Having had a delicious lunch of salami-and-cheese-stuffed pancakes – courtesy of Lizzie, of course – we’re doing our daily walk across the fields with Cedric the dog.
All around us are sapling trees – in their plastic sheathes – planted by the Heart of England trust. A lot of them are leaning over precariously. Maybe it wasn’t just the grown-up trees which got pushed to the ground by the recent stormy weather.
I’m aware that we’re coming up to the day when Lizzie is meant to be seeing her oncologist, for her main post-chemo catch-up. An appointment in which hopefully some needling threads will be tied up. For instance, what exactly did the oncologist mean when he mentioned the ‘postoperative changes’ of Lizzie’s liver? Worrying stuff like that.
‘So do you have your appointment with the oncologist on Friday?’ I ask.
‘What?’ says Lizzie. ‘No, I’m not having that anymore.’
‘How come?’ I reply, surprised.
Lizzie explains that after her oncologist had rung the first time – and thrown off the bit of news about her liver in a slightly blasé manner – he rang again and went through things in a bit more detail.
‘I didn’t know that,’ I say. Not crossly. Just glad that Lizzie’s communication with the doctor has continued.
Lizzie now explains that the oncologist explained, in the second call, what he meant by the ‘postoperative changes’ of Lizzie’s liver. Apparently, he said there was a bit of water around it… but it’s nothing to worry about and was probably due to the operation.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Well, that’s good!’ A dark thought crosses my mind. ‘And what about your abdominal pains?’
Lizzie has indeed had some more abdominal pains, in the last few weeks. In roughly the same place where she got the abdominal pain which led (eventually) to her cancer diagnosis. For obvious reasons, then, this has been a rather alarming development.
‘It’s gone!’ says Lizzie, happily. ‘It went a few days ago. I think it was nothing. Maybe I just had a bit of cabbage stuck in my bum for too long.’
It’s true. Lizzie has been eating a lot of cabbage recently.
‘So…’ I say, not quite believing it. ‘Is that… it?’
‘For now,’ smiles Lizzie. ‘The oncologist thinks I’m cancer-free. He says there doesn’t appear to be anything else for me to worry about. So I just have to go back to see the surgeon in three months and the oncologist again in six. And… fingers crossed… everything will be fine.’
Everything will be fine. Hopefully. We won’t know for sure for a long time. But this feels, to put it simply, like a big step in the right direction.
After all the upheavals… the emotions… the uncertainties… the dark humour in a grim situation… the fights and makings-up again… all of that stuff, over the last six months, we seem to have reached the end of our journey – at least this part of it – in a surprisingly quiet, nondescript way. I don’t want to say anticlimactic… having a big climax to this story is probably the last thing we want, anticlimactic is great! But still… after all of the fireworks, it does feel like a remarkably benign, matter-of-fact conclusion to everything. Just me and Lizzie going on our daily walk, with her calmly explaining the facts… fingers crossed… everything will be fine.
And, frankly, what better way to end things? Calmly, undramatically, optimistically. Until the next chapter at least. Although, hopefully, there won’t be a next chapter. One worth writing about, anyway.
Fingers crossed indeed, I think.
And with that, we walk home – pulled by Cedric – and finish off the rest of the pancakes.
P. D. Clifton 
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