Rachel Ogilvy - There's A Thing...

 

I'm not a cat person. [audience chuckles] I've never been a cat person. In fact, I'm always the kind of person who says, “I don't have room in my life for a cat.” Living in a city like London, it just takes all your time and energy just to survive. I'm self-employed, so I'm either looking for work, preparing for work or traveling to work. So, I'm busy.

 

But anyway, one day back in October 2012, this wee furry-faced grey kitten astray comes to my back door. She decides that she likes me. And over a large tin of tuna, we become firm friends. However, as I say, I'm not a cat person, but that is chiefly because I'm just hugely allergic-- I mean, sneezing like a trucker type allergic, a sort of scream and sneeze at the same time. It's really quite alarming. So, I knew that I'm not going to be her forever home. But I had a lovely Danish friend who was living in London at the time, and she said, "Well, I'll take her," and everybody's happy.

 

So, time passes, Christmas comes and goes, and it comes time for my mammogram appointment at the local hospital. Now, for those of you who've never had the pleasure, [audience chuckles] it's like having your breast squeezed between two plates, a bit like Play-Doh in a trouser press. [audience chuckles] But it's fine. But I had to go, because I had to fight for this test. I was below the age that testing begins in this country. And unfortunately, my sister had a mastectomy about 10 years previously. So, I'm going to go. 

 

But it's just routine. So, in my head, I'm just ticking those boxes, go to the hospital, tick, have the test, tick, forget about it for another year, tick. So, imagine my surprise when the phone rings, and it's the hospital asking me to go back for another mammogram appointment. I don't even think to ask why and they don't ask me to bring anyone with me. So, I find myself back in the hospital, and I'm thinking how lovely everyone is. But I did think it was a bit strange that they only looked at my right breast. I even remember I make a joke with the radiographer about doing a handstand to get a better angle. [audience chuckles] She just looks at me and she says, "Oh, we need to do an ultrasound." And I think, “Okay, brilliant.” I'm really getting the five-star treatment here.

 

So, half an hour later, I'm lying on a bed in a darkened room having this ultrasound, and I'm feeling all impatient, and I'm thinking, just tell me it's nothing to worry about. Just tell me it is a cyst. But it's taken a long time and I'm thinking, I just want to go home, I've got work in the morning. And she says, "There's a thing. It might be nothing, but there's definitely a thing." So, she says, "We'd like to do a core biopsy. We can send you out an appointment for another day if you like, or we can do it now." My wee brain is struggling with this like a fly caught in a spider's web, and I'm, “Yeah, yes, do it now. Thanks.”

 

So, this time, when I go for my results, I take my sister with me. Of course, the clinic's running late, and we're sat outside eating really cheap chocolate and drinking bad coffee from one of the machines, and we're moaning about NHS together, "Bloody NHS," we tut together. Eventually, we go in. I'm still blissfully unaware. And the doctor says straight away, "Rachel, we have your results here and we have found cancer cells." And then, he starts to go on about the size of the tumor, that we've caught it early, that you're to have a lumpectomy followed by radiotherapy, but no chemotherapy if we're lucky. I don't understand a word the man's saying. I've just got like a buzzing in my ears. I'm in shock.

 

And then, I become aware of this thud, thud, thud in the middle of my back like I'm a giant baby needing burped. I turn around, and it's the breast care nurse, and she's trying to comfort me. [audience laughter] I just want to shout, "Get off me. I don't even know you." And the doctor very quietly says, "I'll just go and get a date for your operation. The sooner the better, eh?" And off he goes. My sister decides to take charge. "You're going organic, Rach," she says. So, we end up in my local Sainsbury's. It's taken all my strength just to stand up, but I just want to cry. 

 

I'm standing in my local Sainsbury's in the fruit and veg aisle, thinking, I don't want to be here. This is not fair. I don't want to be standing in flipping Sainsbury's looking for flipping organic fruit and vegetables.” And the weird thing is, this whole time, I don't even feel ill. And two weeks later, I have the operation and it all goes well. And when I wake up, I'm just obsessed with finding out if I have a chest drain. Now, this was important, right, because the doctors had told me. I had what they call a sentinel node biopsy. So, if your sentinel nodes are all clear, you can hang on to the rest of your lymph nodes. And that's really good, because they do a really important job. 

 

But if the sentinels show cancer, then the whole lot's got to go, and a chest drain's put in. So, I wake up and have a quick feel and I can tell there's no drain and I am ecstatic. I'm just over the moon. I'm also completely off my face on morphine. [audience laughter] I have to tell everyone the good news. So, the lovely recovery nurse comes over. I have to speak to her, I have to tell her. I've got an oxygen mask on, and I do that thing that you always see people in films and on TV, they always do, you know, they try and take the mask off, talk, and then she puts it back, take it off, she puts it back. 

 

I'm determined nevertheless to tell her what I know. It takes three attempts. I'm completely incoherent. I'm just mumbling and I'm like-- muster all my strength. And the third time I say, "There's no drain." [audience chuckles] And finally, she understands me. "Yes," she said, "There's no drain." I felt like the Berlin Wall had just come down. [audience chuckles] Once I've recovered from this operation, I need to start my radiotherapy treatment, which is completely painless. But it's every day for four weeks. And the first time I have the radiotherapy session, I just want to cry, because I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. It feels like I'm being microwaved from the inside out. But I know it's my best chance. 

 

So, I'm having my treatment, and I'm thinking, you can't possibly ignore the radiotherapy machine. Trying to ignore the radiotherapy machine is like trying to ignore the International Space Station if it was parked right in front of your nose. [audience chuckles] They paint flowers on the ceiling and they play music to try and relax you, but it strikes me there's some songs you really don't want to hear when you're in there. I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor, [audience laughter] I'm a Survivor by Destiny's Child, and Eye of the Tiger by Survivor. Maybe that's just me. 

 

But after my radiotherapy, there comes a regimen of five years of a drug called tamoxifen, which is designed to suppress my estrogen levels. And the added bonus, is that actually sends me into early menopause. Yay! You know, the thought of being rendered infertile, of that choice being taken away from me, has really shocked me. I'd always done that thing where I thought, well, maybe one day I'd have a child, but the right guy just hadn't come along. I'd always read these articles about people who'd had their eggs frozen just in case, and I thought, well, why not me? And it seemed really important at the time to stay positive and think about the chance of life that could grow inside me when I'd been thinking all the time about death. 

 

So, I decided to take myself off to a fertility clinic. It was just a very strange experience, because it turned out I had one egg, one chance. But it's a chance, I think. And then, the lovely doctor, in the face of my obviously rampant optimism. [audience laughter] He goes and gets the head of the clinic. Now, she's quite a famous woman. She's very, very busy, so I know something's up. She very gently and very kindly explains to me, "Rachel, if we take your beautiful egg-- We're very willing and very happy to do that, we take your beautiful egg and we froze it and later thawed it, fertilized it, impregnated you, and you carried that embryo full term to a live birth, you would be the first person on the face of the planet that had ever happened to." [audience awe] Huh. [audience chuckles] 

 

So, my sister and I head round the corner in the pouring rain to the local Starbucks to try and think this through. Now, honestly, I have never, ever seen so many babies and small children in one place at the one time. [audience laughter] It was really crammed, literally crammed with these gorgeous families, the type of families that I'd hoped that one day I might have. I just thought, I've had enough of operations and tests. The blood test had to happen today, right now, and we sat there for about two hours trying to think it through. I know that seems like a long time, but how do you make a decision like that in just a couple of hours? 

 

So, in the end, I decided I'd had enough of these operations, and tests, and hospitals. As I look around me, I'm thinking, there's enough children on the face of the planet already, isn't there? Children can come into your life in so many different ways. So, I let go. I started to let go of the things I couldn't change. I've had tremendous support from my fantastic family. My fantastic family, and my wonderful friends, and my beautiful Danish friend. Well, she had to move back to Denmark, and she couldn't take the cat with her. "I'll take her," I said, "till we find her forever home." Well, that was about three years ago, and she's still with me, and I adore her. 

 

She's taught me so much. She makes me laugh, she shows me how important sleep is [audience laughter] and to always, always be curious. Now, I know what you're thinking. Crazy cat lady gets a cat, because she can't have a kid. [audience chuckles] Well, I never wanted a cat, I never wanted cancer, but I ended up with both. [audience chuckles] I think I'm a better person because of it. And thanks to the NHS, I'm healthy and I couldn't be happier. Even my allergy seems to have disappeared. So, it turns out I am a cat person, [audience chuckles] I am her forever home, and I am a survivor.