The beginning of the end

At the end of June 2009, Jen had survived five months of chemotherapy and five weeks of radiotherapy. She just struggled through recovering from bad radiation burns that required burn cream and dressing several times per day, and large doses of painkillers. We were still clinging to the faint hope that the good result after Easter -- no secondaries visible on the PET scan - would give us some additional time. We had planned to take all of third term off and go travelling north up to Queensland, and preparations were well advanced. Yet the whole trip was dependent on having another good scan result in early July.

Just as she was fully recovered from the radiation burns, Jen started getting unexplained abdominal pains. She took herself off to the GP (not her usual GP, who was away), who thought that all the codeine Jen had been taking might be causing the symptoms. There was a meeting in Perth that week which needed me to be there, and I decided that a couple of days away would make no real difference to Jen's situation.

So there I was at 11am on Friday 3rd July 2009, in a technical discussion in a motel in South Perth. My mobile rings - it's Jen. In this age, bad news travels by mobile. I take the call outside, standing in their 'Japanese meditation garden', which is an area of small bridges and raked gravel adjoining the car park. There's traffic noise from the four lane highway outside the gates. It's bad news. On a second visit to the GP they wanted a CT scan to check for intestinal problems, which I knew was happening. I hadn't factored in that they would also image Jen's liver. The results were worse than we'd imagined. She had multiple secondaries in her liver, which was significantly enlarged, and causing her pain.

This is one of the handful of really black moments in the whole time of Jen's last ten months - standing in an ugly place, too many thousand kilometers from home, hearing the news that we'd been secretly fearing - the beginning of the end. Some people say that the diagnosis of a cancer recurrence can be worse than the first diagnosis, but for us there wasn't enough time after the end of chemotherapy for the worry to dissipate, and it seemed to all part of the long downhill slide.

The days from there go into a blur. Ten hours later I was home and holding Jen in my arms. The next afternoon, Saturday, we took her to casualty because the pain relief wasn't sufficient, and she stayed in hospital until Wednesday (including a PET scan, which showed multiple secondaries in Jen's lungs and abdomen). The next week we spent with Jen's family in southern NSW. Two and a half weeks from that black moment, Jen was dead, too soon for many people even to adjust to the news that the cancer was 'back'.

Between now and July 21st (and I'm sure, throughout the rest of my life), I'll be remembering those days one year ago, experiencing that accumulation of small regrets - why did I agree to go away to Perth in that week? - but also giving thanks for the good moments, the flecks of gold in the ash heap.