Great poem nottsgal x
Thanks Tors. Yours sums up beautifully how I feel at the moment - desperately pretending I’m not worried by symptoms that have kept me off work for 2 days and occasioned a chest x-ray.
be kind to yourself: you deserve it.
Wonderful poems everyone. Thank you so much for sharing. They inspire, encourage and bring healthy tears…
HER 2 +
18 months after surgery and I’m still going backwards;
My chemo contemporaries are moving on,
Gathering strength, getting repaired and reconstructed.
But I have the herceptin route to travel along.
Eighteen treatments, fifty-four weeks,
Every 3 weeks trying to find a vein,
Then filling my arm full of poison
that makes me feel like rubbish again.
I’m going backwards,each treatment’s got worse;
Each time takes longer my strength to regain,
Though my swollen arm and breathlessness don’t improve
Before it’s time to be infused again.
54 weeks where I could do nothing
towards reconstruction to replace what’s gone.
Ten months so far of going backwards
And still the treatment carries on.
Another treatment done but I’m still whingeing in verse.
Herceptin is a wonder drug but it is nasty stuff;
I really will be very glad when I have had enough.
Nottsgal, I love the poem. Also have herceptin till next March and living my life in 3 week cycles.
Anne xx
This is a poem I wrote a few years, not about breast cancer at the time but it became appropriate again last year and I dare say many of you might empathise. I apologise if the bit about being a non-believer offends anyone.
Where’s the off switch?
Find a switch to turn off my brain
Before it drives me more insane.
A flaw I think in evolution
So tweak a gene and find a solution.
If there’s a God, what did he do?
He really didn’t think it through.
Perhaps a prototype he had in sight
And after me he’d get it right.
If there’s a God he didn’t plan
For one like me when creating ‘man’.
The off switch which he sadly omitted
Draws me close to being committed.
A manual override he should have inserted
Then all this torment he could have averted.
But then, I don’t believe in Him
So to allocate blame – where to begin?
Sleep deprivation, I should say,
Led me to this right of way.
Not a path I’d choose to take
But was no choice that I could make.
Another night and still awake
Driving me mad, for pity’s sake,
Let me sleep, or in the morning
I’ll be fit for nowt but just for yawning!
Only during troubled times
Does poetry then spring to mind.
At the edge of sanity creativeness
Keeps me awake and adds to stress.
I think the rhyme is running out
Just as well or I might shout,
And ball and scream and throw a tantrum
Just from sheer exasperation.
Anne, you have my deepest empathy. All I can say is that I’ve got to treatment number 16 more quickly than I imagined would be the case. Good luck and may your veins always be easy to find Xx
Flori, love your poem and you’re right - poetry comes in times of stress. BTW if you look back a page or so at my poem The Test, you’ll see i’m a non believer too.
Hi Nottsgal - I also empathise with your poem. In particular, I’d love to make the most of my time but am also constrained by the need to earn a living to pay the mortgage. Part of me wants to get some extra work and try to reduce the mortgage now but another part of me thinks, as the next few years are going to be so uncertain, should I instead apply to do only 4 days a week and try to enjoy the extra time to myself now but struggle to get by financially.
Flori, you have exactly the same problem as me - do I pay as much off the mortgage as I can now so that hopefully I can retire early? or do I cut my hours now because maybe I won’t get to retirement and I don’t want to have used up all my time and energy at work?
My boss assumes that once I’ve finished the dreadd herceptin I’ll be back to normal hours - which was 50 to 55 hours per week pre-dx. I don’t get paid overtime so it’s not a financial thing. I’m going to try to stick to no more than 42 hours per week.
Wow Nottsgal, you don’t have a good boss. At least I’m lucky with my bosses - their only concern when I told them my diagnosis was my wellbeing and all of my colleagues have really supported me in all sorts of ways throughout.
Make sure you don’t overdo it. You won’t get your reward in heaven!
work in progress
cancer isn’t pink
it’s brown and green with lots of red and some luminous yellow, and it doesn’t half stink
cancer isn’t fluffy
it’s messy and gooey and leaky and horrid and full of nasty, horrid surprises: it’s a real toughie
cancer isn’t ‘good for the soul’
it’s fight and fight and fight when all you want to do is sleep and wake for it to be gone - pass the sick bowl
cancer isn’t ‘oh, don’t you look well’
it’s wrenching and tearing and squeezing and twisting - really, truthfully, can’t they tell?
feel free to cut’n’paste & add - as you can see it’s modern potry so the 2nd sentence can be as long as you like but it does have to rhyme (ish)
Hello poets
Why have I not seen this thread before? Delighted to find it. Will start to follow and contribute. I love reading and writing poetry. I’ll be back…
Tara
Just bumping this thread up in case anyone wants to read it/ contribute
Apologies if I’ve already contributed here…chemo brain! But I was, for a short while, an email friend to the late poet and novelist Julia Darling. We both had, have breast cancer secondaries. This poem by Julia is one of my favourites.
How To Behave With The Ill
Approach us assertively, try not to cringe or sidle, it makes us fearful.
Rather walk straight up and smile. Do not touch us unless invited, particularly don’t squeeze upper arms, or try to hold our hands.
Keep your head erect.
Don’t bend down, or lower your voice. Speak evenly.
Don’t say ‘How are you?’ in an underlined voice.
Don’t say, I heard that you were very ill. This makes the poorly paranoid.
Be direct, say ‘How’s your cancer?’
Try not to say how well we look. compared to when you met in Safeway’s.
Please don’t cry, or get emotional, and say how dreadful it all is.
Also (and this is hard I know) try not to ignore the ill, or to scurry past, muttering about a bus, the bank.
Remember that this day might be your last and that it is a miracle that any of us stands up, breathes, behaves at all.
Julia Darling
only just found these posts,heres 2 poems i wrote during the nights lying awake pondering what future i had,
the freak
I dont look in the mirror anymore,because i dont like what i see,
its a stranger thats standing behind the glass,looking back at me.
the face is the same,the eyes and the nose,and ive still got the wobbly bum,
the shoulder length hair,so lustrous and dark has now all sadly gone.
clumps of hair on my pillow each morning,strands of hair where my head lay
the chemo was cruel,the sickness intense,there were more bald patches each day,
would i have got through this hell each day without all my familys love
probably not ,i think that without them i would surely have given up
when the doctors removed both of my breasts,my life was changed for ever
would i ever feel like a woman again,for a long time the answer was never.
ive now gone full circle,can look at myselfand now i thankfully see
when i look in the mirror,tho a little bit changed,the person in there is me.
my body has changed but im now so alive my future no longer looks bleak,
i see myself now as the woman i am,im no longer ,in my mind,the freak
without my family id never had made it,id never have got through each day,
i know now my husband of 32 yrs will love me whatever,come what may.
I Will Survive
It was dark and dismal as I lay in my bed,
It was also so dark,inside my head,
Thoughts going round inside my brain,
Spinning faster and wilder like a hurricane.
Im scared of the cancer,would it come back?** **Im trying to smile,but I`m beginning to crack,
My mum and my aunt,now my dad have all gone,
Taken by cancer,now can I live on?
Im strong for my family,I smile for my friends,** **Inside Im unravelling, my sanity depends,
Upon beating this curse that has taken my kin,
I must get my head straight,I will not give in.
Ive had many ops ,and all treatments are done,** **I know that I now have the strength to go on,** **So cancer, jog on ,youre not taking me,
I`m staying right here with my family.
In the blink of an eye
The turn of one minute
The young girl I knew
Was instantly finished.
Now there was nothing
No twist of emotion
Shock stilled my body,
my mind was slow motion.
I watched as they talked
From up on the ceiling
Detached, numb and void
Removed from all feeling
A voice broke through
I lay down on the bed
Keep breathing, deep breaths
In and out, they said.
So I lay for a while
Shock morphing to gloom
As I took in the news
In the White room of doom.
Tors that’s brilliant. Good to see this thread active again.
Just discovered this thread. Thought I’d share this with you. I copied this poem from a book years ago because I thought it was brilliant. When I was dx with BC I found it again and sobbed my heart out. But it IS a very positive poem about bereavement.
If I be the first of us to die
Let grief not blacken long your sky
Be bold yet modest in your grieving
There is a change but not a leaving
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
And all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layering of intimacy shared,
The things that made us laugh, or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing
Each giving and each taking
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble.
Nor are they stone,
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand,
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the woods where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled banks beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land;
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand
And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you.
Be still.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.
From The Smoke Jumper _by Nicholas Evans _
Oh dear! Now look what you’ve started! I haven’t written any poems for ages, but now I’ve been inspired to write some about my BC experience. I wrote a really long one that I wont bore you with - just an outpouring! Here are some others:
Guilty
Guilty, I’ve still got both boobs.
Guilty they’re almost a pair.
Guilty there’s so many women
Suffering so much worse to bear.
I didn’t have the chemo.
I never lost my hair.
I didn’t have the sickness,
I avoided the despair.
While others talked of hair loss,
And moaned about their wigs.
They complained about their nails
Crumbling like ancient twigs.
I’m guilty for not sharing
In their sickness and their pain.
So guilty if my cancer
Should recur in me again!
I could have had the chemo;
They did give me the choice.
I debated long and hard,
Then heard my inner voice:
“It isn’t worth the anguish.
It won’t be time well spent,
Eighteen weeks of poisoning
For a gain of five per cent.
Time to put this behind me.
I need to get back on track.
Quality not quantity,
I’ll never get this year back.”
Not sure if I’m a coward,
Or really very brave:
Refusing to have chemo
May cause an earlier grave.
Today, I’m back at work,
Not still home sick and ill.
One day I may regret this,
But I hope I never will.
Chris