In Person
Thursday, June 24, 2004
I've been busy being better, although a part of me won't crow with delight about shrinking cells as I feel that my role in all this is to be steady, to hang onto a kind of mid course so that when the hospital is gloomy I don't plummet, and when they tell me good news I don't whoop either. I just keep on straight ahead! It's been a very active week....last week we had the reading that explored adapting The Taxi Driver's Daughter into a stage play. I really enjoyed working with actors for two days, trying out things and looking at the book through new eyes. The event was interesting. It showed how much choice there is in an adaptation. I ended up feeling that one had to not be precious about it, and to change whatever I wanted, but then that's quite a broad canvas to work from. I am keen to do the play though. I think it will work for younger audiences. The Manifesto is also being developed with Northern Stage as a musical. We are aiming for a script in hand reading in December and a production early next year.
Then last night I did a reading with a new novelist called David Nicholls who has written a very funny book, picked out by Richard and Judy, called Starter For Ten. We were discussing writing novels and deadlines, and how we worked etc, infront of an audience. Then I had some squid in a restaurant!
And the football has been ridiculously exciting, and I don't even really like football that much!Posted by julia @ 01:58 PM GMT
Wednesday, June 16, 2004
Today I got my latest scan results. It was a complicated morning. I had agreed that the BBC (represented by a very nice person called Andrew) would film the consultation, so that it might be used in the short film I am making with them about cancer, writing and life. But I was dreading it all a bit, incase it all got too emotional,and this morning I felt quite frail.
We met at the hospital at 9.30, and Bev ,my partner, joined us there. She's been overworked lately, trying to finish the building work on our house. Cancer puts pressure on everyone in a family. She wants to get the new room ready before the summer ends, so that we can start lying about in it and enjoying ourselves, but at the moment home is one long list of Things To Do, and she takes the strain. Sometimes I think we should just go and live in a hotel!
It was a very busy clinic, with an ambience of delay. Also a nurse announced that there would be strange thumping and drilling sounds, and that we were not to worry. Then another nurse told me very sweetly that my results were mislaid, so we would have to wait while they found them. So we sat with the strange thumping sound, sipping our tea from plastic cups. Bev and I had prepared ourselves for a morning of gloom. My test results are rarely good, but I was determined to be philosophical, and quite prepared to be told it was time for more chemo. In fact that's what I expected.
But then the drilling stopped, and we were ushered into a quiet sunny room, and my consultant Mark came in, miraculously carrying the results, and told us that the cancer in my liver has shrunk, and that all the other things had stabilized! Tamoxifen, that radiant and clever pill, was working! Or perhaps it's not the tamoxifen, perhaps its all the healers out there, or the poetry I have been writing. Or wouldn't it be wierd if it was something simple, like blueberries?
So I don't have to have chemotherapy yet, and I have another three months grace before the next scan. I said to Mark how strange it all was, the way my body looks as if its on the verge of collapse, and then rejuvenates itself, because this has happened over and over again. Of course he said it was all to do with drugs, even though Tamoxifen doesn't usually work very well on liver spread.
It was a nice moment to film....a happy cancer consultation, Bev and I cheering, and Mark grinning.
Afterwards I went down to Live Theatre and spent the day working on scenes from The Taxi Driver's Daughter, and doing some last minute writing. Tonight we present the work we've been doing to an audience. I have really enjoyed being in the theatre again. It's all so busy and buzzy, and so different to the world of writing novels. I get wildly excited too. I love watching actors developing characters, and playing with the nuances of language.
So it's been a happy day. I've been let off, and I can forget about things for a bit. Thankyou, everyone, for your good wishes, for I am sure they have helped.Posted by julia @ 05:33 PM GMT
Friday, June 11, 2004
I am in the wing of a stately home, rented at the last minute as our house was full of builders and drilling. Actually, I was meant to go to London, to a Royal Literary Fund do, then to be welcomed as a Royal Society of Literature Fellow at a party in Somerset House. But I felt too weary to face the London underground. Although I feel generally well, I find I don't really like being too far away from a sofa, a bath, and a kettle. It was the right decision, I think. I am all alone now with my old friends, bubble bath, tinned pears, the laptop, and various novels. They sell really amazing ice cream in the organic bakery down the road in little tubs. I have been there several times, and I feel I am getting a reputation in the village with my old green coat and unbrushed hair.
I've been working on poems mostly, putting together a new collection. At the moment this is called APOLOGY FOR ABSENCE, but this may change. For a while it was called PROBABLY SUNDAY, and before that INDELIBLE, MIRACULOUS.
On Tuesday I had a blood transfusion and I feel lovely and plump, like a cat full of cream. It was a funny day at the hospital though. I had a scan first, in the large white machine. BREATHE. DON'T BREATHE! They are seeing if the tamoxifen is working, and if I need to start chemotherapy. Then I went up to Ward 36, but they sent me off for a bone x ray, because I had said idly to a passing doctor that my leg hurt a bit. They are very attentive in Ward 36, very kind, but I almost wished that I hadn't mentioned it, as my leg didn't hurt that much. Actually, most of my aches and pains are transitory. I ended up waiting for hours in X.Ray. They said it was a new digital system and nothing was working properly. Then they put me in a box room and told me to take my clothes off and wait, which I did for ages. Then I had the xray, then I had to wait again. I got really impatient and decided to get dressed and get out of the box. I hate it when the hospital makes me feel vulnerable. They were a bit huffy with me, and that made me even crosser. But why should I wait in a cupboard with nothing on??
Anyway, eventually it was all right, and I got back to my favourite spot on the bed by the window, and got my new blood, and my friend Dominic Slowie came to visit with lucozade, and the jolly tea trolley came rattling round, and all was well.
It's lovely being here. It's very unspoilt and peaceful, surrounded by misty Cumbrian mountains. I wonder what goes on in these villages though. It feels very feudal. Infact this house was the squires place. When I got here the green was filled with gypsy caravans and horses, here for the Appleby Horse Fair. I kept on humming...Oh She's Gone With The Raggle Taggle Gypsies Oh....I used to love that song when I was little. This morning I went ambling round the graveyard in the village church looking for inspiring gravestones, but they were mainly conventional ones, with dearly loved and much missed epitaphs. I want mine to be more characterful!
The sun comes out, then disappears, and it rains enthusiastically, and the sky turns deep grey. All can hear are rooks cawing, like a radio four play!
Tomorrow we are reading the new Taxi Driver scripts at Live Theatre, for the reading on 16th June. I think the paperback must be in the shops by now, with my first novel Crocodile Soup. They look like siblings, although the two books are so different.
Thankyou, Uncle Peter, for the article about the Tree of Shoes in the Nevada desert. Isn't it fascinating how easy it is to start up a bit of magic!
I shall return to the floaty day. I think it might be time for a tub of ice cream. Perhaps I shall brush my hair.Posted by julia @ 12:24 PM GMT
Saturday, June 5, 2004
It's been a bit of groggy week. I have felt a kind of unidentified malaise, and an awful lack of energy. I hate this languid feeling. I have been saved by historical romantic fiction, and have read yet another Phillipa Gregory novel full of corset ripping and women on horseback with whips. Her books are so compulsive you could read them walking down the street. Actually, the one I am reading now is making me feel a bit sick, and I have wrenched myself from it to come and do some writing in my room.
I had my pamidromate drip for my bones on Tuesday, and they told me that my blood count is low again, so I should maybe have another transfusion soon. Although I try to be existentialist about this illness, sometimes it just feels like an endless series of appointments. You get tired and bored of it. And I have so much that I want to do at the moment. I finished the Body parts play for Live Theatre. I wrote about two old women in a turkish bath, talking about their doctors. I am also working on scenes for the stage adaptation of the Taxi Driver's Daughter, which is on as part of Live Theatre's New Writing Festival. It's interesting adapting your own novel....you have really let go and invent new things, and not be too literal about the book. Nice to know what the story is though!
Anyway, it did occur to me that everytime I have managed to do some work, my body has felt better. That's why resting isn't necessarily the best medicine for me. I need the stimulation of invention, and talking to other people. The body influences the mind, and the mind influences the body.
I have decided to make a television piece with the BBC, for a programme called Inside out. They have given me a camera to do a video diary, and we will be filming some hospital visits, and workshops with GPs. I want it to be about poetry and health, and how writing can sustain someone through illness. Also I have started working with an artist called Peter Furlinger on a kind of 'thankyou stone' instead of the usual sad gravestone from the bereaved. I am agonising about what to say on it at the moment. I have booked a plot too, in the Old Jesmond Graveyard in a really lovely spot. Peter said he had never worked on a headstone with someone living before! I think some of our discussions might be included in the TV film. It feels like quite a nice thing to do, and something I can do quite slowly. It certainly doesn't feel morbid! I worry about telling everyone this, incase they think my death is imminent. It doesn't feel that way. I still have a tremendous appetite, and I quite often eat snacks in the middle of the night. My body feels extremely solid, and not at all withering. Anyway, who knows....maybe I shall start a trend of 'thanking stones'...and soon we shall all be making them !Posted by julia @ 02:50 PM GMT
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