Post by blackrabbit23 on Mar 1, 2012 15:33:01 GMT -5
This is a story I wrote at uni. I was hoping for some feedback on it. It think it's a bit rough around the edges. Was hoping to send it for publication, competition etc. So any comments would be great.
I finished packing up the last of the boxes and carried it out to the car. I stopped to look at the building that had been my home for the last 11 years of my life. It was Victorian in style though somehow had never felt dated to me. It fitted in with the houses around it, nothing special, but to me this house had been my life, like a limb I suddenly had to sever. The red brick pattern was familiar in all aspects, the gradual slope of the tiled roof, the circular window in the door that had been part of why I’d bought the place to start off with. The ivy snaking up the wall seemed to have grown with me, an extra few inches for every year, so it now crowded most of the front wall, hanging around the door. Yet somehow the place looked dead, despite the foliage and the maple tree out the front, with the curtains gone and the furniture no longer visible inside it felt like a shell rather than the faithful friend it had been.
When I was first diagnosed I had been there for about a year. Everyone had said the place would be too big for me to handle now, but I loved that little window too much to move. Admittedly there had been times that it did all get on top of me but despite it’s age the place was in good shape and needed very little work when I moved in. I’d redecorated it all in my style before the diagnosis so I didn’t have to worry about that. It was actually thanks to this house that I found out I was ill. I was dusting one of the high cabinets in the dinning room when I slipped and fell, cracking the bones in my wrist and hip. It hadn’t been a bad fall and because I was so young, only just into my 20s the doctors had decided to investigate it a bit more. There was an x-ray then a bone scan, goodness only knows what the difference is, a CT and an MRI. Then they said they had found the start of a lump on my thighbone and wanted to do I biopsy. Now the word biopsy obviously scared the Be-Jesus out of me, and when they came back with the results I heard the word no one wants to hear. Cancer. Bone cancer.
“Osteosarcoma? I’ve never heard of that.”
“It’s very rare.” The doctor said, “affecting only one in every million.”
One in a million. Normally I’d have loved to hear those words.
I was too shocked to speak.
“We’ve caught it very early.” He said, “if you hadn’t have had that fall you might not have known about it for months.”
“So what now?” I ask, still not really taking it in.
“Well because it is in such early stages I would suggest a course of Chemotherapy before we can removed the tumour.”
Tumour. Now there was a tumour too.
“Surgery?” I said. “Is that really necessary?”
I wasn’t really going to argue with a doctor but I wanted to feel like I had some control over my life.
“In this case, it is by far the best option. As I said we have caught it early, so with the surgery and a short course of chemotherapy you should be fine.”
Should be fine, he said.
So they blasted me with drugs, methotrexate, injected into my veins, to shrink it, then they operated, said it had gone well, that they had got it all out. Then more chemotherapy, to make sure it didn’t come back, a new drug cisplatin.
The side effects were hard; if it was on the packet I got it! Nausea, constipation, anaemia, malnutrition, memory loss, and depression of the immune system. In the time I was in treatment I got every cold that was going round and I would be laid up in my four-poster for days on end. The memory loss was the worst I think, I would forget what had just happened, not really being there in conversations.
My family were great; my brother even came to stay in my big old house for a few weeks to look after me. I tried not to see my mother too much because of the look she always wore. It would cripple me more than the drugs. She was so worried, and I knew she felt guilty about me getting it. On one of the rare times she was able to come with me to the hospital for the treatment the doctor had said that it could be inherited and asked if anyone in our family had ever had cancer. It turned out her mum had, breast cancer that killed her at 43. ‘Course back then treatment was less advanced so chances of surviving were slimmer but that didn’t stop my mother from worrying. No matter now many times you say ‘they’ve got to it early’ it didn’t make a difference to her. Sometimes I think she wouldn’t really be looking at me, she’d be looking at her mother’s coffin, which she buried at only 17.
Most of the time it was just the house and I. I could feel it wrapping its arms around me in a protective hug some nights. I tended it and it tended me. Everything was fine for a long time. I was all clear. The treatment had worked. I threw a party to celebrate, filled the whole living room full of balloons and had a 60s theme. That was one of the best parties I had in the house.
I come back inside now and go into what used to be the living room. It faces out onto the street, the tall windows topped with stained glass flowers, roses and lilies. The room feels so empty now, as I remember it full of balloons, champagne and cheesy 60s music blasting from the stereo.
The cancer came back about a year ago now, much worse than before. This big old house suddenly got a lot bigger as my joints swelled and moving became agony. My brother tried to help out but he’s got his own family now and couldn’t come over as often as he did before. As the dust piled up on the bookshelves I knew I couldn’t cope anymore. The treatment’s not working now, neither the chemo nor the radiotherapy. They keep the tumours under control but they’re not shrinking anymore. I have to move out of my lovely home to hospital so they can step up the treatment, and maybe get them shrinking again. I’m not holding my breath about that though.
As I lock the front door for the last time I can’t help but smile. The old girl’s been good to me and now that I can’t manage her anymore it seems only fair to let her have a new family look after her. I take one long last look as I climb painfully into the car with my brother and I think I see the house saying goodbye.
“Shall we go?” my brother asks.
“Yes. Lets go.” I say and whisper goodbye to the Victorian brick, the creeping ivy, the lovely circular window; my home. God I’ll miss her.
I finished packing up the last of the boxes and carried it out to the car. I stopped to look at the building that had been my home for the last 11 years of my life. It was Victorian in style though somehow had never felt dated to me. It fitted in with the houses around it, nothing special, but to me this house had been my life, like a limb I suddenly had to sever. The red brick pattern was familiar in all aspects, the gradual slope of the tiled roof, the circular window in the door that had been part of why I’d bought the place to start off with. The ivy snaking up the wall seemed to have grown with me, an extra few inches for every year, so it now crowded most of the front wall, hanging around the door. Yet somehow the place looked dead, despite the foliage and the maple tree out the front, with the curtains gone and the furniture no longer visible inside it felt like a shell rather than the faithful friend it had been.
When I was first diagnosed I had been there for about a year. Everyone had said the place would be too big for me to handle now, but I loved that little window too much to move. Admittedly there had been times that it did all get on top of me but despite it’s age the place was in good shape and needed very little work when I moved in. I’d redecorated it all in my style before the diagnosis so I didn’t have to worry about that. It was actually thanks to this house that I found out I was ill. I was dusting one of the high cabinets in the dinning room when I slipped and fell, cracking the bones in my wrist and hip. It hadn’t been a bad fall and because I was so young, only just into my 20s the doctors had decided to investigate it a bit more. There was an x-ray then a bone scan, goodness only knows what the difference is, a CT and an MRI. Then they said they had found the start of a lump on my thighbone and wanted to do I biopsy. Now the word biopsy obviously scared the Be-Jesus out of me, and when they came back with the results I heard the word no one wants to hear. Cancer. Bone cancer.
“Osteosarcoma? I’ve never heard of that.”
“It’s very rare.” The doctor said, “affecting only one in every million.”
One in a million. Normally I’d have loved to hear those words.
I was too shocked to speak.
“We’ve caught it very early.” He said, “if you hadn’t have had that fall you might not have known about it for months.”
“So what now?” I ask, still not really taking it in.
“Well because it is in such early stages I would suggest a course of Chemotherapy before we can removed the tumour.”
Tumour. Now there was a tumour too.
“Surgery?” I said. “Is that really necessary?”
I wasn’t really going to argue with a doctor but I wanted to feel like I had some control over my life.
“In this case, it is by far the best option. As I said we have caught it early, so with the surgery and a short course of chemotherapy you should be fine.”
Should be fine, he said.
So they blasted me with drugs, methotrexate, injected into my veins, to shrink it, then they operated, said it had gone well, that they had got it all out. Then more chemotherapy, to make sure it didn’t come back, a new drug cisplatin.
The side effects were hard; if it was on the packet I got it! Nausea, constipation, anaemia, malnutrition, memory loss, and depression of the immune system. In the time I was in treatment I got every cold that was going round and I would be laid up in my four-poster for days on end. The memory loss was the worst I think, I would forget what had just happened, not really being there in conversations.
My family were great; my brother even came to stay in my big old house for a few weeks to look after me. I tried not to see my mother too much because of the look she always wore. It would cripple me more than the drugs. She was so worried, and I knew she felt guilty about me getting it. On one of the rare times she was able to come with me to the hospital for the treatment the doctor had said that it could be inherited and asked if anyone in our family had ever had cancer. It turned out her mum had, breast cancer that killed her at 43. ‘Course back then treatment was less advanced so chances of surviving were slimmer but that didn’t stop my mother from worrying. No matter now many times you say ‘they’ve got to it early’ it didn’t make a difference to her. Sometimes I think she wouldn’t really be looking at me, she’d be looking at her mother’s coffin, which she buried at only 17.
Most of the time it was just the house and I. I could feel it wrapping its arms around me in a protective hug some nights. I tended it and it tended me. Everything was fine for a long time. I was all clear. The treatment had worked. I threw a party to celebrate, filled the whole living room full of balloons and had a 60s theme. That was one of the best parties I had in the house.
I come back inside now and go into what used to be the living room. It faces out onto the street, the tall windows topped with stained glass flowers, roses and lilies. The room feels so empty now, as I remember it full of balloons, champagne and cheesy 60s music blasting from the stereo.
The cancer came back about a year ago now, much worse than before. This big old house suddenly got a lot bigger as my joints swelled and moving became agony. My brother tried to help out but he’s got his own family now and couldn’t come over as often as he did before. As the dust piled up on the bookshelves I knew I couldn’t cope anymore. The treatment’s not working now, neither the chemo nor the radiotherapy. They keep the tumours under control but they’re not shrinking anymore. I have to move out of my lovely home to hospital so they can step up the treatment, and maybe get them shrinking again. I’m not holding my breath about that though.
As I lock the front door for the last time I can’t help but smile. The old girl’s been good to me and now that I can’t manage her anymore it seems only fair to let her have a new family look after her. I take one long last look as I climb painfully into the car with my brother and I think I see the house saying goodbye.
“Shall we go?” my brother asks.
“Yes. Lets go.” I say and whisper goodbye to the Victorian brick, the creeping ivy, the lovely circular window; my home. God I’ll miss her.