The Monster in Emma

By Emma Sheils

A diagnosis of cancer is no laughing matter, but for Emma laughing through surgery and treatment was her way of dealing with breast cancer. Having already beaten severe eczema, post-natal depression, B12 deficiency, anxiety and chronic depression, she was determined to ''tackle the tumour with humour'' This book is a collection of almost 50 years of funny tales and stories in the life of a brave and inspiring woman.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tiny Angel Press LTD
• Release date: Apr 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386330271

Book preview

The Monster in Emma

TACKLING THE TUMOUR WITH HUMOUR

EMMA SHEILs

FOREWORD BY MATT LUCAS

Copyright © 2019 by Tiny Angel Press LTD.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to my good friends Cheryl Langridge (1969-1993) who died from liver cancer while at Teaching College and David Reed (1969-2017) who died while walking in his beloved Munros.

Table of Contents

Foreword

About the Author

Prologue

1 | A Spanner in the Works

2 | Childhood Memories and No Fashion Sense

3 | The C - Word

4 | An MRI Not a KFC

5 | Growing Up

6 | Love ‘N Stuff

7 | Surgery is Looming

8 | Almost Time

9 | All Things Foreign

10 | Life’s a Song

11 | Bye Bye Boobie

12 | The Honeymoon Period

13 | A Pregnant Pause

14 | Other C Words

15 | Come Fly With Me

16 | Mid Life Crisis

17 | Whatever the Weather

18 | All the World’s a Stage

19 | Everything’s Not Alright

20 | The Butterfly Years

21 | When Phoebe Met Foobie

22 | Shirley Valentine

23 | Keeping Abreast of Things

24 | Those Who Teach, Can

25 | All Becoming Real

26 | Food for Thought

27 | Scotland the Brave

28 | Chemo Brain

29 | Friends

30 | Literally Tearing My Hair Out

31 | In Screensaver Mode

32 | Back to Work

33 | Glory, Glory Man Utd

34 | New Chemo Drug

35 | The Work Years

36 | Radiotherapy

37 | Autumn Term 2018

38 | Happy New Year

39 | So Embarrassing

40 | To Conclude

Appendix I | The Mountain Lion

Appendix II | An Alphabet Of Ailments

Appendix III | Acknowledgements

Appendix IV | Useful Contacts

Foreword

Through anecdotes, quotes, funny stories and tales from her past, Emma describes her breast cancer story in a unique, personal and absorbing way. She faces the Monster with humour, and it was through laughter and smiling that she was able to face surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy all in the space of a year.

In her own words, a’ cross between Miranda Hart and Bridget Jones’, Emma is a likeable and endearing woman who has emerged smiling through both mental and physical health problems and life-changing events.

Cleverly entwined with stories from her childhood, this bittersweet autobiography becomes a record of her fight with cancer from diagnosis to end of treatment and a source of inspiration for the millions of women around the world suffering with breast cancer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Approaching fifty and recently divorced, Emma Sheils is a school teacher and a mother of two girls and a pug.

Having spent her childhood in Kent and secondary school years in Edinburgh, she attended the University of St Andrews and completed a PGCE in Canterbury.

Emma met her Moroccan husband of 22 years in her own words in the street in Sicily 1990 and married in 1994.

Having suffered from eczema as a child, it became severe and regularly infected and began to take over her life. Fighting this debilitating skin condition illness, in 1996 she was eventually admitted as an outpatient at St Thomas’ Hospital.

In 2015 she was diagnosed with Pernicious Anaemia, Vitamin B12 Deficiency and Vitamin D Deficiency. The previous misdiagnosis of these conditions had led to bipolar outbursts, manic depression, psychotic behaviour and many neurological disorders.

Now on B12 injections and medication for life, Emma has made a full recovery from a year battling a mental illness. Although it cost her marriage and almost her life, she has been able to gain a deeper understanding of what it is like to live with both a physical and mental illness and the effect it has on others around her.

The sting in the tail came in October 2017, two months into a new job, when she was then diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer.

A month later her mother too was diagnosed with cancer.

PROLOGUE

The late Ronnie Corbett used to regularly deliver after-dinner speeches at his and my former secondary school -The Royal High, Edinburgh. I envied the way he could tell anecdotes from his life, and although they were simple tales, he had me reeling with laughter. He had a way with words and impeccable delivery. He used to sit in his chair too during The Two Ronnie’s Show and do the same, recounting funny stories and making his audience giggle and laugh. I suppose he was one of my inspirations for this book.

My friends and colleagues used to tell me I should write my tales down and create them a holiday book to read. I began retelling odd occurrences that had happened to me to friends both on and off Facebook. The stories were met with both laughter and squeals of OMG! They clamoured for me to write a book.

When I was diagnosed with cancer, I was determined to stay positive and document my journey. With my friends’ pleas in mind, I have put together an amalgamation of tales from my past and a diary of my battle with cancer, tenuously linked together and almost in chronological order.

If I were reading this collection of tales, I would honestly think ‘how could all of this have happened to one person?’ but it has, the tales are true. I also want it to be a positive read for anyone going on their own cancer journey or know of someone who is going through anything similar. This book is also a positive one for anyone battling a mental illness too.

Where friends and family have wished to remain anonymous, I have respected their wishes. They have shared in my embarrassments, my triumphs, my despair, but most of all you the reader can either emphasise or sympathise. What would like you have done in the same situation? I would you to enjoy reading my tales. After all, fortunately, they didn’t happen to you. I honestly feel like Kent’s very own Bridget Jones, but unlike Bridget, my life is real.

1

A SPANNER IN THE WORKS

If you hadn’t have rolled around in the grass with your loved one, then you wouldn’t be in this predicament.

AN ODD FEELING

I loved being a pug owner. I was greeted by a waggy, curly tail and lots of licks on my return from work and we both enjoyed nothing more than a bundle and a roll in the garden.

We would play hide the toy in the socks and yank the sheep toy and similar such made up games.

On one such occasion in October 2017, I was lying on the garden grass playing with my dog, and it felt like my bra underwire was digging into me. The advantages of having a garden that was not overlooked meant that I could fling my bra off and resume the playing. So I did. The pain didn’t go away, and I could feel hardness. Not quite a lump, but more of a thickening of the skin and it bothered me all evening. I had never felt this before, and it worried me.

I visited the doctor a couple of days later, and he wasn’t happy with what he felt, although he did reassure me that eight out of every ten lumps or bumps turn out to be nothing more than cysts. I didn’t have a lump, or a bead or a moveable marble as mentioned in all the breast self-checking awareness adverts. It hurt to press and felt like a long strip of hardness. The doctor said he would refer me to the breast clinic.

Did you not notice the discolouration? said the nurse in mid-blue at the Breast Care Unit.

The appointment had come through within a couple of days. Not really, I thought. I’d been in the sun a lot over the summer, and there were various tan lines visible.

What about the dimpling here? she said prodding underneath. Surely you noticed this in the mirror? Mirror? There was no time spent looking at myself in any mirror, let alone looking for discolouration or dimpling! I did check my breasts regularly in the shower, but only for lumps.

Usually, the routine at home was to shower and dash back into the bedroom stark naked to save taking the wet towel back to the bathroom. The landing streak, I call it in our house. More often than not, the heating wasn’t on, so it was pretty chilly. There was no time spent peering at breasts in a mirror.

The nurse in mid-blue looked straight at me and said they were going to do both a mammogram and an ultrasound that afternoon and that in her professional opinion, she was, or rather I was, looking at breast cancer.

THE MAMMOGRAM

It was an odd feeling sitting there in the Breast Care Clinic. I had gone on my own. The nurses and receptionists were all friendly; there were posters and thank you cards pinned to the walls and business cards you could take. There were adverts for support groups and leaflets about where to get the best wigs too. It was all a bit overwhelming.

Had I got cancer?

I fiddled with my fingers. Oh my goodness, my nails were yellow! How come I hadn’t noticed? Was this a sign of cancer? The worry of my nails passed the short time spent waiting and thankfully as my name was called, I realised I had peeled a large orange earlier.

Contrary to popular belief a mammogram isn’t a form of sexting; it wasn’t sending topless pictures via social media! At 48 I was too young to have been summoned for my well-woman check, so this was my first experience of this machine. I had heard a lot about it, and I was intrigued as to how it all worked. In Europe, women over 40 are offered a mammogram. In England, it is the age of 50.

I am very sure, however, that the inventor of the mammogram was male. You are supposed to put your breast on a platform which then turns into a vice – trapping your breast between two heavy metal plates and then you are supposed to hold very still.

Well, I put one of my breasts on the platform. There was a very unladylike slap sound as if a piece of meat had been thrown onto the counter. I did wonder then how those women less well endowed coped. How could they lay their wares on the slab?

All was well until the cold vice-like machine closed its jaws onto me. I honestly thought I would pop or burst or end up with a pancake. Stay very still, said the radiographer in white.

I wasn’t going anywhere.

I tried to gauge the look of the lady in white. Did she look worried? Had she seen something on the screen? I was given my clothes and told not to redress but to nip to the room across the corridor. She was not allowed to reveal any information.

You will read from now on that I recount tales from the past whenever I mention a keyword or subject. At times the tales may seem a bit random, but they make sense to me in this order and have occurred to me as I’ve reached certain points on my journey. I promise I will not leave anyone lingering about what has happened to me – and this journey will have a beginning, middle and an end that will give this book a structure. So please bear with me as I venture back into my childhood and teenage years and then through my university years into adulthood.

The reason for this is that my cancer diagnosis has put everything into perspective. I’m beginning to know now what is important and what isn’t. My real friends are starting to rally round and time spent with my family is precious.

It’s also all about living for the future and not dwelling on the past.

When you think that there may not be a future, you learn to value it more. You want it so badly, and the only thing you can do is live every day as though it was your last. It does sound like one big cliché, but it’s true. It makes so much sense.

I’m a historian. I love the past, but I know that I can never go back (of course, I’m not Dr Who!) but it’s nice to think back on stories and tales as they have made me who I am today. I have perhaps learnt from my mistakes or not as the case may be.

Remembering the past has helped me realise what I value the most. Sometimes I look too hard for the story to be funny and it’s hard to recreate the time place and atmosphere for someone who wasn’t there, but I’ve tried my best, and I hope you can imagine me talking or playing the role that I do.

I wanted to share these memories as a record of my life for my children and my friends- my legacy, perhaps a primary source for the future, except I am careful not to mention politics or name names in this book where possible.

THE CORRIDOR

As a teenager, many a secondary school trip involved dodging the teachers on patrol of the corridors at night-time and running across the corridors into each other’s rooms. Each year group had a different bedtime, and the challenge was to defy it as much as possible. On one music trip, we smuggled one of the older boys into our girls’ room because he was a good singer and we wanted him to sing to us. He was quite a willing ‘kidnappee’, but every time there were room inspections we had to find a different place to hide him! It seemed unfair that the year above could stay up half an hour longer, (similarly the older sibling has a later bedtime).

The ‘Corridor’ also seemed to be an excellent analogy for this book of my cancer journey. There is an obvious direction and way forward, but lots of doors or tangents on the way to open and to find out what went on in that room or on that occasion. Some doors remain firmly shut, bolted and locked, never to be opened and for only me to know what is in that room.

Some doors are just pushed shut and can be opened with a key or a link, and some are left ajar to step in and briefly have a look. The last few doors have the sign ‘Do not disturb’ on but can always be opened later when the time is right.

THE ULTRASOUND

I was shown to a bed of familiar blue paper towel by a nurse in mid-blue and told to lie on the slab.

I was amazed – yet pleasantly surprised by the hot gel being squirted on me. The last time I had an ultrasound and had gel on me, I was around 30 weeks pregnant and bursting for a wee, having drunk a bath full of water. The gel on that occasion and all other previous occasions were most memorably cold. That feeling of bursting at the seams was so uncomfortable, and yet while you were at your fullest, a nurse would press down on your bladder, and you were supposed to remain calm and still. It was an uncomfortable experience.

PROBABLY, MOST LIKELY

A nurse in navy came into the room to do the ultrasound and after some sliding around with the probe, said it was 90% likely that I had cancer. The 10% margin of error was for a possible infection that would show up in the same manner, and the only way of finding out was to do a biopsy then and there on breast tissue and the lymph nodes.

I was remarkably calm, or so I thought. There were no tears. It was all a bit surreal. There was a whole rainbow of nurses in the room including a new one in sea-green. I hadn’t gone with a friend, and a part of me wished a friend was now right there with me.

I wiped the slime off me and began lacing up my boots. I hadn’t apologised for the two odd socks that I had shown, and as I covered my Kermit the Frog sock with my boot, it was I who felt like a bit of a Muppet.

THE WAIT

I had to wait a week for the results.

Although only a week, the days passed so slowly. In this day and age of instant gratification, I was guilty of not being able to wait for long. Everything is geared around to make life simpler and quicker. There are apps available to ease the burden of waiting; food delivery, paying bills and even dating. I think I was used to getting things straight away.

I am quite an impatient person. I always have to multitask. I can’t eat my cereal without reading the back of the cereal box or watching TV or going on my phone. I hate queuing, and I most definitely hate waiting.

I had to return to the hospital a couple of days later for full blood tests. I took my paper ticket at the phlebotomy department and waited for my number to flash up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t waiting at the deli counter for some nice cheese, or for my child’s shoes to be fitted.

It took seven attempts to get blood from my veins. I did have tricky veins that opened briefly and then suddenly snapped shut. It may also have been because I was stressed. If I drank anything, I felt I would have been a walking sprinkler system!

The waiting for results continued.

THE BALLOON

I had done some long waiting before, alongside my then four-year-old daughter H. She had been picked to go on stage at the local pantomime to fill the time while the cast changed into their finale costumes. The comedian Kev Orkian had got her to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star on her own and had presented her with a goody bag and a pink balloon. H. was to look after this special balloon, and when it had deflated, she was to put the pieces under her pillow. When she woke up in the morning, apparently a £10 note was to be there!

H. waited so patiently for this balloon to go down. She didn’t poke or prod it, and it sat wedged in a plant pot on a shelf. It was an ordinary air-filled balloon, quite small but it didn’t seem to change; it just did not deflate. H. would check it every day, and it looked the same. At one point I even considered sabotage. Finally after six months and a few days, in June, the balloon started deflating, and when it was just a limp pink bit of rubber, she put it under her pillow. Magically ten pounds did appear. That was a long time for a four-year-old (and a 34-year-old) to wait, but we did it, we waited.

NOT THE SAME

Had I got cancer?

I was looking at people and objects and the house differently. As I passed people in the street, I thought how many others had cancer too? No signs were hanging around their necks. What do I say to my parents? Should I tell my daughters? I had so many questions, yet had so little time in the day with a full-time job to be worrying about the answers. There was plenty of time for worrying during the sleepless nights that were soon to come.

I was told not to go searching for answers on the internet. I didn’t. Well, at least for the first few days I didn’t. I then had the urge to search the breast cancer sites and then after looking at statistics and survival rates; I got it into my head that I might not see Christmas. I convinced myself I only had months, if not weeks to live. That was ignorance on my part but also some of the recommended online sites for checking the prognosis needed more data.

I began blitzing the house.

My possessions were just stuff. It wasn’t important. The family was more important than things. I saw the furniture and ornaments in my house as extra things that I could walk away from. I let go.

I started organising bags of stuff. There were bags for charity, bags to throw out, bags to keep to sell at a boot sale, bags for eBay and bags of personal objects that I wanted to give personally to different people. I started at the top of the house being ruthless and worked down, giving everywhere a spring clean too, in October!

I struck up a bizarre conversation with a buyer on eBay. It started with a question about the length of a soft toy, and then the questions got personal and sentimental about why I was selling childhood toys. Internet safety at its worst, but it was signal of how vulnerable I was if I was talking about my situation quite openly with strangers, yet keeping it incredibly close to my chest with friends and colleagues.

Apart from a Facebook hint that something was awry, I hadn’t said anything to anyone.

A LONG ROUND ROBIN LETTER

I bought, wrapped and labelled Christmas presents – it was still October. I packaged and addressed parcels and had them all ready to go. I addressed and wrote Christmas cards but then left the envelopes unsealed. If things were to get tricky around December time, then I would be all prepared, and if I weren’t around, the family would still get a present from me. Bizarre I know, but that was how I was thinking then.

What about my traditional included Round Robin letter? What could I write? I was still mindful of the time I sent my Robin letter flying way too early a few years back.

I am always quite organised when it comes to Christmas, and by the summer before the December I knew who was getting what and apart from the gift tags, most presents were ready and wrapped. It was partly a time management thing but also fun to be thinking throughout the year what to buy for different people rather than buy the wrong thing in one big frantic rush in December.

I also sent out along Round Robin letter to friends abroad who weren’t on Facebook or email.

In October 2007 I started early and had my printed letter all typed and photocopied. I had written sentences like. What a busy Christmas week at school! and The Nativity again brought a tear to the eye. I also knew which pantomime I was chaperoning and mentioned how tiring it was working behind the scenes, yet how proud I was of the girls performing up on the stage.

All of this at the beginning of October!

I was also organised in that I bought the stamps early to save queuing later in December. That day I weighed nearly thirty different letters all going around the world, and the lady in the post office was diligently collecting them and putting the airmail stickers on. We were chatting for a bit as there was no queue. After paying, I waited for my letters to be returned to me. The lady looked blankly at me. What did I want?

The letters had gone, over five minutes previously.

They had been collected while we were chatting. My friends in Hong Kong and the USA were to get a Christmas card with my letter full of future news, at the beginning of October!

GETTING ORGANISED

I had no idea what was going to happen between October and Christmas 2017. I certainly wasn’t going to write about the future, so I left the box of addressed cards downstairs to be a work in progress.

I did, however, start hand drawing a set of personalised snowmen cards for my Year One class. It kept me busy in the evenings; I needed to be busy. If I was busy, there was less time to dwell on things.

However, I lay awake most nights dwelling on things, my mind churning over and over.

2

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND

NO FASHION SENSE

I had a great childhood, living in Kent in a typical suburban cul-de-sac with two younger brothers. Dad went to work, and mum stayed at home. It was a life very much like the Ladybird Peter and Jane stories, but without the dog.

However, it soon became clear that my parents had wanted three sons. Why else would they dress us all the same? Every family photo the same, dressed in matching home knits and C & A pretend denim shorts, even down to the same knee-length stripy socks.

Maybe due to this or something else in the water but I soon realised I was happier as not a follower of fashion, but a creator. I have my whatever is ironed and nearest philosophy about what to wear each day.

FASHION

Browsing through photos of pictures of me in pink rara dresses, corduroy pedal pushers and Wham Choose Life t-shirts, it did appear as if I followed some trends, but a Frankie Say t-shirt with a purple pinafore skirt and lace-up shoes were not and still not a good look. It’s a photo that my brother has over me!

The Wham t-shirt did not, however, distract from the one neon towelling pink sock and one green one that I was wearing in another photo. Neon was such a big 1980s thing. I had even given the remaining pair of neon socks to a German friend for his birthday in the hope it would strengthen Allied- German relations.

Soon I was to discover the joy of the elasticated waist (I still enjoy it) and in particular a pair of men’s purple, paisley print pyjamas. I can’t believe people frown nowadays at women shopping in pyjamas, in 1990 I wore pyjamas everywhere! I wore them teaching international students English in Edinburgh, I wore them skate-boarding, and I wore them mountain climbing. I wore them inter-railing to Italy too.

One evening in northern Italy, I was slumped with my rucksack in a doorway waiting for a youth hostel to open, wearing said pyjamas, when a passerby threw me some Italian LIRE!

I was also wearing them the day I met my future husband.

Traumatically the pyjamas came to a tragic end.

While living through a freezing winter in Italy 1991, I put my washed pyjamas on the line to dry. Overnight they froze solid and then snapped. The fibres in them just broke. The pyjamas