By Christine Piff

Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted it no longer matters.' M.Scott Peck MD

I am sitting on my hospital bed. It is four o'clock in the afternoon and most of the visitors have left. My consultant wants to see me. I smile, give off good vibes. My face is still sore after the biopsy. I am trying my hardest to be bright and cheerful. I am thinking positive. Inside I am feeling sick.

"Sit down Christine." sit down wrapping my dressing gown around me, trying to protect myself' from the still, coldness I can feel in the surrounding air.

"We have found a malignant tumour growing in your sinus. I would like you to see the oncologist at a combined clinic tomorrow." I didn't hear anything else.

I walked back down the corridor aware of the formality of the beds, the environment, the flowers and the staring faces. I stood still at the side of my bed. I felt as if I had been knocked off the world and it had gone on spinning without me. I was here, yet I wasn't, the world was going on without me. The word cancer hadn't been used. A malignant tumour made it sound easier. I had known, right from the beginning I had cancer. Deep down inside me somewhere safe was the fact that I was going to have to live through an episode which shook my very core. I threw myself' down on the bed and wept for my three young children.

A few days later I visited the oncologist who told me I was going to have radiotherapy to shrink the tumour. I was in a positive mood, determined to get on with things, treat the cancer and then get on with my life. I had it all sorted out in my mind.

"It will mean you losing your eye." Did I hear him clearly? The radiation will mean the loss of your eye. That dull, numb feeling took over again.

"How soon would you like to start the treatment?" He was oblivious to my feelings, unaware of my reaction to being told I would lose my eye. I spat the words at him.

"How about tomorrow."

Tomorrow came and I travelled in an ambulance to a different hospital. I saw lots of doctors, sat around and waited for verdicts and an ambulance to take me back to my ward. They made their decisions and I was to start six weeks of radiotherapy. No problem. Get on with it, treat it' and get better. So I thought. No one could have prepared me for what was to come. Only if you have been there could you begin to imagine the pain and discomfort that developed in my mouth. It began with a small ulcer and rapidly it spread over the entire contents of my mouth, tongue a jaw. Drinking water was agony.

Another meeting with the doctors. They decided to give me chemotherapy. This was an injection prior to the radiotherapy, twice a week. When I awoke after my afternoon sleep having had my first injection. I didn't understand what was happening to me. My arms and legs felt like the size of massive oak tree trunks and just as heavy to lift. My mouth was dry and the pain to sip warm tea was immeasurable. It was impossible to eat anything at all. By the end of the six weeks, seven really, I had a few days off during the middle of the sentence for bad behaviour, I weighed five stone.

Six weeks later an appointment with the ENT surgeon and the oncologist. My nails were about the only good thing in my favour. This was due to the milk and raw eggs I drank. I had a very neat bald patch above my ear extending in a curve into the back of my head. It felt very cold. I was on a high. I had done it! I never believed anything could be as bad as the past few months. I was feeling better and on the road to recovery. Well, so I thought.

A Sledgehammer

I sat in the chair offered to me. I felt really good about myself'. I had painted my long finger nails, put on some lipstick, camouflaged my bald patch, I felt at one with the world and delighted that the treatment was behind me and I was slowly recovering. I smiled at the doctors and listened as the oncologist who I named 'Moses' stood behind me and felt my neck. Inside I knew what he was feeling for, but ignored the complications. He stood in front of me, lifted my chin up with his hand and stared into my face. The eye he had told me I was going to lose was runny and watery. I had fought to keep it open during treatment so the lid didn't burn.

"We have finished the first step of treatment, we are now going to progress with the next. You will come into hospital on Thursday and we operate on Friday."

I can only describe it as being made of ice, and he had taken a sledge hammer and smashed it over my head. I was lying, shattered in a million pieces upon the floor. I saw their mouths opening and their eyes looking at me, but I didn't hear a word. I felt cheated. angry. disappointed not just for me but for my family, in particular my children who had fought the battle with me. My friends and neighbours who had helped me along the journey, this disappointment was their disappointment too.

A nurse put her arms around my shoulder and asked me to go outside. She sat me in the corridor on my own and told me the dentist wanted to see me. Slowly the news sunk in and I absorbed the pain like a sponge, it seeped and soaked into my very soul. I became two Christine's. The strong angry one who was going to stand up to them all, cope with the cancer and get on with it and the frail, sad, bleeding Christine, who hadn't the energy or will left to fight anyone or anything. I felt let down, cheated.

My husband came to the rescue and before long I was sitting in the dental chair. It was hear I suffered the biggest blow. After asking why I was seeing a dentist, he explained that he would be removing my palate and half my upper teeth. I was devastated, this was more than I could take. I made him promise me that when I came round alter my surgery, I would have teeth in my mouth. I picked myself up, dusted myself down and went home to break the news to my children.

Claire, Matthew and Dominic were twelve, ten and seven years old and very good friends with each other. Claire was my best friend, Matthew was my hero and Dominic was my sunshine. I explained the cancer was still there and I had to have the surgery to remove it because cancer was a group of bad cells that did not stop growing, and if I didn't have the surgery I would probably end up with two heads. They accepted what I told them and carried on with their lives as best they could. My mother came to stay to look alter them, and me. I didn't tell them I would probably lose my eye.

Two weeks later I awoke in intensive care with my teeth in my mouth as requested. I had spent four days in a world of darkness, my senses only coming into play when I heard a nurse's voice speaking to me, and touching my hand. I learned to know who the soft shoes and the hard shoes belonged to. I linked sounds with voices and shared the world of the blind for a few moments as I joined in the team of life again. It had been touch and go, yet I was unaware of it. The nursing care was excellent. They saved my life and helped restore it prior to returning me to my old ward. It was a battle to get liquids down, they tried iced water, ground ice, ice cream, jelly. Unfortunately, nothing would go down my throat. The obturator, which was the artificial palate holding my upper teeth felt like a huge obstacle in my mouth.

Fright And Fight

My voice frightened me; I didn't sound the same. I had difficulty making myself understood. I escaped into sleep most of the time and awakened from the darkness when I heard the soft, gently voices encouraging me to open my eye. The ward sister's soft, West Indian voice lulled itself into my ears, "Christine, you have still got your eye." I smiled a big smile and my teeth fell onto my chin.

It took two weeks to fight back, to try and eat and drink with the obturator fitted tightly into my mouth. I had to learn how to remove it, clean it and put it back. It would have been easier to have run a marathon. It was like living a nightmare. A nurse came and took me down to the plastic surgery ward to have my stitches removed. The surgery was called a maxillectomy. It had involved making an incision through the centre of my upper lip, around my nostril, up by the side of my nose to my eye, and underneath the lower eye lid to the edge of my temple. This enabled the surgeon to remove the tumour from my sinus and also the maxilla bone which the tumour had grown into. A skin graft had been taken from inside my left thigh and lined my oral cavity. The pain in my leg was frustrating. It hurt like hell. My face was okay.