In Gratitude by Jenny Diski

Author:Jenny Diski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-08-03T16:00:00+00:00

After waiting that long week for the results of my post-chemo scan, the answer to the hovering question about the effect it had on the tumour in my lung and the affected lymph nodes was much the same as most eagerly awaited answers to important questions. Inconclusive. As I’m learning to expect, nothing very decisive has resulted from the treatment. The tumour has shrunk a little, but, Onc Doc said swiftly, it was small to start with. The lymph nodes too have decreased a little in size. There was neither excitement nor disappointment in his manner. It may be that he has the same air of studied neutrality in his everyday life, when eating a delicious meal or going over the top on a rollercoaster. Or, more likely, it is for work purposes alone, in order to prevent overexcitement or crashing disappointment in patients with unrealistically high hopes or fears. I imagine that his ‘but the tumour was small to start with’ was intended to prevent disappointment at the seeming slightness of its reduction: a small reduction in a small tumour is not to be sneezed at. It seems I am to think that the cancer that can be seen hasn’t got worse, indeed it has improved, and if I were the right sort of character, I could take heart from that. To me, being the sort of character I am, it means I’ve got cancer (‘So what took you so long to arrive?’), and I won’t not have cancer, but as the Doc said at our first appointment, a certain amount of time can be added to my life by the treatment (two to three years instead of perhaps fourteen months) before the symptoms begin and the dying process starts. I smiled and said, ‘That’s good’ in a way that I hoped showed I hadn’t got any unrealistic hopes up, and that I was grateful for his, the nurses’ and the radiographers’ efforts. The team. And, of course, I am grateful. I try to feel grateful.

As far as I understand it, the main problem is with the spreading of the cancer via my lymph nodes – this is what happens most commonly with lung cancer – to brain, to bone, who knows where? When I asked, the Onc Doc said that they hadn’t seen any new cancer sites, but they couldn’t know if there were cancers too small yet for the scan to pick up. ‘We can only see what we can see with the instruments we’ve got.’ I assume that the cancer spreading minutely through my body, like microscopic pig-iron in diminutive goods trains, is the reason, even with treatment, that my life expectancy is still only a fairly abbreviated two to three years. It’s a travelling cancer sending its cells here and there, so that only when they have taken root and grown can they be seen, by which time, I imagine, new invisible seeds will have been planted elsewhere. Etcetera. Still, if Onc Doc’s super cool

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