APPENDIX

My World

MY FATHER-IN-LAW LIVES in the French city of Aix-en-Provence and Fiona and I had gone out there to visit him for a few days in October, 2015, during a parliamentary recess. We were getting ready to head out for a spot of sightseeing one morning when I spotted what looked like an abnormality on one of Fiona’s breasts. When she was 17, she’d had an operation to remove what they call a ‘breast mouse’, which is like a wee lump or a bit of gristle, and naturally she thought it was that again. She promised she would get it checked out when we got back to Scotland.

We enjoyed the rest of the break and when we got home, Fiona was as good as her word and went to see our doctor, who referred her to hospital. She was working that day and popped along to the appropriate department after a break in her shift. She was very relaxed but the surgeon took one look and issued her with a follow-up appointment for the following week, saying, ‘I don’t like the look of that at all.’ Fiona hadn’t been prepared for that response, especially as she was there herself, but didn’t call me because she knew I would be in at First Minister’s Questions. If I’m completely honest, before she left that morning I had a feeling all wasn’t well, although there’s no way I could have convinced her to allow me to come to the hospital. Anyway, as soon as I got out of FMQs, I saw the missed call and phoned her straight away. She was in a right state but mentioned the hastily-arranged follow-up appointment. I told her I would be right home but she wanted me to stay at work, as she was doing the same. I wasn’t having any of that and headed straight home. When I got there, Fiona was already in, and as soon as I walked into the living room, we looked at one another and burst into tears. We had a long chat but decided not to tell anyone, because nothing had been confirmed at that point. It was a long seven days until the follow-up, but they more or less confirmed what we already knew: Fiona had breast cancer. To be honest, I felt nothing at that point. I was completely ready for it. If the doctor had told me it wasn’t what we thought it was I would’ve fallen straight off the chair. We asked a few questions and came out of the meeting feeling a bit strange. I was neither up nor down, which I think was because we’d already had such an outpouring of emotion the week before. So we had to then tell loads of folk and that was the difficult part. There was a lot of crying and talking to family and friends, but we were ready to get on with it and beat it. We were relatively confident we would do so, as the consultant had told us the size of it, how they planned to deal with it and that they expected Fiona to live for another 40 years, so it certainly wasn’t a case of ‘the end is nigh’. It was a hammer blow, no doubt about that, but there was a lot of hope. Almost immediately, we had a procession of people at the door offering help and support. Our house was full of flowers and cards. People genuinely cared and were 100 per cent behind us. Yet we thought of those who receive similar news but who leave the surgery and return to no one; to a cold, empty flat. No support, no cuddles, no cards, no flowers. How do they cope? I can’t even begin to imagine.

Once we got past telling everyone the bad news, Fiona sat Chloe and I down, and said, ‘Right, here’s the deal. We are going to carry on as normal. You’re going to work, and you’re going to uni, and we are going to do everything just as before, and I don’t want to see anyone moping around the house.’ She then looked at me and said, ‘And I don’t want to see you going about ironing and dusting, and loitering about the house looking after me. You’ve never done it before, so don’t start now!’ A harsh judgement on my domestic efforts, but the message was clear, ‘we continue as normal.’ In hindsight, that was the best call she made. She isn’t the type who sits there saying ‘look how terrible this is for me’, that isn’t her. Chloe agreed 100 per cent. She is probably the most practical and straight talking of us all, and would regularly remind me of the need to act ‘normal’.

But even though we were all getting on with it, I won’t pretend we didn’t have our moments, because we did. I think if you asked any of us now, we would say it was bad, it was certainly tough, but probably nowhere near as bad as we thought it was going to be.

Fiona has naturally thick hair and when she started chemotherapy her hair was coming out in big clumps. I feared the worst, because as a former hairdresser she has always taken great pride in her locks. After a few weeks of treatment, the inevitable started to happen and she immediately called the girl who did her hair and asked her to come over and take the lot off. I had been at work and when I got home, I realised Susan the hairdresser was in, so I braced myself, walked in and they were just about to start. Susan said, ‘Will I just take it down and keep it quite short?’ I thought, ‘here we go, this will be awful,’ but Fiona was great, and afterwards admitted it was actually better getting the lot off than having to look at handfuls of hair in the shower each morning. She said it was more traumatic losing her eyebrows than her hair!

From diagnosis to the end of her treatment was probably about seven months. She still has tablets to take for the next 10 years, but apart from that she is great. We went to a follow-up meeting at the end of the treatment and they said it had gone as well as expected. They told us about the next stages and of all the classes she could attend to help regain her fitness.

At the end of September, 2016, an organiser from Breast Cancer UK’s Race for Life called to ask if Fiona would act as starter for their Edinburgh race. She also agreed to make a speech and did very well. She had decided to embrace it and I was very proud of her.

One thing Fiona did say right from the start was that she would shout it from the rooftops, to ensure that the message to ‘check yourself’ got out. Chloe would come in with her pals and Fiona would be harassing them all, saying, ‘Check your tits, always, because it really can happen to girls as young as you.’ And they would all just stand there looking at her, or more than likely staring down at their shoes!

One of her colleagues at the hospital, who also lives in Fauldhouse, was diagnosed the week after Fiona, so the two of them helped each other a lot, and a guy we know across the road was also dealing with stomach cancer, so there was a wee group of them who kept each other going throughout.

When you’re living through something as serious as that, you tend to have a cry at times and then get on with it. It’s only really afterwards that you look back and say ‘wow, we went through quite a bit there’, but we are constructed to deal with situations at the time and worry about them later.

Cancer rates in our country are high and will get higher. It is likely that one in three of us will experience cancer over our lifetime. The message from my family is to take all the help you are offered, support each other best you can and provide support to others in the same boat. Stand up to it with all the physical and emotional strength you have and you have a real chance.

#FuckCancer