An Ode to Them: When My 37-Year-Old Partner Was Diagnosed with Cancer
I will start this by saying I am definitely not looking for ‘oh blesses’ and dipped lips of compassion. This self-indulgent piece is perhaps less of tale of epic woes but more of a celebration of resilience and love.
In fact, in many ways this year has been the best year of my 42 years. I have experienced things that I know that have saved me from the edge of canyons, from people who I know have no clue of the gift they gave at the time.
This year, my beautiful, kind, 37-year-old vegetarian, mini-warrior of a partner was diagnosed with Stage 3 Colorectal Cancer.
I remember she had found some blood in her poo around Christmas. It hadn’t felt like a gift from Santa and we both treated it like the insidious and unwanted Grinch at the time.
Also, in February, my friend and producer died. It was a shock. But the rawness of grief from losing a friend so young had to sit in limbo as we moved to the next hurdle. This next bit had to be about her. About us.
My partner had her colonoscopy booked very quickly - within two weeks of the poo sample results. The worst bit of the colonoscopy for my partner is the horrendous prep leading up to the procedure that means releasing your entire body weight on the toilet for the best part of a week and being nil by mouth for 24 hours. If you knew my partner, you would know she loves her food and so asking her to not eat for an entire day was risky. At times I felt that she was even considering slicing a piece of my backside off for a desperate midnight snack. I went to bed that night with one eye open. And then, of course, the morning arrived that would be the start of the drift into a strange uninhabited landscape for the next eight months.
I remember working that afternoon, it was a Friday. In March when the colour in the sky was still threatening and confused by the spring sunshine.
At about 4:20pm in the afternoon, I got a call from the hospital to say I could go and pick my partner up. I jumped up and ran out the door armed with my keys - and braless with excitement for the weekend.
I remember walking pretty nonchalantly through the halls of the hospital; not really thinking about the space. I marched like I hadn’t a care past the internal gardens, up the stairs, and down the long linear corridor to where my partner was. I had even parked pretty badly thinking we would only be there for a minute and therefore it didn’t matter.
When I got in the room I was told to sit down and then a couple of nurses came and got me. They pulled back the curtain that wrapped around the bed she lay in. I saw the redness of my partner’s face, the wet around her eyes. I asked, ‘What’s happened. Did it hurt?’
And she said, ‘No, but they think I have cancer.’
I think about those words now and the effect they had in that moment. I know I felt like my legs had gone from under me, but I let them wobble below my waist as I tried to anchor myself so that I could be present for her.
We listened to the Macmillan nurse and asked flat questions that we couldn’t believe we were asking, and because everyone was finishing work and the hospital was closing, we just went home.
I remember that weekend we walked through it together like ghosts. Private tears, wailing and wallowing, the odd silent panic attack gripping around my heart and crushing it against my ribs.
It had felt like we had been left on an island, without a means to catch fish, or make fire. It was a lonely and frightening 48 hours, stilted with moments of terror and silence.
Weirdly though, the worst part beyond the reality, was telling people. We had to let people know what was happening. She had this monster growing inside her and we had to get it out, and we couldn’t do it alone.
That call she made to her mum, as I called my mum at the same time, was one that sat suspended in time for a while. I can’t remember what was said, I think I was in the bathroom when I spoke, but the order of each sentence is a blur.
After this it was telling our extended family, our friends. My partner opted for phone calls. She would perhaps send a brief message to say, ‘Hey have you time for a chat later?’, a booked-in appointment to give rubbish news to someone. I am not a great phone communicator in the sense that the new voice notes on WhatsApp are my new best friend. I was easily swayed by this method of communication to stutter out the painful sentences to our friends; it meant it wasn’t a dialogue, but a statement. I reflect now and realise I might have been selfish in that choice. The thought of my dearest friends hearing those words in that moment over a voice note hurts me a bit, but at the time it was all I could do. I couldn’t talk about it. I didn’t want a dialogue; a shapeless, clunky soliloquy was the best I could do. I am sorry now about that, but it truly was all I could muster, I could not take or hear their reactive pain as well as feel my own.
The NHS continued to move fast, and we were told that she would be getting surgery. The fear deepened. Her body would be instantly and permanently changed.
She would have to have a stoma and an entire removal of a body part that we take for granted. I need to be crass here, it helps people confront the reality. My partner no longer has an arsehole. She now has what is affectionately known as a ‘Barbie bum’.
I remember the moment she went down for surgery; she had had her last ever poo through her backend. I often think of that when I lay in the darkness and try to sleep, and blink back a tear for my partner. I remember before she had the surgery begging to a god I never believed in to ask that there would be another way, ‘Please don’t do this to her, there must be another way to get this cancer out of her’.
Bowel cancer is the third most common cancer in the UK, and yet I still feel that we aren’t really talking about it. I know as soon as we knew where it was, and what it was, there was no shame in discussing and describing it. It’s a reality after all, we all have rectums, and we can all get cancer.
Eight hours of surgery felt like eight lifetimes with eight apocalyptic Ice Ages and eight new sunrises.
Her mum and I hovered around the BRI like helpless conjoined twins. Never leaving each other’s side but equally wanting to be apart so that we could cry or scream privately. We went to shops on Gloucester Road, and paid money for things we didn’t really need. We waited for the call to say that she was okay, she had survived, it had been a success, she would be fine. Killing time is a funny thing. Part of you wants to hold time in your hand and never let it slip through the creases, but that day we wanted it gone, we just wanted to see her. Time was a hindrance, a frustrating wall in our way.
The BRI in Bristol centre has to be one of the worst places I’ve ever been. The long, narrow corridors seem to weave like a maze, windowless and darkening with each turn. The three main lifts are always overoccupied which means that the claustrophobia you thought you had shaken off years ago, springs back and suffocates you all the way up to the 8th floor. Seeing her post surgery was a beautiful shock coated with relief. She would be okay. She will be okay. Everything is different now, but it will be okay.
For ten days I would travel by train or drive into the centre from my home in Weston-super-Mare to visit my love.
All in all, each day end-to-end would take about 3 and a half hours depending on how long I stayed with her. I was working full time too, so needed to make up for any hours I had taken out each night. My exhaustion was nothing of course to the inconsistent pain my partner felt, losing a body part like this is still not something she has fully dealt with. Often within the simplest Sunday spoon, I crave the thing that I used to detest, the sound of an unabashed fart. Those idiosyncrasies that once turned our stomachs or made us roll our eyes can be missed deeply when they are no longer there. I often wanted my partner to fart with pride, as it’s a privilege I know she misses too. I know when I let out a raucous one there is a small envy that runs through her, and I get it. Grief can be for many things…and now I find myself grieving the loss if her farts.
We moved through the rest of the summer, transitioning with the tide as my partner learnt how to do things now with a stoma. There are three types of stoma - a colostomy, urostomy, and ileostomy. My partner has a colostomy. When we tell people about the stoma they might mention ‘Mollie’ from Traitors or ‘Adele Roberts’ who famously runs marathons. Granted both these are fine examples of brilliant women, living with stomas, but it might also be interesting to know that one in 311 people in the UK have a temporary or permanent stoma. That fact made my head spin when I first heard it via the specialist stoma nurses. It made me think about a crowded Taylor swift concert. All those tickets sold, I imagined looking around that crowd and calculating the likely percentage of people who may be living with a stoma. It is a lot. And what is it really? Well, for us it’s a vital lifesaving adaptation to our plumbing. For a little while my partner loathed her new plumbing, it was a constant fight to work with its tempestuous change of heart. I know how hard it was for her to see this ‘thing’ sticking out of her stomach as a part of her. It was a doctor that made her rethink about her relationship with the stoma, when he asked, ‘Have you named it yet?’
She hadn’t ever thought about naming something that she couldn’t stand but when she contemplated the point of this often-tricky body part, she couldn’t help personifying it. This thing: was potentially a life saver. This thing would change a few situations, but it was ultimately a beautiful and necessary part of her body. I remember the moment she realised this, as she turned to me and said, ‘I’m going to call her Frida, after Frida Kahlo’.
We are now just past the third chemo. The ongoing complications of sickness, dehydration, constipation, bowel inflammation, it’s not a picnic. Frida is fickle, forever changing her mind! Laxatives Frida? Is that what you want? What do you want, Frida?!! Add chemo then to this confusing pattern of body part indecisiveness and it becomes a chaotic maelstrom.
Anyone who has experienced the cyclical catechism of chemo will know that it really can rip the carpet from under you whenever you are not looking. The fear of infection is real. We have in the last 9 months been to the hospital over fifty times, including four trips to A & E. As a partner, witnessing her go through it was almost worse than her physical anguish after major surgery. When it was bad, it felt like the world was stopping on its axis and was threatening to just plummet into the depths of the abyss. I’ve never felt more scared to be honest. But the hope of the success of this treatment still remains a sunrise for us, we see it as inevitable, because it has to be. My partner is resilient and her bravery bounces and echoes off every wall that grows taller around us.
We have booked a trip to Amsterdam in December. We should by then, be free from the darkness of this experience and we are planning a wedding for next year. She proposed to me on a beach in Cornwall whilst I was changing my shorts - the moment could have been romantic but my inability to pull my pants up ruined it slightly. I said yes. We are realising weddings are expensive.
The point of this tale is to say that even though this year has been unimaginable at times, life changing, heart shattering, it has also been a pensive and brilliant mirror; a shining reflective shield. To be given the chance to see and feel how loved we are is surely a gift. From the second we told friends and family about what was happening our world grew larger, it never shrank.
From real offers of ‘I’ll take you to that appointment’,’ I’ll pick you up,’ ‘you can stay at our flat’, ‘I’ll do your washing’ ‘I’ll look after the cat’…I always knew we had good families and beautiful friends, but the evidence around us suddenly solidified, like we had suddenly an army with swords and spears surrounding us.
One of my most wonderful friends told me, when I asked if my partner could bring someone else to their wedding to assist me, ‘Abii, she can bring an entourage’. Another friend got me through each day, by simply sending a message at a random point just to ask how we both are. They never let the lights turn out on us, not once.
Flowers, cards, homemade soups, vegetarian curries, and sourdough left on our doorsteps; silly videos to make us laugh, Sainsburys vouchers, help in the garden, the list goes on.
The simplest acts of love and kindness wrapped around us daily and seemed to leave a residue of sanity and safety. In the midst of pure horror and fear, we simply had something stronger than both - our friends’ and families’ unwavering and unconditional love. Thank you.
Cancer has taken a lot of things away, and I promise you that sadly it does, but it’s also filled our already pretty good solar system and framed it with epic, endless glorious galaxies.
My thanks also go to all the amazing teams who have helped support us.
To the MacMillan nurses, stoma nurses, Sirona, and all the staff who work tirelessly in our hospitals and for our great NHS. Without you, we would be truly lost.
Lastly - check your poo.
Written by Abigail mansfield
I am a queer writer, from Bristol and Somerset. I have written two fictional novels with a focus and representation on queer characters. I wrote a third book which is an anthology of short stories, called ‘In P.i.e.c.e.s created from first lines gifted from various people I know or have met. I have written a few pieces for The Everyday which has been a huge privilege and has given me a new voice, I’ve loved exploring that non fiction, vulnerable version of myself. It’s felt important. I continue to write poetry and songs, and whatever inspires me, politics mainly, and look forward to my next challenge. I also really love cats.