I didn’t actually start writing this journal when Lizzie was first diagnosed with cancer.
I started writing it a couple of months later.
To be honest, when Lizzie was first diagnosed with cancer, writing about it was the very last thing on my mind. Things were way too upsetting and stressful!
She found out about it, in the middle of July 2021.
Before the diagnosis, we’d had a pretty weird year – like everybody else. We moved to the countryside (in the Midlands, to be slightly more specific) in 2018… for the better air, the good free schools, to be nearer Lizzie’s family… and for a change. We certainly got that! A year and a half later (in January 2021), lockdown hit.
We’d found it challenging adjusting to life in the countryside, as it was. Before moving, we’d lived for many years in a busy suburb of South West London called East Sheen. In Sheen. we’d become completely acclimatised to bumping into friends in ‘Artisan Coffee’ or Waitrose and nattering about whatever media folk in London natter to each other about. Probably about the marvellous media job they’re doing or boxset they’re watching.
Out in the countryside, in the village called Bunton we moved to, things weren’t like that (Bunton isn’t the village’s real name, btw, although it’s similar. The fact it’s also the surname of a Spice Girl is purely coincidental). There was no bumping into people we knew, in a coffee shop or supermarket, because there was no coffee shop or supermarket. There was nothing, apart from the village church. Also, we didn’t know anyone to bump into.
It became harder to befriend people, we might be able to bump into, when lockdown hit and we were only allowed out for a bit of exercise every day (hard to believe restrictions like that actually existed, in these subsequent days of ‘Partygate’).
The kids were at home all the time, of course, doing home schooling – which was driving them and us slowly nuts (as it did with families all over the world).
Also slowly driving us nuts, was the fact that the old house we’d bought to live in was gradually but determinedly falling apart. The shower leaked. Damp rose from ground. The window frames were beginning to rot. Bits of masonry would fall off the walls. I attempted to fight this ongoing deterioration by painting all of the external woodwork a lovely ‘heritage’ green. But it wasn’t nearly enough to make much difference – like painting the outside of a toppling Jenga tower green.
Another consequence of us living out in the sticks, when Covid hit, was I suddenly found it very hard to get work. I’d been working as a scriptwriter of animated films (most of which haven’t been made and the ones which have you won’t have heard of) for a few years. Suddenly, as the pandemic raged, all my work dried up. And, being out of London, it became much harder to rustle up any more.
I’m moaning. Actually, in many ways things were good for us, living in the countryside during lockdown. We had much more space than when we lived in London. The country air was clear and pure. And the chances of bumping into people, and catching Covid, were seriously reduced – because there was hardly anyone for us to bump into.
Lizzie managed to pick up work fairly consistently. As well as being an amazing painter, she also does concepts on film and TV shows. Sounds glamorous? I think it is! Although Lizzie herself would rather just be doing still life paintings of flowers. She loves painting flowers.
My stressful bout of unemployment also came to an end, at last, when I was offered a job working remotely in film production. Not a job I particularly wanted (working in film production isn’t always as interesting as it sounds, particularly on the managerial side of things). But I was relieved to be offered it.
I was offered the job on July 17th. On July 18th, I was away from Bunton – I can’t remember where – when I spoke to Lizzie on the phone.
Lizzie had gone to see a doctor in Birmingham, to discuss a persistent pain she’d had in her abdomen for some time. Months and months and months in fact.
She’d had a blood test (not her first, as a result of the pain) a few days before… and today was having an ultrasound, followed by an appointment with a doctor to talk about the results.
When I spoke to Lizzie on the phone, after the appointment, she sounded seriously shaken up.
She suddenly burst into tears.
‘I’ve got cancer,’ she managed to blurt out, between sobs.
Lizzie didn’t just have cancer. She had very advanced cancer. Stage 3C Ovarian cancer. The last stage before Stage 4 – which is when cancer is frequently terminal.
Lizzie’s cancer wasn’t necessarily terminal. But it wasn’t far off.
The weeks which followed were a blur.
Lizzie was booked in to have surgery at the BMI Priory Hospital, in Birmingham, a couple of weeks later. Me and she have both paid into Bupa private health schemes for years – and finally it was payback time for Lizzie (not in a particularly nice way, though. Who wants that kind of payback?).
Her surgeon was called Mrs S. and was the same surgeon who had operated on Lizzie’s mother, when she too had had ovarian cancer – in her 70s in her case (we didn’t know if Lizzie’s Mum having the same cancer was a coincidence or not, by the way. There are genes which mean cancer can be hereditary. But these were things we weren’t really thinking about, at the time).
Lizzie was lucky. Her cancer was so advanced and bulky, normally she might have been expected to have chemotherapy before her operation… to shrink her tumours down. But Mrs. S., apparently, was a gung-ho sort of a surgeon… and was quite happy to cut out the enormous tumours (the first one they found, in the ultrasound, was 16cm across) immediately.
Of course, they don’t just cut out the tumours. They have to cut out various organs with the tumours too. In other words, Lizzie was to have a total hysterectomy – all of her reproductive organs removed.
And so, after a week or two of absorbing this shocking news – followed by an emotional farewell – Lizzie went into the hospital and I…
… went on holiday.
OK, that sounds bad. I went on holiday with the kids (which in many ways, I’d say, is hardly like being on holiday at all). Does that sound better? Probably not.
In fact, the holiday – down in Devon, with Lizzie’s best friend from childhood and her family – had been booked months in advance. And Lizzie was insistent I take our kids Jake (boy) and Annie (girl) down for the week. Honest she was!
Lizzie explained that she’d rather the kids have a nice time on hols, than sitting around at home worrying about her in the hospital. It’s not like we could visit her anyway. Such things weren’t allowed back then, because of the Covid restrictions (rules were different for us non-Tory politician types!).
So as Lizzie was on a trolley being wheeled into the operating theatre… the kids were in kayaks being pushed out into the sea (OK, these things weren’t actually simultaneous. That’s just a bit of artistic licence for you).
It was a pretty surreal time. Lizzie’s childhood best friend and her family were wonderful at distracting us all. Jake had his fifteenth birthday too, on the trip (which involved a meal out and Annie and I blowing up lots of balloons with Jake’s face on them, which Lizzie had somehow found the time to order on the Internet). But me and Jake’s and Annie’s thoughts always ended up returning to the BMI Priory Hospital in Birmingham.
How was the children’s mother – and my long-term partner – actually doing?
Was she OK?
Annie responded to the uncertainty of it all by asking lots of questions. When’s Mum coming back? What’s it going to be like when she gets back? What can we do to make life easier for her, when she’s back? Jake* responded by not saying much – I guess he was internalising things. But I knew he was thinking about what had happened. A lot.
*Jake is not our son’s real name, by the way. It has a similar ring to his real name, however. Also, Jake Peralta (from Brooklyn 99) is one of my favourite TV characters, so that’s another reason I’ve picked the name as a pseudonym (possibly not a very good reason, but a reason nonetheless).
Thank heavens for WhatsApp.
The first signs of life from Lizzie, post operation and post recovery time in intensive care, came via the wondrous App.
Lizzie sent a photo of herself, plastic tubes crisscrossing her face like the Gravelly Hill Interchange, with tired eyes but a relieved smile on her face.
I spoke to Lizzie’s surgeon, Mrs. S., that same day – who confirmed the operation had been a success. She’d removed all of the tumours.
Thank fuck! I didn’t say this in front of the kids. But this, of course, is exactly what I thought.
Me and the kids were back at home by this time… and we started WhatsApping Lizzie regularly, as she continued to convalesce in hospital. Not just texts – face-to-face calls too, when Lizzie had the energy.
Here are a few examples of the kinds of messages we exchanged.
**
Me: [after seeing the photo of Lizzie drained but smiling, after her operation]: Ah! Amazing to see you smiling! You ARE amazing!! Xxxxxx
Me: Sorry for the obvious question, but how are you feeling? X
Me: Are you high on morphine?
Lizzie: Morphine and tramadol. X
Me: Nice!
**
Me: Goodnight! Sleep tight! Love you! XXX
Lizzie: Thanks! I think it’s going to be impossible to sleep… love you too. Thanks for being so lovely about all of this xxxx
[Btw – yes, Lizzie did actually say this! Clearly it was the effects of the morphine and tramadol].
Lizzie: PS – I get to see the actual tumour tomorrow!! I’ll take a photo! X
Me: Look forward to seeing the tumour tomorrow (?)! Sleep as well as you can and I’ll speak to you tomorrow!! I know I keep on saying it, but you really have been amazing about all of this. Loads of love xxxxxx
Lizzie: Thanks. You too. No more texts. Trying to sleep xxx
[Sadly, Lizzie never actually did take a photo of her main tumour – so we’ll all just have to imagine it].
**
Lizzie: The physio has just told me that for the next six weeks I mustn’t do prolonged standing up for more than 30 mins.
Me: I’m jealous! ; )
**
Me: Morning! How are you feeling today? Xxx
Lizzie: OK. It’s going to be a long recovery x
Me: I know, but at least you’ve started it! X
**
Me: [after Lizzie has posted a selfie… focussing on the huge scar running down her abdomen in a straight, vertical line] Wow! That’s a big un! Xxx
Lizzie: Name of your sex tape!
Me: I meant to say ‘hardly noticeable’.
Me: That’s what she said! Xx
[‘Name of your sex tape’ and ‘That’s what she said’ are references to Brooklyn 99 and The Office US respectively, in case you didn’t know. By this stage, you can clearly see that Lizzie was beginning to regain her inimitable smutty sense of humour].
Lizzie: I’m buying bikinis for next summer!
Me: THIS summer! See you tomorrow!
**
That last exchange took place the day before Lizzie’s return, after she’d been in the hospital for over a week.
The day Lizzie was let out of hospital, I drove up to the BMI Priory to pick her up.
Not surprisingly, they brought her out of the front of the building in a wheelchair. And, not surprisingly either, Lizzie looked pale and drawn. But (not surprisingly for Lizzie) she still had a smile on her face. The smile suggested a mixture of defiance… and relief to be alive.
And so began Lizzie’s convalescence. Lizzie hates lying around doing nothing. (Unfortunately, lying around doing nothing is my favourite thing to do in the world – so we often butt heads on the subject). But Lizzie had little choice on the matter – and so she remained largely bed-bound for the next month.
During this period, WhatsApp continued to be a major source of communication.
Most of the messages coming from bedridden Lizzie were now instructions – of the bland domestic kind. E.g.:
Lizzie: could you ask Annie to bring me a cup of tea?
Lizzie: could you ask Jake to write a birthday card to his great Aunt C. please. Annie did already but Jake didn’t x
Lizzie: I think I left my phone in my car or the kitchen. Can you look?
Lizzie: Ignore. Found it.
Lizzie: can you get sausages and bacon and eggs for the kids’ breakfast please?
Etc.
Whilst – in normal circumstances – I might have grumbled slightly at Lizzie’s electronic list of chores, in these new circumstances I was only too happy to do them.
I just wanted Lizzie to focus on getting better.
Part of that process, of course, was for her to undergo chemotherapy.
The chemo began five weeks after Lizzie’s operation – in September 2021.
She was due to have six sessions, over three week intervals. So the whole course was going to last for eighteen weeks in total.
When it came to her first chemo, Lizzie’s sister C. drove her to the BMI Priory Hospital. With hindsight, I should probably have driven Lizzie. I mean, what can be more important than a family member’s health? But my head was full of work – I’d been doing fourteen-hour days on my ghastly film production job – so C. very kindly offered to be chauffeur.
Lizzie spent the whole day having the chemo. When I spoke to her on the phone, she said she was sitting by herself in a hospital room… whilst an assortment of medical types came in an out and told her not very much.
As I mentioned in the section ‘Covid and Chemo’ above, eventually the medical types put a ‘port’ in Lizzie’s chest and began pumping her full of the chemo stuff.
I’ve already talked about how Lizzie was always at her worst the week immediately after the chemotherapy session (that’s when she’d begin saying things like ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it’). But the week after that, as the chemo medicine finished working its way through her system, she’d always have a dramatic upswing (and would say things like ‘I’m going to beat this thing!’).
After noting this cycle of despair/elation, Lizzie began basing her plans around it. She wouldn’t schedule in anything during the first week after chemo… because basically she’d feel like she was dying. But in the second week after chemo… all bets were off. She might go on a walk with a friend… or even meet them for coffee.
After the third chemo, Lizzie’s sisters C. and H. noted the despair/elation cycle too… and decided they were going to take Lizzie out for a treat, during her second ‘good’ week.
They suggested they take Lizzie – for her treat – to the Daylesford Organic market, near Chipping Norton in the Cotswolds. And Lizzie – because she understandably felt like she deserved a treat after so much awfulness – agreed to it.
How could C. and H. have known that their act of kindness would end up going badly wrong? That’s because, when C. and H. led Lizzie into the large tent which had been set up at Daylesford, it was COMPLETELY PACKED FULL OF PEOPLE. And Lizzie, unfortunately, ended up being squashed amongst them – and catching Covid off one of them (she had no idea which one, afterwards).
So, anyway. That’s why Lizzie ended up with Covid AND cancer. And that’s pretty much when I started keeping this journal of everything which was happening to her and us (me, Jake and Annie).
So that’s what this blog is. A journal, of a very weird time. A diary without dates (because I didn’t think of writing any dates down, at the time).
It’s generally chronological (OK I admit it, there are a few times I might have taken a little bit of license with this. For instance, the section a few pages above called ‘I’M GOING TO DO IT!’ was probably the first bit I wrote. But I didn’t want to start the book with this… so I pushed it back a little! I hope you don’t mind me taking the occasional liberty like this!).
The other thing you might have noticed is… there’s quite a lot of humour and joking around in the events I describe. Seems inappropriate, given the subject matter? Well maybe it is. But that’s just how things were. Despite Lizzie’s many downs (and there were many, many) there were a few ups as well. I wanted to write about these too. Maybe I’ve focused too much on them, but life’s depressing enough, isn’t it? Anyway, I talk about this a little more in the section above ‘WHY I WANTED TO WRITE THIS BOOK’.
As a final note, here, I wanted to say… I didn’t just write about Lizzie’s cancer, in this journal! (Although I did write about this a lot). In fact, I wrote about the whole weirdness of our Autumn 2021 to Spring 2022 on just about every level. I lot of this weirdness had to do with our move from London to the countryside… being surrounded by a lot of people we didn’t know… getting a (terrible) dog to fit in with our roles as country squires… and, of course, getting 100% trapped in our new lives by the whole Covid bombshell (when we couldn’t leave the house or do anything, really). So there’s some stuff about this as well, in the upcoming posts, just to give you a heads up!
To end this long section, I’d like to describe something which happened not long ago – when Lizzie and I and the kids went out for Sunday lunch with some friends. During the lunch, the Mum-friend asked Lizzie how she was doing and Lizzie replied ‘much better.’ She then described how much of a rollercoaster she’d been on, emotionally, whilst she’d been having chemo.
I wondered, after Lizzie said this, how much of her despair she must have hidden from me and the kids in her darkest hours – in between the moments of laughter. She’s certainly a stoical lady – not one to want to make a fuss, even in extraordinary circumstances. I then also wondered, how much of the awfulness of everything which happened I’ve subsequently filtered out; how many bad memories of Lizzie’s experience I’ve unconsciously dropped.
‘Don’t they say that happens to you, after you’ve had a car crash?’ I said, to the Mum-friend. ‘That your mind begins to block out the memories it doesn’t want to deal with?’
‘That’s what they say happens to you after childbirth,’ said the Mum-friend, knowingly. ‘Yup, I’m struggling to remember anything about that either,’ I replied. The Mum-friend rolled her eyes and sipped on her strawberry daiquiri.
P. D. Clifton 
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