Wait and see

After only a couple of visits to the hospital we belong there, we're in the club, know where to go and what to do. Even I, the appendage, feel that I have my place under its Oncology Wing.

We clock up a few hours in the radiotherapy waiting areas. Someone on the staff (clerical, I suspect, without knowing why) has a subscription to Gardens magazine (NOT Gardens Illustrated which would be a completely different kettle of fish; you probably have to be BUPA to find that in a waiting room), and there is Country Life, some old Cosmopolitans and a Vogue. Nothing housey. By the time Major's initial simulation is over I have flicked through the whole stack, spending most time with Hello, circa May 2003. That distraction out of the way, the real waiting game can begin which is Observation (subtitled Guess the Cancer).

The radiotherapy labs keep office hours, Monday to Friday, 9-5, so there's no shift work, and we see the same sets of staff most times, and, often, the same patients. This is surprising as the sessions are short, no more than 4 minutes or so, and the waiting areas are usually busy. Maybe it's to do with the settings of the machines, since the strength of x-rays changes throughout the treatment; some weeks a full-on zapping, other weeks a mere tickle, the machine teasing the tumor like a cat with a mouse. Maybe the patients we see are all in step with Major and his course, though their cancers are in different bits. The thought of the planning this would involve hurts my head; it's more likely to be the alphabetical order of their names... In any case, a lot of people in the South East of England are taking a nuking.

Many of the women go into cubicles when they arrive, and exchange their tops for blue hospital smocks, and their shoes for thick socks that look as if they belong to wet suits. I guess from the smocks that they have breast cancer, though the socks are a bit of a mystery.

During half-term, children accompany their mothers, swinging their dangling legs from chairs, and finding things to fidget over and giggle at, delightfully shadow-free.

There are men with red patches on their necks, areas of burning defined by straight lines, so maybe they're oropharynx like Major, though the thing about this game is that you never know - it could be the bones, or something else in the neck that is cancerous rather than the squamous cells. (In the beginning, Graham told us that there's a cancer for every bit of the body, and showed us a willy immobilisation unit he'd made.)

There are out-patients in wheelchairs brought in by porters from the NHS bus who will have to wait for all of their fellow passengers to be treated before they can go home again, and in-patients with no hair, wheeled up from the wards in their bed clothes. An old man is brought along in his bed, and we watch his progress through a whole week at the same time every day. He starts off on Monday sprouting tubes, frail and semi-conscious , and by Friday his hair is neatly brushed and he's alert. I would like to say hello (my Oncology Club membership might allow me to) but am not able to break through the bed/dignity/big-mouth, nosy soprano thing.

One day there is a prisoner waiting with two guards, one of them joined to him by handcuffs. He is round-shouldered and cowed, not a malignant presence, but weighty, more priest than paedophile. He looks like Shylock, or a faded flamenco king, or an aging Indian chief; swarthy, pock-marked skin, a huge hook nose and intense greeny blue eyes that make me think of exotic fish, though I only get the quickest glimpse as he casts them down to the floor. He is not your average man of Kent. A skull cap is on his head, but in place of robes, regulation jeans and a plum sweatshirt dress his thin body; they express nothing of him but the loss of his expression. In contrast, the beefy anglo-saxon guards are completely at ease with all that their black and white uniforms and shaved heads say of them. There is no interaction with their charge, but they chat and laugh with each other. Really, casting and wardrobe have excelled themselves again; I even forget to guess.

Major's favourite team is at LA3, particularly Rachel who has warmth and curiosity, and quickly tunes into his way of being. The boys in LA2 do not possess such charm; they call the patients' names with their heads in their clip-boards, then "date of birth?" across the room when the patients are barely out of their chairs. These are people they see day after day, for weeks sometimes, but Major says they're OK once he's inside the lab, and anyway, much better that they're really quick with the mask business.

Most times Graham will saunter through at his slow andante, "it's all go today...". He'll stop for a chat, and ask Major the time of his appointment, then look at his watch. The machines can be temperamental, and have cranky days when they don't work well, causing delays. On such days Graham has a word with the lads, and Major's name, as if by magic, will be the next one called. Major oils this system with gifts of strawberries and apples for the teams, whatever he finds at the farm stalls on his way in. He and Graham share an innate understanding of what makes people tick, and would thrive on any black market. They're natural survivors.

The man in the thermoplastic mask

Radiotherapy ended over three weeks ago and Major is recovering well. This is how it started...

At the end of August, Major and his new mask have a 45 minute appointment in the radiotherapy simulation suite. Dr Rowell is there with his team to work out exactly where the x-rays will strike. The purpose of the mask is to keep the patient still so that the rays hit their target precisely without damaging surrounding healthy tissue. Mildly claustrophobic, Major has had nightmares about this since the date with Graham; I know because most nights I've been woken by his whimpers and flailing limbs.

He lies on a plinth with supports under his knees to keep his back comfortable. The mask is placed over his head and bolted down; he's told to raise a hand if it's too unbearable in which case he'll be released. His eyes are open, and immediately dust falls into them from the mask; he can barely blink it fits him so tightly. Eyelashes poke out through holes too small to allow a relieving fingertip in, and laser-thin lines of green light criss-cross his body. He is left alone in the dark room.

Dr Rowell and the techies sit at banks of computers behind a glass wall as in a recording studio. At the tap of their fingers the plinth goes up, plinth goes down, and the giant head of the machine moves above and around Major at impossible angles for one so huge, its blank face preparing to blow Terminator kisses to his tumor from all directions.

Major's course of 35 treatments is to be mapped out and programmed in during this simulation; decisions made about photons, electrons, neutrons, futons and all sorts of sci-fi business; "warp factor" is probably somewhere in the mix. A radiographer repeatedly rushes in to mark grids on the mask with thin strips of tape, and then to draw lines and bullet points on them in green ink (earthling, lo-tech style). With each visit she reassuringly coos to Major "not long to go now", before dashing out again. After 25 minutes he waves to her as she approaches and grunts through closed mouth his urgent desire to be free. She explains that there are only 5 minutes to go, and if they break now they'll have to go right back and start from the beginning. She tells him he's doing really well, and disappears.

In the village Major bumps into our neighbour, Jenny, a reflexologist. She has made repeated offers of a free session since she heard that Major had cancer, and now he is so freaked out by the simulation experience that he finally accepts. After a generous hour in her slanting chair he floats home across the road, clutching a relaxation cd dealing with FEAR. He dreamily tells me that the session was wonderful, and sleeps all afternoon and through the night. The next day as I'm practising I hear strange moans outside my room, and "no, no, NO". I open the door to see Major denying his fear on my yoga mat, eyes closed, body extended, listening to the cd through headphones. Over the next few days he is often to be found in meditative pose, his fingers forming various shapes as Jenny has shown him, glass of wine on the table at his side.

A second session with her a few days later is as pleasant and relaxing as the first, but, after the third the other-worldly sense of well-being disappears, and Major comes home agitated and disturbed, muttering in all seriousness about the release of demons. Jenny reckons he is particularly responsive to the work so it should have good results.

On the next visit to Maidstone Major seeks out Graham and asks him to cut eye and mouth holes in the mask. He asks that his nose might have a hole too but this is an orifice too far and is denied him for the sake of the mask's "structural integrity". When Major enters LA2 for his first dose of rays he asks to hold the mask before being clamped under it. He gives it a good shake and blows away dust from the new cuts, then gives himself up to the plinth. He says that by the time the session finishes, some 4 minutes later, he is almost asleep.

Comments

Thank you so much for the emails you've sent about the blog and the love you've sent to Major. It's fantastic for both of us to have the good vibes coming through. I know that comments have been hard to post here, but the settings have been tinkered with, so hopefully, if you check the "anonymous" button that comes up when you've clicked on "comments" and copy the squiggly letters there, the comment should get through.