A patient for Lucy Van Pelt
There was nothing romantic about this cancer. Utterly arbitrary, it didn’t have a narrative. It was just blank-faced and dutiful, a civil servant among diseases. So I went deep into some glum pop music and constructed what stories I could there." Giles Smith, Lost in Music.
Shortly before I left Sydney (where I’d been staying in a rented flat while having treatment for breast cancer, with lots of support and TLC from my wonderful parents) to return to my husband and children in Darwin, I had the following dream. My mother is standing next to a big, old-fashioned desk. We both know that its drawer has not been opened since before I started treatment, and that its contents may need to be cleaned out. My mother opens the drawer and extracts...a watermelon. The fruit disintegrates in her hands, splattering juice all over the floor. She is left holding onto the skin – now looking like a dripping green sock – which she examines with concern and then hands to me.
On waking, I was torn between laughter and mortification. Oh, to be the possessor of a satisfyingly obscure subconscious! Is it possible that I had been...I don’t know...bottling up a thing or two since I was diagnosed with cancer?? Initially I thought that the watermelon was a cute hint at my imminent return to the tropics, but on further reflection I began to suspect that it represented my level of psychological complexity.
Giles Smith used pop music to help him make sense of cancer; I’m going to try and use this blog. My watermelon is about to splatter. Stand back – this could get messy.
This is the first post from my new blog, Paw Paw Salad (www.paw-paw-salad.com). I'm planning to reflect on my experiences with breast cancer there and would love to hear from you - please come and say hi!!
Comments
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Hi Liz, yes dreams can be funny things. Sometimes they make sense and other times they leave us to "wonder why". It is always good to try and fathom them out. Good luck and I will take a ride down your website. XLeonie
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Lovely to hear from you, Leonie! Yes, please come and say hi on the blog!! I'll re-post things here, but hope to have some other 'non-cancer' stuff on it as well (hopefully some fun things about adjusting to life in Darwin, etc). I'm very keen to make connections with other women with breast cancer, and hope this site and my blog might both be ways to do it. I'll be keeping up to date with your posts! Cheers, Liz
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Lovely to hear from you, Leonie! Yes, please come and say hi on the blog!! I'll re-post things here, but hope to have some other 'non-cancer' stuff on it as well (hopefully some fun things about adjusting to life in Darwin, etc). I'm very keen to make connections with other women with breast cancer, and hope this site and my blog might both be ways to do it. I'll be keeping up to date with your posts! Cheers, Liz
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