Paw Paw Salad

Singin' the Black Book Blues.

About a year ago I bought myself a little black notebook

Some time in June last year, after it came to light that I was crook

Neglected now for months I get it out once more and take a look.

 

It ain’t the kind of black book that has contents likely to defame

This ain’t no list of lovers, contact details listed next to name

The hook-ups that are outlined all involve an IV and a vein.

 

I met up with this notebook after meeting up with the Big C

It lived inside my bag after some nasties were found inside me

At each and every nerve-wracking appointment it was on my knee.

 

The notebook’s filled with questions and some roughly drawn survival charts

Accounts and contact numbers and my surgery admission cards

And details of the medical equipment firm who’d make my bra.

 

I’ve got those little-black-book, life-and-death-in-biro blues

The can’t-believe-that’s-my-list-of-medication blues

Used to run your life - now it seems that cancer’s running you.

 

The notebook's crammed to bursting with suggestions from folk being nice

When cancer comes to visit everybody’s got some good advice

Sometimes it’s really useful, but there’s some I’m scared to look at twice.

 

I scribbled down the chances of a spread to liver, lungs or brain

A visit from a team of Mets who don't have baseball as their game

I double-check it often but the numbers always stay the same.

 

Six months since chemo ended and it’s time to see my docs once more

How fast has come the day when I must knock upon that clinic door

It seems the time's arrived to take the book out of my bedside drawer.

 

I’ve got those little-black-book, chattin’-about-cancer blues

The love-my-doctors-but-scared-as-hell-to-see-'em blues

The..yes, I look just fine, but I looked fine this time last year

..could be jotting down that I’m OK or I’m cactus

..only thing that helps is humour of the same colour...blues.

Strutting...and a little fretting.

Life has been chaotic over the past few weeks. Last weekend, I sang with the Darwin Chorale on the outdoor stage at Charles Darwin University in a show called ‘Hats Off to Broadway’ with the Darwin Symphony Orchestra and musical theatre star Michael Cormick. It was a hoot. I'm the tall gal with short hair near the centre of the back row (you can't see my post-chemo curls in these pictures but the current effect is rather 1970s).

As we sang, I recalled standing on the same stage twelve months ago. This time last year the Chorale performed ‘Opera Under the Stars’ with the DSO and an international-calibre tenor and soprano flown in from 'Down South'.

Hearing the voices of these magnificent singers at close range during rehearsals was a thrilling experience. As for being on stage with them - for someone who up until then had been a 'shower singer' – well, this photo gives some idea. You can just see me in the middle, looking down at the music through my long hair and smiling - drinking in the moment, and completely unaware that my life was about to fall apart. If, after the show, you'd have asked me about my health, I would have described it as excellent. It still seems incredible to think that I actually had two invasive tumours which had started creeping into my lymph nodes.

The season of first anniversaries is upon me. Lump detected: 13 June. Off to the doctor: 14 June. Ultrasound: 23 June.  Biopsy: 28 June. Diagnosis: 4 July.  Mastectomy: 13 July. People talk about the emotional nature of cancer anniversaries, but while on stage last weekend I somehow found it even more poignant to be reminded of my last few days of pre-diagnosis innocence.

A Darwin year splits in dramatic fashion. Dry season weather is almost obscenely beautiful. If you’re lucky, visitors arrive, and a year’s worth of cultural and sporting activities are crammed into five glorious months before the torpor of the wet season takes hold. Last year, I ended up missing most of the dry. This year, two dear friends have already been and gone, and my parents arrive tomorrow afternoon. I am grateful for the busy-ness and distraction, as next week I fly south for the first six-monthly checkup with my treatment team. Lovely as it will be to visit friends in Sydney, I pray that this year my taste of winter will be fleeting, and that I’ll be back within days to revel in the splendour of my first full Top End dry .