The Gritquoy Blog

From time bombs to falsies…

I was 19 when I first realised that I had two time bombs strapped to my chest. That was when my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer too late for it to be contained and she had a radical mastectomy at the age of 48.

By the time she was 54, Mother had secondaries throughout her body and she committed suicide in an act of self euthanasia so that we wouldn’t have to watch her waste away and die.

That was in 1972 and I had already had one benign cyst removed the previous year. Thus I had embarked on what turned into a series of worrying discoveries and subsequent minor operations to check them out.

Then, true to the family tradition, I developed cancer myself – in my late forties – and had part of my right breast removed. But it had been caught early, there was no sign of any spread to the lymph nodes, and a course of radio therapy was all the treatment I received. I was living in Brussels at the time.

When I returned to Scotland in 1997 I presented myself to my doctor who arranged an appointment with a specialist at a local hospital. He took one look at my family history and sent me off to a geneticist who tutted loudly and told me that I was almost certain to have a recurrence of the disease.

Three grandparents (my grandfather’s prostate cancer counts because it is similar to breast cancer); my mother; and my father’s sister had all succumbed in their forties and I had too. The outlook was bleak.

So, when I was offered a double prophylactic mastectomy, I jumped at the chance to get rid of the time bombs. I was visited by a psychologist to see if I was fit to have such radical treatment, passed the test – get them off me, please! – and my breasts were removed in 1998.

I immediately rejected the idea of reconstruction. For one thing, it would not be straightforward because, having had radio therapy, the skin on that side was unfit for a silicon implant. Muscle would have to be brought around from my back – no thanks! And meeting women who had problems with their implants firmed up the suspicion I already had about them so I opted out of the whole procedure.

For the last thirteen years I have lived with a hollow chest and coped for the most part. I’ve got used to wearing loose clothing – especially when overweight – and tweaking at it to keep it loose. Occasionally, I’ve browsed the catalogues of bras and falsies but never very seriously especially when seeing the cost of the prosthetics.

I have never felt any less of a woman minus my breasts and although there have been times when I’ve wished I could wear more feminine clothing it hasn’t been enough to do anything about it. The cost put me off and it was also wonderful not to have to wear a bra. Early on, I discovered that men don’t find me any less attractive sexually so that wasn’t a problem either.

But this all changed recently when a close friend encouraged me to look more closely at my options. And, last week, I was given some lifelike prosthetics – for free by the NHS – which are nothing like the birdseed one which my mother had forty years ago. Now there will be no stopping me, and my clothing options have suddenly broadened!

And sporting a new pair of spectacles chosen by a panel of my younger daughter and the aforesaid friend – to replace ones which I’ve never felt suited me – I am now almost seeking out mirrors instead of avoiding them altogether. The psychological impact of all of this is obviously far stronger than I ever imagined it would be. Why didn’t I do it before now?

As for the family cancer, my children have my genes and although their family trees aren’t quite as horrific as my own, their chances of developing cancer are high. I had hoped that there would be a cure by now and, hanging on to that hope, there is still a little time left before they hit their mid forties. All I can do is be thankful that ours is a late onset strain, encourage them to be aware, and keep my fingers crossed…

Thirty-nine years ago today my mother committed suicide. It was the week after her first grandchild, my son, was born but they never met. She was 54.

The last time I saw Mother was in October 1971. I lived in North Argyllshire but had travelled south to Croydon with my (first) husband for my younger brother’s (first) wedding. I was five months pregnant and it hardly showed. Mother, it transpired, was suffering from secondary cancers and her distended abdomen made her look more pregnant than I was and we told her so. But we didn’t know she was ill.

Her primary cancer was breast cancer and she had had a lump for a while before any medic took it seriously. So, when they decided to give her a radical mastectomy, in 1966, it was obvious that it had spread.

In 1969 she was found to have a benign brain tumour and the resulting operations left her suffering regularly from horrendous headaches. And she was never quite the person we had known all our lives, after that experience.

On 29 March 1972 – the day my son was born in Inverness – she was content. Her first grandchild had arrived safely, all three of her children were, it seemed, happily married, and she had met and approved of my father’s mistress and told him that he should marry her (which he subsequently did).

But Mother knew she was ill. And, after waiting for my son to be born, a visit to her GP confirmed it. He arranged for her to visit the breast clinic at Guys Hospital and she knew she would be admitted immediately. So she made her plans.

Choosing a day when my younger brother and his medical student wife were visiting, she locked away her diamonds and, leaving notes about an outstanding grocery bill and some knitting she had been doing for my baby, she made her way to the attic spare room. With her she took her late mother’s sleeping tablets, a glass, a jug of water, a bucket, a pad of paper and a pen. She climbed into the bed, took the tablets, and fell asleep as she wrote. The note was addressed to her husband, my father, and told him how much she loved him.

My brother and his wife found her which was her plan – she didn’t want my father to do so on his own. The coroner’s verdict was suicide due to cancer because the autopsy found she was “riddled” with it.

But I like to think it was self euthanasia.

Today I visited the local cemetery for the first time ever taking my younger daughter with me. My mother has no grave – she had no funeral and was cremated – but the one we visited is that of a neighbour who was a beloved grandmother, mother, and the teenage sweetheart of her grieving widower. She died last November and yesterday her family marked Mother’s Day by visiting her resting place together. I was unwell on the day of her funeral and I chose today to pay my respects to her because it has been a special day for me too.

I am not religious and never have been and probably would describe myself as an agnostic, if I have to say anything. But the truth is that none of us know what happens next when we die, if anything. However, I would love to think that somewhere out there, somewhere in the ether, are those people whom we have loved and lost patiently waiting for us to join them. But I shall have to wait and see, won’t I? As will you!

We lay in bed together in a hotel in the middle of France, having just made love, and I found myself saying, “I’m going to be pregnant!”. There was absolutely no reason for my saying this because I had an IUD and we had been together for months but I said it all the same.

My premonition was correct. The holiday was a disaster and we had rowed a lot – we shouted at each other in the quiet streets of a French town – and I dumped him as soon as we got home. But I was pregnant and knew it as soon as I missed the first period and started feeling squeamish in the mornings.

I was 38, a divorced single mother with two young children, and on social security benefits. So having another child, especially by a different and absent father, was absolutely out of the question.

My children are my life. I dote on my children. I always have and I always will for they are a part of me. But I could not have this child: this part of me had to be destroyed.

I contacted an ex lover who rushed over (my children were away for the weekend with their father). He brought a test kit for me and a large bottle of vodka for himself which he drank straight down from the bottle. But he held me all night whilst we waited to perform the test. And he then rang my far-flung family and they arranged everything for me.

A wonderful man, this ex lover, he was a long-term alcoholic and I loved him dearly but we knew we had no future. However, he had transformed me – a battered wife for many years – from an agoraphobic into a part-time student at the local college (which is where I met the father of this child) but that is another story.

The first hurdle was to obtain the permission of two doctors. I didn’t want to tell my own GP because it was too close to home and this had to be a secret so I headed for a private clinic in Glasgow.

The male doctor asked me about the man who had compromised me. Compromised? I was a consenting adult who had been enjoying a very good sex life, thank you very much! The second doctor turned out to be heavily pregnant which was a bit awkward. More so for the others, I imagine, since I was able to chat to her about having children.

Permission was, however, granted without any question because of my circumstances but my heart went out to the pair of frightened students who were there – they were denied it.

I was then to go to a Liverpool clinic and a planned trip to my father’s in London was altered. He met our train from Scotland in London and I handed him my children in exchange for an envelope containing the £100 I needed for the abortion. Then I stepped onto a Liverpool train and headed for my younger brother.

My brother was working so I took his place in his bed with his wife and we talked before we slept. She later told me she couldn’t believe how calm I was about what was about to happen but I had to be, didn’t I? I couldn’t think about what I was actually doing, could I? She then drove me to the clinic and sat with me until I was admitted.

It was a 24-hour arrangement. Admitted first thing one morning, discharged first thing the next. Begowned and besocked, I spent the entire morning waiting along with my room mates. It was a time to swap confidences and fend off the pangs of hunger.

There were four of us in the room and the others were all in their teens or twenties. The first had enjoyed an office party too much, the second was terrified that her parents would find out, and the third had got too close to her cousin on a family holiday and he had brought her to the clinic.

There were also two Irish women there and I discovered that it was what the wealthier women did – travel to Liverpool – because abortion was not legal in their country. They probably still have to do that, I’m not sure!

I told the father. In an angry phone call demanding a lift to Glasgow, in fact, but I had left it to the last minute and he was unable to oblige. I also rang him when it was over because he asked that I do so. And a short while later he gave me £100 which he could ill afford but it made me feel a bit better. I don’t know if he has ever had any children.

My GP found out, of course, when I presented him with the clinic’s letter six weeks later. He was very supportive and told me off for not going to him immediately.

Do I regret having an abortion and destroying my baby? No, never, because I had to think of my two living children, I had to put them first. We women have to face the worst of all decisions at such a time and it is ours and ours alone. But my sympathies go to the fathers as well for they are a part of it too. And nowadays it seems as if some girls look upon abortion as a form of contraception and I do worry about the long-term effects of this attitude.

Some would say that we who don’t want to have a child should abstain from sex, especially those of us who aren’t actually married. That is, of course, the obvious answer – simple, isn’t it? But one can’t turn off the desire by the turn of a switch. We all need to be held close and have the companionship of a loving partner and it is part of what we humans are. That need, that desire, never goes away and sex is a part of it, the icing on the cake.

As for what happened next, it was a couple of years before what I had suppressed came to the surface along with some of my other bad experiences. That was when I had a minor mental breakdown and took time off to recover my equilibrium in a locked ward in the local hospital. But that is yet another part of my story.

I’ve often thought that my autobiography would hit the bestseller lists if only I had a gift for words! And I started on it some years ago – for family consumption – but transferring it from my head and diaries to paper is a laborious business.

It’s all there, the stuff which hits the headlines in the gutter press. Although, come to think of it, not quite all. No murder features in my life – not yet – unless you count the next door neighbour who was murdered by her daughter. Or the sister of an acquaintance who was murdered by her husband, wrapped up in a carpet, and stashed in the coalshed. I could include them, couldn’t I?

But the rest is there: cancer; divorce; incest; rape; abuse (mental and physical); addiction; agoraphobia; mental breakdown and hospitalisation in a locked ward; suicide; abortion; and I could go on. I’ve even dated an ex jailbird!

My parents both hit the newspapers when they died and I long since decided that they warrant a chapter of their own because of the secrets in their relationship.

It would also be cathartic and they say that revenge is sweet! The brother and the husband who abused me are in relationships, have partners in their old age. I have no-one and their treatment of me is the reason I am alone and should not attempt to find that kind of happiness. It simply isn’t fair!!!

2011 has dawned and it is confession time. There are too many secrets but there are some which will remain hidden because I still care about the other participants and don’t seek revenge against them. So I think what I’ll do is dip into the story, here and there, as the mood takes me. Watch this space!