the house gets hungry or thirsty.)

I’m not going to go into a list of exercises here––you can either get the Conley books or you can find plenty of exercises online for free. I like the Conley exercises because after two weeks, my arms have been transformed from loose flesh hanging on pipe-cleaners to toned and muscled limbs that I want to show off by going sleeveless everywhere, even in winter. The arms are the most easily toned area of the body; seeing what you can accomplish in a mere fourteen days (give or take; one size does not fit all and ymmv) can motivate you to keep going with your exercise.

The advantage here is that you don’t have to get dressed and leave the house; you can watch TV or listen to music or audio books. So if you’re allergic to the gym, this is a doable alternative.

Me, I actually like the gym. My only problem is, there are seldom enough free weights/dumbbells to go around and someone always runs off with just the set I need––or worse, half of the set I need––just when I need it. The gym also costs money and you have to factor in the time it takes to travel to and from––and if you’re having chemo, you might use up all your energy just travelling to the gym. 

And then there’s the matter of being immune-compromised––gyms are germ farms, as are shower rooms. If you do visit the gym, you should stay out of the steam room and the chlorine-flavoured soup that is the swimming pool.

But I still like the gym. I always go at the least-crowded times, so if i need help with a machine or if I have a question, there’s always an employee free to help me out. People with honest jobs don’t usually have this option, which is another good reason to keep a set of dumbbells in the house.

I also like exercises classes. I like moving in unison with a group; it’s very social and most of the people are really nice. But I’m not feeling up to that sort of thing right now. I think once I finish chemo, I’ll try hot yoga at one of the Fierce Grace studios in London, which are the easiest for me to get to, and I’ll try out the various machines at our local leisure centre, which is closer but slightly less convenient for public transportation.

If you have never been terribly physical because you’re self-conscious or because you were always picked last for mandatory school sports or whatever, take back your birthright––joyful movement for its own sake. Start small, with dumbbells at home, where there is no one to feel self-conscious in front of. It’s true about the endorphins––you’ll really feel better psychologically.

Many of us were robbed of the enjoyment of sports and/or dancing because we didn’t do it well. The thing is, the point is not to do it well but to do it. Your body needs it; your brain needs it. You deserve to think of dancing and/or playing sports as fun, because these things are fun and they make you feel good. And in case you didn’t know, you deserve to feel good.

Okay. Arise, go forth, and conquer. 

Or just stand up. That’s a good start.

Oh, my eyebrows, my eyebrows

Are leaving my face

‘Cause the chemo is working

All over the place

My balance has gone

With my inner-ear hair–�

Still have a slight moustache

(That hardly seems fair).

My scalp’s getting smoother

With each passing day

And now, my poor eyebrows

Are passing away.

I know they’ll be back

And I’ll just have to wait

Ain’t drawing them on

‘Cause I just can’t draw straight.

And so, this farewell

To my two favourite eyebrows

Now departing my face

They’ve turned into bye-brows.

³Ò´Ç´Ç»å-²ú’e²â±ð²ú°ù´Ç·É²õ!

Back in my younger, non-carcinogenic days, I still wasn’t much of a drinker. I was the world’s cheapest drunk and I still am. I can get loaded on a glass of wine––sometimes half a glass. But I was always careful to drink a lot of ice water at the same time. I never had a hangover until the early 90s, when I went out drinking with my aerobics instructor. That woman partied me under the table so that I never had a chance to drink enough water and for the first time in my life, I was hungover the next day––not just tired but completely yuck. I haven’t had a hangover since.

Or rather, I hadn’t until I got cancer. Now every three weeks, I have a chemo hangover.

For those who have wondered, or even if you don’t give a rat’s caboose, I’m on CarboTaxol––carboplatin and paclitaxel. I get the paclitaxel first. It takes somewhere between three and four hours; the carboplatin takes about an hour and in between, there are saline flushes (the IV equivalent of a palate cleanser). The paclitaxel has alcohol in it and if you’re as cheap a drunk as I am, you’ll feel tipsy. And if you’re a cheerful drunk, which I am, you’ll feel like acting silly. Photos have been posted on my Twitter feed and my Facebook page. Considering I’m actually being poisoned in an attempt to kill cancer cells, chemo day is kind of a fun day. I joke with the nurses, my fellow travellers laugh at my t-shirt, and my husband stays right by me all day.

But then there’s the morning after.

The first time, I had to have a CT-scan, which they insisted on giving me as soon as I finished chemo. I had to drink something called ‘contrast� and it didn’t sit well with the chemo. I woke up in the middle of the night so violently ill that I had to go to A&E (the ER, for US readers). After that, I spent a week in hospital, running fevers.

When it was time for my second round of chemo, I didn’t anticipate any problems. But the morning after, I was bent over the loo again. I had nothing to bring up––everything I’d eaten the night before had been digested and moved on, unlike in the first round, where it just sat as if waiting to retrace its steps and come out the way it had gone in,

This round of chemo is my third and puts me at the halfway mark––three down, three to go. This time, I thought I might get sick and I was prepared. Sure enough, I was up at 3 a.m. and everything I’d eaten for dinner was still parked in my stomach, waiting to exit, even though I had taken an extra anti-nausea pill before going to bed.

Business taken care of, I settled down in the living room so as not to disturb Chris, who’d had a long day with me without benefit of alcohol, and did some deep-breathing exercises. And that was it. I slept for a little while and I’ve had no further problems. So I guess that’s just how it is––first thing in the morning after, I suffer the effects of a chemo hangover. I suppose it could be worse but nausea is the one thing I hate more than anything else.

Nausea is the one thing that cripples me; it stops me dead. I can’t think, I can’t move, I can’t even watch TV let alone read to take my mind off it. I can function with a headache or a sore throat or other pain, with a cold, with a fever, with just about any other problem. But if nausea hits me, I’m done till it stops.

Chemo hangover. Who knew?

This Thursday will be the halfway point in my course of chemotherapy––three down, three more to go. But there is already good news: the chemo is working.

Since starting chemo six weeks ago, I have lost fourteen pounds (that’s a stone for my British friends, about 7 kilos). Not because I dieted or tried to eat healthy or because I had no appetite; I lost it because the chemo is working.

Without getting too clinical: the form of cancer that I have has resulted in weight gain. The weight loss means the cancer cells are dying off.

The weight loss doesn’t really show. I haven’t suddenly become a sylph. But I’ve noticed I can move around more easily.

Even the small victories count. And when they’re part of a larger victory in the offing, so much the better.

After being poisoned, you hardly notice the slide downward for the first few days. Along about the fifth day after, however, the fatigue is more noticeable. Days ten to fourteen, you hit bottom. The chemo is stomping cancer with hobnail boots. But there’s collateral damage: your energy levels, mood, Weltanschauung, ambition, concentration, even your I.Q. all take a hit. It doesn’t help that you’ve lost all your hair; you’ve also lost weight but thanks to what cancer is doing to your body, that doesn’t show. Nothing looks good on you; nothing looks good to you. You have to worry about being neutropenic––susceptible to infection because your white blood count is low––so going out isn’t an option. If you’ve still got your sense of humour at this point, it’s so acid and ghoulish that Ambrose Bierce would tell you to lighten up.

But it’s just five days: ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen. By day fifteen, you’re coming back up the other side of the V. Things aren’t so bad, especially because you are by-God alive, the fog is clearing, your ambition is waking up, you remember that you have the best friends in the world, the best spouse in the world, the best cat in the world. You can still do what you love no matter what you look like, and anyone who thinks you don’t look good can just go look at something else, thank you so much, I’m sure. Five low days out of the month––BFD. Remember PMS? That was worse.

You’re still tired but now you can think of work-arounds, especially for going out. If you stay off public transportation when it’s most crowded, like at rush hour, you should be fine. You want to see friends; they know you’ve got cancer, they’re not expecting Madonna. You always look wonderful to people who love you; you know this because the people you love always look wonderful to you. Life is sweet–�your life is sweet, and so is everything in it.

If you want to live, you’ve got to get out there and live.

I had to ask Chris to move a vase of daffodils out of the living room because the smell was upsetting my stomach.

The vase was at least five feet away and I’ve never had an especially sensitive nose. Even when I was pregnant, I didn’t suffer from olfactory over-sensitivity. We’ve had daffodils in the house every year, as soon as they’re available; the colour is a nice reminder that brighter days are ahead. Chris has always kept plants and flowers; when I first saw our flat, I was amazed at all the greenery in it. My husband is a wizard at getting plants to grow and flourish. And I like that he always remembers to pick up something seasonal to give the place a little life and colour.

But the daffodils�. Amanda had remarked that something smelled good in the room last night when we were watching TV on the sofa. I figured it was the daffodils and that Amanda had a particularly talented nose (she’s a self-healing mutant, too, but that’s a story for another time).

Today, I didn’t notice the smell right away. After a while, I became aware of a greeny, plant-ish smell and it was poking me in the stomach. Eventually, I realised what it was and asked Chris to take them away.

It’s too bad. “The Daffodils� is one of my favourite poems; “I wandered lonely as a cloud…� In elementary school, we had a music book in which this poem was actually set to music. Never cared for the tune but the words always resonated with me. “They flash upon the inner eye, which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils.�

I guess all my daffodils will have to be mental, at least for a while.