I’m in the office, doing my shit-shovelling film production job in London.
It’s 7.30pm. I wanted to leave an hour earlier, but there’s just so much shit to shovel today.
Suddenly my mobile rings… it’s Lizzie.
A couple of days ago, before I left for London, Lizzie told me how she has an appointment with her oncologist on Wednesday of this week (which, as it happens, is today).
Lizzie was a little anxious about the appointment, it seemed. Not so much because seeing a doctor about cancer – even former cancer – would make anyone anxious. Lizzie seemed more anxious about the fact that she was going to have to pick up our daughter after school… and take her with her to the appointment.
Logistically, there was no way around it. I was going to be in London. No-one else – including Lizzie’s sister C. – was available to pick up Annie. Lizzie was going to have to do it herself… and then take our daughter along with her to the hospital. There wouldn’t be time to go back home first and drop Annie off. There was no getting around it.
Was Annie going to be happy about this?
Like hell!
Anyway, it’s now Wednesday – two days later and, of course, the day of Lizzie’s appointment – and as I said I’m in my office in London when Lizzie calls.
‘Where are you?’ she asks.
‘Still at work,’ I reply, self-pityingly.
‘It’s 7.30.’
‘I know!’ I retort, appalled. This is not in my work contract!
‘I’ve just been to see my oncologist!’ Lizzie now says, breezily.
Yikes! I think. Even though my work is so incredibly fucking boring, I’ve been so immersed in it, I’ve completely forgotten to ring her to ask how the appointment went.
Am I in the doghouse?
Lizzie’s relaxed tone suggests she’s not too bothered, or if she is, she can’t be bothered to say how bothered she is.
‘Annie was INCREDIBLY angry, that I made her go with me, and wouldn’t drop her at home first,’ she yawns. ‘I don’t know what the doctor made of this cross teenaged girl sitting in his office.’
‘So… how did it go?’ I finally ask the big question, approximately two hours too late.
‘Well… it’s been a year since I was given the all-clear, did you know that?’ asks Lizzie, now sounding a lot more focused (and possibly irritated too, at the prospect that I might not know that).
‘Wow, yes, of course it is!’ I reply. And wow, yes, of course it is! I think. Lizzie was given the all-clear of her grade 3C ovarian cancer a year ago – in June 2022.
Of course, that same month she ended up in the hospital with a bowel adhesion… an appalling consequence of her cancer debulking operation months before. Afterwards, Lizzie said that the experience of the bowel adhesion was even worse than the debulking and subsequent chemotherapy for her cancer. ‘Agonising,’ was how she described the adhesion. She really felt like the blockage in her bottom was going to be the end of her, so to speak. The whole business was pretty horrific. It rather took the sense of relief out of Lizzie getting the all-clear for cancer, not long before.
Anyway, back to my conversation with Lizzie in the present…
‘It’s been a year… and my oncologist says my CA-125 markers are eleven!’ Lizzie says, happily. I think it’s happily.
‘Markers’ are the numbers which say how much evidence there is of cancer in a person’s blood stream, if I haven’t mentioned that before.
Eleven’s good. I know this.
‘Eleven. That’s great! Right?’ I ask, for confirmation.
‘Yes it is! Eleven is normal,’ whoops Lizzie. ‘It means, after a year, I’ve got absolutely no signs of cancer! I’ve been clear for a year!’
‘That’s brilliant!’ This is a momentous moment. But strangely, as our life has grown back to normality – in tandem with the hair growing back on Lizzie’s head – it doesn’t feel that momentous. Maybe I’ve just grown used to Lizzie being well.
When she told me she had the all-clear a year ago, it felt like the culmination and resolution of an epic, epically awful journey. Our lives finally swinging back into balance, after a year of them being turned upside down.
Now it feels more like we’ve been driving down a relatively calm road for a year… and Lizzie’s just received a shiny new, clean driving license… free of any blots… meaning we can carry on motoring down the calm road. Maybe, hopefully… indefinitely.
Still… it might not be as dramatic as a year ago… but, the more I think about it, the more I realise this moment is pretty momentous. Whichever way you look at it. Of course it is.
‘When I think,’ says Lizzie, her tone darkening, ‘of those odds my oncologist gave me, when I asked him for them last year.’
Yes, I think. I remember.
‘There was an eighty-five percent change of my cancer coming back, he said,’ says Lizzie, ‘and then, if it did come back, I’d only have a fifty percent chance of surviving.’
‘I remember.’ I say it out loud, this time.
‘But when my doctor told me today I still haven’t got cancer… he said it’s “what he’d been expecting”. I was pleased…’ explains Lizzie, ‘but also I felt a little like strangling him. If it was what he’d been expecting, all along, then why did he give me those shitty odds before?’
‘That’s a fair point,’ I say.
‘Oh, I shouldn’t complain,’ sighs Lizzie. ‘He’s lovely really.’
I get the sense that the good news her doctor has given her, is helping to push out any malignant thoughts from Lizzie’s head. Like a wonderful, pain-free form of mental chemotherapy.
A dark thought enters my head though.
‘When your doctor said there was an eighty-five percent chance of your cancer coming back, did he mean of it coming back within a year? Or did he mean over a longer period?’
If the doctor did mean a year, it really sounds like Lizzie has beaten the odds (after all, she’s been clear now for a year). But if the doctor meant there’s an eighty-five percent chance of the cancer coming back over a longer period of time (two years? Five?)… well, it means Lizzie’s not out of the woods yet. Not that she ever really will be, completely, I suppose.
‘I don’t know, I didn’t ask,’ says Lizzie, in reply to my question. ‘And I don’t want to know. Thinking about that will bring me down! I just want to think about the good news.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Anyway,’ says Lizzie, her voice now full of humour and confidence and life. ‘So that’s that. I’m clear. Maybe not forever. But for now.’
‘Which means I’m afraid you won’t be able to cash in the life insurance on me just yet,’ she concludes.
A comment like that, I feel, warrants a reply in kind.
‘Well, I’ll keep the life insurance payments on direct debit. For now. Just in case.’
Lizzie laughs a deep laugh… dark and creaky as the gallows… and I join her.
June 2023
P. D. Clifton 
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