Clear

It is frosty again this morning, and the day promises to be clear and sunny, as spring saunters in finally, better late than never. I'm going to a Feldenkrais into Dance workshop today. I'll tell you about it afterwards, but for now let's just say dancing is the order of the day, the order of this end of the week. Dancing for joy! Last Saturday I received a letter recalling me for Further Tests after routine breast screening (my first ever, having turned 50 in the last year). The appointment was on Wednesday morning. Four whole days and nights. Three friends had been recalled and found to be clear, one had been recalled and is now a breast cancer patient, veteran of two operations already, and embarking on chemotherapy, radiotherapy, herceptin, tamoxifen... the works.

Even now three days later, it is hard to recall exactly and to describe the different phases of terror, dread, anxiety, nervousness and sheer panic I experienced in those five days. I can also report that I had one afternoon - Monday, where I became calm and grounded and was able to be in the moment, where I did not know what was happening, and there was as yet nothing to be frightened about. I went to a very precious spot on a steep hillside above a clough where a beck comes rushing down over stones, a spot between a holly and a hawthorn, where L and I made our private vows almost five years ago now. And I lay on the grass, head on my fleece, and looked at the sky and felt the earth beneath me and the word clear came to me - clear clear clear. I felt clear inside and I knew somewhere that my tests would be clear. It didn't last in quite that form, but it sustained me somewhere inwardly, enabled me miraculously to get some reasonable sleep on Monday and Tuesday nights, and to remain relatively calm and not become hideously irritable, grumpy and reactive on the drive over to Bradford on Wednesday. I was called in almost as soon as we arrived at the Pennine Suite, where breast screening stage two takes place. I was given a plastic shopping basket in which to put my (above the waist) clothes and a very soft pale blue gown with a belt like a dressing gown to wear. I waited in a warm room with comfortable chairs, with first one, then later two and three exceptionally nervous women. Happily not for too long. A repeat mammogram (there's an area of your left breast we'd like to take a closer look at) was followed by ultrasound. X-rays, I was told are 2-D images of 3-D things (in this case breasts) and there can be... well, optical illusions. The second X-ray showed nothing. Nothing! So I lay on my side while the doctor moved the little ultrasound probe over the slippery gel on my left breast, round and round, back and forth, thinking wait, wait, just wait til he says it's ok, don't count your chickens... And then he said it - actually I can't even remember the exact words now but there was nothing there, nothing of concern, nothing to worry about, and I was FREE TO GO!! He gave me a mini lecture, looking right into my eyes as I lay there bare breasted, about being breast aware and not relying on the 3-year screening to catch all cancers, and to go to my GP about any changes, any at all. Yes, yes, oh yes, of course. Up I sat and wiped the gel off my irrepressibly healthy left breast, scrunched up the tissue paper I'd been given for the purpose, told the doctor he was my favourite person today, picked up my basket of clothes, and went to the changing cubicle, and thence back to L in the main waiting room, who looked entirely stunned to see me fully dressed and announcing our departure!

We eventually found our way from the door where we came out of the hospital, to the car park where we had left the car, sent a wave of text messages, and set off to drive home, singing and dancing to a party mix one of my friends made for my 50th. The relief, the sheer unadulterated happiness of being alive, well, free from cancer, free from breast screening and all its works, and released from the torment of worry of the last four days, is something I had never experienced before. Joy. The relaxing of muscles I didn't even know I'd been tensing. The sense of taking a full breath again. And another and another and another.