117. The test results

If all goes according to plan, we are travelling back to London from Majorca today. Ah, the spring of 2015 is so much better than the spring of 2014. But just in case you don't want to miss out on last year's colourful events, this blog post was prepared well over a week ago and put into the system to appear on your screens today...

ONE YEAR AGO

17 April 2014

My perspective has shifted. Now, I perceive this as Good News:

I have cancer. It is confined to a small lump in my breast. It hasn't affected any cells in the rest of my breast, or in the other breast.

I will need a lumpectomy. My operation is planned for the 1st of May, in exactly two weeks' time, one month after my diagnosis.

Six to eight weeks later, I will start a three-week course of radiotherapy.

And that, we hope, will be that.

The only remaining unknown is whether the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes. This will be tested during the operation.

These are the facts.

We met with the surgeon today. I think she was rather taken aback by all the questions I asked (What is the hormone receptor status? Is it HER2 positive?) even though I'd been given a rather smart folder with information for the breast cancer patient, directing her to ask exactly those kind of questions. In the end, she offered to show me my MRI scan pictures. Even I could see how  clearly defined and confined the cancer is.

Of course I am relieved, although there is also a strange sense of anti-climax. All that worry and upset, all those utterly fundamental thoughts about living and dying. All that frightening loss of control.

I feel as if I have some, if not most, of my control back again, now that I am armed with the full facts and a certainty that this will turn out to be a mere blip on my path, rather than a deviation from it.

[Ah, little did I know that there was more to come...]

Now, there is a danger that I slip back into my old familiar self, the one who is in control, the one who can cope.

The charmed one.

Perhaps the biggest shock in all of this has been my shock itself. I keep thinking: if I'm so utterly thrown by this, so tearful, so shaken, then how on earth will it be if something really difficult happens? If, like so many people I know and love, I have to cope with a life-changing, life-long condition? (Diabetes, arthritis, depression.)

If, worst of all, I lose a child or husband?

Cancer carries a certain gravitas, I have discovered. I have told almost everyone I come into contact with, including people I don't know, who need an explanation for my inability to give a talk or attend a conference. There is universal, instant sympathy and understanding.

Now that it turns out to be relatively minor, I feel a bit of a fraud. Of course it is nice to get all this sympathy, but shouldn't others get an equal share of it? There are so many misunderstood and debilitating physical health conditions (quite apart from equally debilitating mental health conditions) that need as much sympathy, as many allowances.

In a way, I feel lucky that I have cancer because people understand my distress and my need for time off. As I have been saying, only half-joking: As far as excuses go, cancer is quite a good one.

But perhaps I ought to listen to those wiser than me. Like one of my good friends, who said: "It is like you to be positively reframing this as an educational experience but you are allowed to feel less positive emotions from time to time."

Owl has helped enormously in making the children part of this, making them understand.

I almost forgot to take him to the appointment with the surgeon, but my younger daughter reminded me.

"He's a bit worried about what the doctor is going to say," I said, making him tremble.

"Oooh, don't worry Owl," my younger daughter said, rushing over and kissing him. "You are not alone, because your mummy is worried too."

115. Of Owls, emotions and a teenage son

ONE YEAR AGO...

11 April 2014

This is rapidly turning into Owl's story rather than mine.

Although of course it is mine, my deeper, truer story perhaps. I am flabbergasted by its power, the way it instantly reaches the part of me that dares not show itself.

"I am frightened" doesn't ring true, because I don't recognise myself when I am frightened.

"I don't want to be a cancer patient" may be true, but it sounds petulant, complaining, angry perhaps.

But when I say "Owl is frightened", I am filled with compassion for him, for myself. Choked with compassion. Poor, poor Owl. Of course he is frightened.

Of course I am.

And I know that no amount of reassurance or shows of strength can take his fear away. No use saying that thousands of Owls before him have had cancer and got through it and are fine. He knows that.

But he is frightened, and all I can do is sit with him, sit with himself, and allow him his fear.

Owl doesn't want to be a cancer patient. That is not a statement borne of petulance or rebellion against life: it is a frightened whisper.

I don't want to be a cancer patient, not because it clashes with my role as competent and in-control woman, but because it clashes with my sense of self. It turns my world inside out.

Isn't that the hardest thing?

So many people have credited Owl with wisdom, yet here he is, toppled over (literally) by the slightest breeze.

Here I am, with my life so full of blessings, aged 50 and never suffered any significant loss or life challenge. Early stage breast cancer hardly ranks highly on the list of possible challenges, but like Owl, I am blown over.

OTHER UPDATES:

I am feeling much less nervous, physically, than earlier in the week. I no longer have that constant weight in my stomach, the lurching, the butterflies. Perhaps I am getting used to being classed as a cancer patient? To the uncertainty it brings?

But I am living on such an emotionally charged level.

The slightest thing turns on the tears, and that is something I am no longer used to. Weeks, months, even a few years can go by without any need to cry about my life (crying at films or beautiful music doesn't count).

But now, I cry when I think about myself.

I cry when I write about Owl and his feelings.

I cry when people are nice to me (and so many people are nice).

I cry when I suddenly have more to do than I thought I had: tears of not coping.

The sound of the cello, the feeling of hot water on my skin, a loving embrace: everything moves me to tears. It is as if I am connected to the raw essence of life and love, all the time, and it is exhausting.


A few days ago, I wrote about the unhelpful things people do or say.

How a focus on themselves, rather than on me, turns their words from supportive into an ordeal.

I feel a bit mean now, having said that. There have been several such people in recent days, and I am so conscious of how hard it is for them to be confronted with illness or death. Most people are simply not experienced with communicating about such things, or too fearful of being confronted with the emotions of the suffering, the ill and the bereaved, and so they can't really listen.

I am feeling much warmer towards everyone now and try to encourage as much openness as possible by talking openly myself.

And I am learning to ignore the comments or suggestions that aren't helping.


TELLING MY SON...

My son returned from his school trip last night. It was late and he was tired, but my husband and I both agreed that this couldn't wait.

So we sat him down at the kitchen table and told him that I have cancer and will need treatment.

"Oh, OK," he said in typical teenage-boy fashion, matter-of-fact and devoid of emotion or the betrayal of any concerns.

This evening, he and I have spent a long drive together. We are on our way to Holland, where he has a rowing camp (he missed the outward journey on the school coach as he was too busy returning from the other school trip, so I'm dropping him off in Amsterdam; I will then join my older daughter who is staying with my sister). I am writing this in the cabin of the overnight Harwich-Hook of Holland ferry.

[Are you keeping up? Blimey, such complex arrangements. I do remember how worried I was about this trip. Would I be in a fit state to drive all the way to Holland? Would I crash the car? But all went well. In fact it turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because car journeys are excellent for talking to teenagers.]

So, without being asked, I talked and talked about everything.

I talked about the MRI scan, the difference between radiotherapy and chemotherapy, why we need to wait for the results and what we are waiting for. I gave him all the technical knowledge I could think of.

He listened; he asked the occasional question.

"Is chemotherapy where your hair falls out?"

It can be. I explain why: how chemo kills fast-growing cells, and therefore kills cancer, but also affects healthy cells and in particular the ones that grow fast: hair; the lining of your stomach and gut. Hence the side effects: hair loss, diarrhoea, vomiting.

"Doesn't radiotherapy kill all the cells, even the healthy ones?"

It does. That's why the machine turns round, concentrating on the spot in the middle which will get blasted most. And that's why you have to keep coming back: you simply cannot have it all in one go.

I tell him how lucky I am, getting this now and not 20 or 30 years ago when treatment was far less sophisticated or successful; and getting it in my breast, where it can be found early enough.

"How did you find it? Did you just feel it?"

Yes, I did.

I told him everything, the whole story, from first feeling the lump and being so sure it was harmless, to waiting to hear how much of my breast has cancer.

My son won't ask questions, so I will just keep telling him what's happening, without being asked.

[Which is exactly what I've done, always. With all three of them. Test results, trips to the hospital, meetings with the consultant: I've reported everything as part of "this is what happened today". I have never sat them down again for a semi-formal conversation (too nerve racking for all of us!), but told them any news immediately, individually. Each child has needed a different approach, a different language. With my son, the approach has often been: talk to his back whilst he's sitting at the computer. Worked a treat, and he clearly thought so too... see my blog post on talking to teenagers about cancer]

To be continued...

114. A powerless Owl

At six o'clock this morning, I set off to Majorca with my husband and younger daughter. I have tried and failed to remember the last time we had a proper holiday. It must have been somewhere back in 2013.

Now, the last thing I want to do whilst splashing about in the Mediterranean is post blogs about One Year Ago, so yesterday I lined up four contributions for the week ahead (including this one) and pressed the "publish" button with a range of dates attached. I've only just discovered that such a feature exists on Blogger. If all goes well, they should arrive on your doorstep at the right time. If not, we'll have a bit of catching up to do when I get back.

My friends, I hope you enjoy last year's misery. If it all gets too much, just think of me lying on that beach with my newly sprouting hair. See you when we get back.


ONE YEAR AGO...

10th April 2014

I've emailed Owl's picture in the scanning room to a couple of friends who know Owl's story. One of them responds:

"Having a surrogate to be the patient sounds fascinating. Will you let him feel and say things that you usually wouldn't?"

I think about this, and the words that I tap into my iPhone are new to me, bringing fresh tears to my eyes. They flow easily these days.

"Owl wouldn't say boo to a goose and would never ask questions of the doctors and nurses. He lets everything happen to him and is completely powerless.

(Which doesn't upset him the way it would upset me, because he doesn't know any different.)

He is very frightened but accepting. He knows that he is loved unconditionally by my older daughter's Pig and my younger daughter's Bear, and that they love him not despite but because of his vulnerability.

And he knows that because of this love, it doesn't matter whether he lives of dies."

[That evening, I sat up until midnight to sew this friend an owl of her own. You can read about that here.]

To be continued...

113. Owl makes an entry

ONE YEAR AGO... following my diary entry a couple of days ago, when I started dreaming up titles of my-cancer-story-turned-book.

9 April 2014

No, not How To Be A Cancer Patient after all, but When Owl Had Cancer. 

Here's why. Time to tell the story of Owl...

[Which I've already done, so I won't repeat it again. If you want to follow the story properly, you could read this blog post - it's an almost verbatim transcription of that diary entry. It describes how Owl came about, as well as the MRI scan I had on that day. The diary entry ends thus...]

One day, who knows, I may tell Owl's story publicly. At least I've got his photograph and his MRI scan certificate to show for it.

Well, now we know. His story has indeed been told. Publicly.

MRI scan with Owl, 9th April 2014.
What strikes me now about this photograph is how you really cannot tell that I've had a rather turbulent week...
Which makes me wonder about all those people we meet in hospitals, on the tube, in the shops.
What do we ever really know about someone else's life??

76. A Parliament of Owls

 The postman delivered a parcel yesterday.

It was a hand-embroidered owl cushion.

I stared at it open-mouthed. Such a labour of love - and I've only met the sender twice. She is retired and lives in Cornwall. I know her through the PCPLD Network (which I chair, and which is organising this week's conference in Glasgow). Two years ago, she came to the annual conference because she had won our award for giving outstanding end-of-life care to someone with intellectual disabilities. It was the first time that the award winner was a mother rather than a professional, which made it all rather moving. This wonderful woman had looked after her adult daughter who developed dementia and eventually died. The daughter had Down Syndrome.

We talked and talked over dinner the night before the award ceremony. Not only about her beautiful daughter, but also about shared interests, a love of nature, creativity, even Pilates. Last year we had dinner again, as we had invited her to give a talk about her daughter at our conference.

She heard about my situation, found my blog (amazing in itself, as sending an email was a new venture for her when I first met her), and wanted to do something for me.

To think that someone I don't really know that well would spend hours and hours and hours making something for me, sourcing the embroidery kit she remembered seeing, finding suitable material for the back of the cushion, and finishing everything so beautifully (down to the piped edges, the button, the carefully matched fabric halves at the back)... it left me flabbergasted.

There was a touching six-page letter.

"I felt I had made a beautiful connection with you, however brief," it said. "You lead a team who made me feel very special at a time which was very hard in my life. Thank you Irene."

It just goes to show that you never really know how even the most fleeting of connections can touch lives.

She has certainly touched mine with her thoughtful gift. This being a Good Week, I was glad I could phone her this morning, to thank her in person.

Writing this makes me think of John, a man I met through one of my research studies. He had mild intellectual disabilities and died of a particularly nasty and distressing cancer. I spent many hours with him during the months before he died. He knew that he was dying. He talked and talked about his life. One of his most vivid memories was of a passer-by who, when John was briefly homeless and living on the streets, had asked him for directions - and then handed him a £20 note. That passer-by could never have known that many years later, a dying man still felt comforted by his kindness.

So here's to all of you who have bestowed kindness on me. I am touched.

And because of the thoughtfulness of so many of you, I am now surrounded by a growing and very happy parliament of Owls. Who knew they came in so many different shapes and sizes? One friend offered a theory.

"I assume everyone knows about your blog," she wrote, apologising for what she thought was probably my 100th owl card, "and that's why there is so much owl merchandise around."

Personally, I think it's a case of supply and demand. You just keep sending me owls (lovely!) and the shops will keep stocking up.

The Owl Mug

The Owl Scarf

Some of the many Owl Cards...

...more Owl Cards...

...and more, plus a couple of Owl Hangings

53. The owl who is afraid of the dark

"My owl is hoping your owl is OK as he is afraid of the dark so I have to take him upstairs with me."

These are the words of the ten year old daughter of distant friends. Her lovely card, which I received a couple of days ago, cheered me up no end.

I don't know this child at all. Her parents took her along to my 50th birthday fundraising bash last year, where she seems to have acquired one of the many little owls I made. People took them home, leaving a donation for charity.

Her mother wrote a little note: "I think you are definitely onto something with your worry owls - our daughter now has a scared-of-the-dark-owl... Surprisingly helpful!"

It's lovely to think that Scared-of-the-Dark Owl has a brave young girl to save him from his fears.

I didn't know which of my owls she had chosen, so I asked her to take a picture of her frightened owl for my blog. Here he is. He lives in Yorkshire, which is perhaps unfortunate as it's bound to be darker there than in London, being further up north.

The owl who is afraid of the dark

It's even lovelier to think that my humble cancer-stricken Owl has a growing group of supportive friends of his own, scattered around England and thinking of him.

There's Knee Owl, who is trying to regain his balance after years of walking problems. He lives with my friend here in London who's had two knee replacements.

Knee Owl

Then there's Heart Owl, who I sent to live in Devon last month after another friend's mother barely survived a massive heart attack. "A miracle owl would be wonderful," the distressed friend said after the doctors told her how poorly her mother was, "to help us all adjust to the changes and losses ahead of us."

So I made her a blue owl ("Mum likes blue") with its heart sewn together from two pieces of embroidered fabric ("Mum likes embroidery"), big enough to hold my friend and her five siblings, despite being broken.

Owl about to send Heart Owl off to Devon

Not forgetting Jokery of course, who lives with us. He was made by my younger daughter who thought Owl needed a good friend of his very own. Jokery, she informs me, is extremely scared of spiders. (Funny, that. So is my daughter. But Owl isn't, so they can help each other out.)

Owl and Jokery

The thing is, all of these Owl friends seem to have some kind of difficulty in life and are themselves in need of help and support.

I like them better for it. It occurs to me that they are better friends and better helpers, not despite, but because of their own problems.

I try to imagine a capable, competent, perfectly healthy owl who sails through life and copes with anything. Somehow that doesn't seem as good for Owl. It would just make him feel inadequate.

There's a lesson there somewhere. Weeping in the woods? Perhaps it doesn't matter.

39. An owl with 18 knees

Here's another Owl Story from the archives, to distract from my depleting hair supply. This goes right back to the days and weeks following my cancer diagnosis.

(If you haven't read about Owl, you'd better do that first; this post will make no sense otherwise. Here it is.)

One of my friends was completely taken by the possibility of having an alter ego to help you through life.

She had a knee replacement last year and was just weeks away from having her second knee similarly upgraded. She latched on immediately to my suggestion that she might need an owl of her own for her impending surgery.

"I’d love an owl," she said, before adding that unlike my Owl (who has the job of being the meek and helpless patient that I am struggling to be) hers would need to be the strong, in-control one.

"I am definitely shaky about this operation,” she explained. “I know it’s going to be painful and that I’ll take time to recover, even if the end result is well worth it. But because my other knee operation went really well, I don’t find people can relate to my reluctance.”

I sat up until well after midnight sewing her a plump and solid owl, weighted so he won’t topple over (unlike mine, who is so light that, true to character, he is floored by the merest breeze).

My younger daughter observed that an owl was no good for my dodgy-knee-friend, because owls don’t have knees. It prompted me to sew on 18 small knee-like feathers. I also gave him feet. My friend has struggled with her walking for years and years.

She was delighted.

Knee Owl with my own Owl, pre-surgery

Knee Owl proved too heavy to lug to hospital appointments, but she reported that he has cheered her on from afar. She has been more assertive in hospital appointments. His help has gone beyond the strictly medical. Once, he stopped her from buying a bar of chocolate during a must-have-chocolate-because-I am-stressed moment. You don’t need chocolate! You are stronger than this! Knee Owl apparently whispered into her brain. (And he wasn't even with her at the time.) Success. She stayed chocolate-free.

Talk about alter egos.

Who needs expensive therapies/assertiveness training/psychologists when some left-over fabric and a couple of old buttons will suffice?

My older daughter loved Knee Owl.

“Can’t you make me one?” she asked.

"I will,” I said, a bit nonplussed because she has already made several equally lovely owls herself, so why ask me? “What kind would you like?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I can invent something wrong with me?”

It turned out that she didn’t just want any owl, she wanted one that could help with a particular health problem.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “If you ever get ill, you’ll be fine. You have Pig.”

It set me thinking, though. Could the idea of Owl reach beyond cancer or knee replacements?

The thought hasn't left me. I've kept an eye out in hospital and it seems that I am not the only one carrying an animal around. Once, I stopped a frail-looking elderly woman who was being pushed along the corridor in a wheelchair, clutching a monkey. I couldn't help it. I had to introduce Monkey to Owl, to the bemusement of both the woman and her nurse.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my colleagues sent me an email with an intriguing subject line.

The Owl and the Pussy Cat

"When I was seriously ill a few years ago with post-operative disasters, I had Pussy Cat, who was given to me by my youngest child (then 7 years old). This was a clever choice because cats have nine lives, don't they? In the haze and confusion of life-threatening illness (not cancer) I felt the warmth and weight of that little grey tabby cat on my feet and often joined in his cat conversation. Sometimes he glowed orange and grew into a powerful tiger. At other times he multiplied into a hundred playful kittens, pawing and nipping at me to keep me alive. Pussy Cat now sits on a shelf in the spare room but his creative spirit still emerges from within me at times of crisis."

Well now, here's clearly a new career for someone. Better be careful. Before I know it, I’ll be running a bespoke Owl Fitting Clinic just along from Clinic 2, with orders coming in from all quarters.

To do it properly, I'd have to find out what an owl with diabetes looks like, or with chronic heart failure, or with dementia. (Any ideas?)

But more importantly,  I’d have to find out who the patient is, and not just what is wrong with him. And if a patient came along with a daughter and a Bear, I'd give Bear a little owl too.

I would definitely have to think of something better than Clinic 3 though. Perhaps something like...

Life's A Hoot.

Owl You Need Is Love.

Everything Will Be Owl Right.

Or Be Whoooo You Are. Isn't that the crux of it?

23. When Owl had surgery

I’m on holiday. Properly, it seems. The kind of holiday that has medieval castles in it, and antique markets, and daily swims in the sea/helpings of ice cream/bottles of wine. There is an un-British amount of sunshine punctuated by some very British showers. I’m even halfway through a novel, the first one I’ve managed in four months. Very gradually, the Winnie-the-Pooh problem is receding. (Let's hope it doesn't strike again.)

A proper holiday does not include cancer, so I’ve tried not to think about it.

With reasonable success. I am not composing any blog posts in my head. I’m pretending that the pixie cut is my own free choice. (And not a bad choice, at that. Gentlemen, you don’t know how lucky you are with your crew cuts. The time saved! The quick transition from shower to I’m ready, let’s go! And that’s not just a jokey way of making light of my limited hair length. It’s the truth. Let’s just gloss over my sharp intake of breath every time I look in the mirror.)

But now I need to take a short break from the holiday, because the hospital scanning machines are awaiting my arrival tomorrow morning. I have left my family at the seaside and made the two hour train journey to London. 

I want to stay in holiday mood though, so I am not writing anything new. Instead, let me empty my drawer of back-dated Owl stories.

My surgeon

This story about Owl’s surgery starts a week before I was due to have my mastectomy.

We did not yet know that it would have to be postponed. I’d had a lumpectomy three weeks earlier. Owl had his stony lump removed even earlier than that, on the day that I created him out of scraps of fabric and a few handfuls of fluff. Now, unexpectedly, we were facing rather more invasive surgery.

My daughters had been wondering how such a flat chested animal could have a mastectomy.

We briefly considered and then rejected the possibility of giving him breasts. Even if I could manage the technical challenge, he would look ridiculous. Instead, I thought, I would just have to bandage him up, mimicking my own plasters, pretending he was similarly scarred.

Then, one night, I suddenly woke up at 4am, thinking about all this. The solution just popped into my head. I would unpick and cut off part of Owl’s right wing. I would have to do it the day before going into theatre, so the children would find him, like me, with a missing part.

I was suddenly overwhelmed by tears at the thought of such mutilation.

I had been completely open and honest with the outside world about the impending loss of my breast and my decision not to have a reconstruction, and I didn’t doubt my choice for a moment. If anything, I felt increasingly positive about it, glad and relieved that I could be so confident about my body.

I was sure I would learn to love my scar, and I had been very upbeat about it. Bring it on! It’s nothing, really! No-one will love me any less!

So there I was, 11 days after being given the news that I would lose my breast and six days before the surgeon’s knife was written into my diary. I had convinced myself that I was absolutely fine about it. I would just go through it all and emerge physically mutilated but emotionally unscathed.

The thought of having to cut off Owl’s wing, however, was unexpectedly devastating.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told myself. “It’s only a bit of stuffed fabric.”

But I knew why I was so upset. My feelings about Owl were simply a reflection of my deeper, perhaps inadmissible feelings about myself.

Of course I knew I wouldn’t love Owl any less without his wing. If anything, he would be loved more, for having lived through such trauma and shared it with us.

Even my rejection of reconstructive surgery was echoed by Owl. I knew I wouldn’t want to sew on a perfectly matched new piece of fabric. He would be fine with a prosthesis, an un-matching piece of fabric. He would also be absolutely fine with nothing at all. (And as it turns out, none of us have so far felt the need to fill his wing-gap.)

My positive thinking around living without a breast was real, but it was not my only truth. I hadn't allowed myself enough space to grieve. Too much of a For goodness sake, pull yourself together, it's only a breast attitude.

Thank goodness I allowed myself to howl over Owl instead.

I took myself downstairs and sat on the sofa with an extra-strong cup of tea, clutching Owl, crying and crying for our tough journey ahead.

A few days later, my mother started dying and everything changed.

Instead of undergoing the mastectomy, I travelled to Holland to be with her.

When I returned to London, the impending loss of my breast was the last thing on my mind. It didn’t matter to me. I was just relieved that it would be done soon, so that I could go back to the much more important business of being my mother’s daughter.

I felt none of the distress that had been so prominent a few weeks earlier. My Go ahead, let’s get this over and done with attitude was reflected in Owl.

It was almost midnight. I had flown back to London that day and I was due in the Surgical Admission Lounge early the following morning. My heart was full of the farewell I had just shared with my mother.

Suddenly, I remembered Owl’s wing.

A few weeks earlier, during the 4am sobbing episode, I had envisaged a profound and moving ritual, where I would use the symbolism of cutting his right wing as a way of saying a final goodbye to my right breast. I would take my time over it. There would be reverence and tears. Knowing me, you might even expect candles, incense and bell-ringing.

Instead, I made a quick trip to the sewing box. It was a matter of detached cutting, snip-snip, there we are, done, can I go to bed now? I hardly looked at the result. The result didn’t matter.

I don’t think I was suppressing my deeper feelings, as I had clearly been doing prior to the 4am drama.

Like my own mastectomy, Owl’s surgery had simply become one more thing on my to-do list.

The children’s reaction to his new scar mirrored the way they reacted to mine.

When his bandages came off a week later, they were simply interested to see what he looked like, without judgement or emotion: “Has his wing been cut off? Oh, let’s see then!”

Similarly, when I showed them my own fresh scar revealed by the removal of my plasters, they had a good look and then went off to do something more interesting.

It made me marvel at young people’s ability to take things on board. Their days are full of new information, new ways of looking at things. Owl’s amputated wing and my lost breast were simply becoming part of their world.

Although, admittedly, now that the swelling and the multi-colours have subsided and my chest is settling into its forever-future appearance, they do notice that things are different for me. Only a few days ago, during rush hour in the bathroom, my daughters looked at me emerging from the shower, and the younger one said with feeling: “I don’t want to get breast cancer.”

I’m with her on that one.

If anything, how on earth could she ever bear to put her scissors to Bear?

15. How Owl helped me

Three months ago, when I first took Owl to hospital, I realised that he could be my alter ego, channelling feelings and emotions that would take me quite a while to access otherwise.

I had never been a patient before.

The loss of control was (and still is) incredibly difficult for someone who is used to being on the other side of the staff-patient divide.

I was used to supporting patients at their most vulnerable times, discussing their situation with other nurses, doctors and social workers. My way of coping with this sudden reversal of roles was to stay as competent as possible and to keep talking to my doctors and nurses as if they were colleagues.

There I was during my biopsy, lying on my back, breasts exposed, huge needle inserted into my lump in order to grab a few cells, which made such a loud noise that I’m being shot! sprang to mind.

Did I close my eyes and think about the implications of the fact that this lump, clearly, was not the cyst I had anticipated?

No. I lay there discussing the challenges the staff faced last week, when a patient with autism found it difficult to cope with having a mammogram. (Didn’t they know that there were picture books available to help women like her? They didn’t, and the staff found this so interesting that I lay there just a little bit longer than was usual, talking about my work.)

There I was in the surgeon’s office, discussing the ins and outs of my cancer, dry-eyed. So this is an invasive ductal carcinoma with lobular components? What grade? What is the hormone status? And the HER2 status? Will she make sure that the lump is removed with adequate surgical margins? Yes, OK, I see. That sounds fine.

It wasn’t fine. Of course it wasn’t.

But I could not allow myself to be a “non-coper” around cancer, crumpling in a heap on the floor of the doctor's office. I couldn’t accept that sometimes, coping takes the shape of collapsing into bed with the duvet over your head, relinquishing all responsibilities.

Shouldn’t I, of all people, be able to stay upright in the light of cancer? Had I not spent years and years supporting others in this situation, learning and learning what they needed in order to keep going? Hadn't I learnt to talk about cancer and loss in an intelligent, compassionate but sensible way?

In stepped Owl.

When I emailed the photographs of his MRI scan to the few friends who knew his story, one of them responded:

“Having a surrogate to be the patient sounds fascinating. Will you let him feel and say things that you usually wouldn’t?”

I thought about this, and the response I tapped into my iPhone was new to me, bringing fresh tears to my eyes (they flowed very easily during that time).

“Owl wouldn’t say boo to a goose and would never ask questions of doctors and nurses. He lets everything happen to him and is completely powerless (which doesn’t upset him the way it would upset me, because he doesn’t know any different). He is very frightened but accepting. He knows that he is loved unconditionally by Pig and Bear, and that they love him not despite but because of his vulnerability, and that because of this love, it doesn’t matter whether he lives or dies.”

I was flabbergasted by all this: the powerful way in which expressing Owl’s feelings instantly reached that part of myself that dared not show itself.

If I were to say “I am frightened” it didn’t ring true, because I didn’t recognise myself as a frightened woman.

But when I said “Owl is frightened” I was immediately filled with compassion for him, for myself. Choked with compassion. Poor, poor Owl. Of course he was frightened. Of course I was. I also knew that no amount of reassurance or shows of strength could take his fear away. It was no use saying that thousands of owls before him had survived cancer. He knew that. But still, he was frightened, and all I could do was sit with him - sit with myself - and allow him his fear.

When I said “I don’t want to be a cancer patient” it sounded petulant, complaining, angry perhaps. Yet I knew I wasn’t angry. (I have never asked Why me?  Rather, on hearing my diagnosis, I immediately thought: Well, it happens to millions of women, so why not me?)

But when Owl said he didn’t want to be a cancer patient, it was not a statement born of petulance or rebellion against life. It was a frightened whisper.

I didn’t want to be a cancer patient, not because it clashed with my role as competent and in-control woman, but because during those terrible first weeks, I felt completely floored by my diagnosis. I was shaking and shaking inside, and that clashed with my sense of self. It turned my world inside out.

So many people have credited owls with wisdom, and yet here he was, toppled over (quite literally) by the slightest breeze. I kept telling myself that early (and eminently curable) breast cancer hardly ranked highly on the list of possible life disasters. I kept thinking that there were so many worse things in the world, but like Owl, I was blown over.

There have been many moments like that. Times when I thought I was fine, then looked at my Owl, imagined how he was feeling, and realised that I was not fine at all.

It may sound bizarre and possibly even childish, but having this “cuddly toy” has helped me enormously, not only in understanding my emotions, but also in allowing myself to feel them.

Here is a comment from one of my lifelong friends, who has spent three decades nursing patients in a major cancer centre.

“You know,” she said, “when you were telling me about Owl, the thought struck me that so many of our cancer patients have a soft toy in bed with them. There is a little shop in the hospital where their grandchildren buy them as a present, but then they keep and keep them. They even tie them onto the drip stand that holds their chemo drugs. I always just thought that was quite fun, but now I’m suddenly thinking: perhaps there is more to it than that? Perhaps they need them as a companion during their treatment?”

Perhaps…

Are we onto something here, Owl and I?

In any case, I am not going into the chemotherapy lounge without him. Then I can feel sorry for him, so that I won't have to feel sorry for myself. And if anything is particularly unpleasant, I can let him do the moaning on my behalf.

You see, I could easily accuse myself of being a wimp, and worry that others think so too. But surely, nobody would dream of accusing a helpless little owl of being a shirker and not coping well?

Perhaps I can even take a leaf out of my older daughter's book, when she pretended to be Pig and therefore suddenly dared ask scary dinner ladies for the food she wanted. I could perhaps pretend to be Owl, and be helpless and scared...

So if you meet me, and I tell you that I want to hide in my bedroom because I am frightened, don't be fooled. I'm just pretending.

I am NOT feeling helpless. It's Owl who is helpless.