Escaping Page 5

  After three months of trying to become pregnant there was no sign of success. By eighteen months, with sinking hearts we realised we would need medical assistance for something that millions around the world could do happily by themselves. In early 1989, we consulted Dr Ric Porter, an in-vitro fertilisation specialist, and walked out of his surgery laden with charts, pamphlets and diaries, vowing that we would be one of the lucky couples who would conceive with his help.

  My life then revolved around precision lovemaking techniques followed by hours of lying perfectly still with my bottom elevated on pillows, blinking back tears and hoping that this time it would work. Every morning I would go to Dr Porter’s surgery, where all the other competitors in the Great Baby Race would be sitting in a row. One by one we would go behind a partition and present our thighs to the sister-in-charge for the injection that would hopefully take us closer to our dream. I hated every one of those women. They were my rivals. I felt no sisterhood, no team spirit. Pure loathing seethed from my every pore. Was this what I had yearned for when I married? How could I have become so spiteful?

  Had I listened carefully to the nursing sister when she explained the violent mood swings and other side effects caused by the daily mega-doses of hormones to increase the number of eggs in my follicles, Norman and I would have understood my feelings better. But I wasn’t interested in side effects; I just wanted a baby. I felt like a complete failure.

  Norman was equally desperate to have children, but he was somewhat more confident that destiny should be left to do the work alone. I was becoming extremely difficult to live with, but he rose to the occasion every time with his gentle words of wisdom and love. He would take my hand, saying that marrying me was the best thing he had ever done in his life and that a baby would be a welcome addition to our family but not a necessity.

  I knew he was right, but I couldn’t shake off my despair. At thirty, I felt my biological clock was ticking, and even though realistically there were many years ahead of us to conceive, I could only focus on my monthly failure to fall pregnant. By the time my sister Kate had given birth to her third baby, I was a seething mess of green-eyed jealousy. I was consumed by maternal desire.

  After the third IVF attempt, we called a halt to the proceedings. My obsession was attacking the foundations of our otherwise healthy marriage and I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

  To our astonishment, the following year, after almost three years of marriage, we became one of the lucky couples. Without any medical intervention, but perhaps due to an overdose of Easter dark chocolate washed down with copious amounts of tea, I finally fell pregnant. Dr Porter was delighted and astonished, though I was not the first of his patients to achieve the impossible.

  During my pregnancy I happened to run into Latin Ray for the first time since we’d split up, all those years ago. He was as much the carefree bachelor as ever. Lucky one of us had grown up! Far from making me nostalgic for the past, this chance encounter only made me appreciate my wonderful husband more.

  Our first child struggled into the world on 9 January 1991. Mimi Celeste was beautiful and perfect. I had cracked the code. Norman went out and bought every conceivable item that a modern newborn could require: a baby harness with extra-long adjustable straps, a 4WD pram for tricky manoeuvres, a baby monitor to clip onto his jeans, and, for when she was older, a pair of teensy red Weeboks, similar to his own man-sized Reeboks.

  Although Dr Porter had strongly advised me that some sort of contraception should be used for the first couple of months, I felt my chances of having more than one child were minimal. But I was wrong: on Mimi’s first birthday I was already pregnant again. Two babies within eighteen months were more than we’d ever hoped for!

  Our divine cottage would be too small for two children. Before the arrival of the second, we started the time-consuming process of buying another house, packing and moving.

  Norman was in his element, and said he would take care of the whole event. My job was to sit and read, waiting patiently for the new baby. I started to learn Japanese, practising Kanji characters on shopping lists for Norman to try to decipher. Sheilagh would spend hours looking at houses in Mosman for us to buy, gleaning ideas from their gardens and interiors. Looking at houses drove me demented. I was delighted to hand the responsibility over to Norman.

  He had a list (as always) of the prerequisites for our ideal home: large garage (for him), big house, big pool, big garden, big view, close to shops and schools. After a bout of more rational thinking, the list was revised and our ambitions downsized. We decided to move to Bilgola, a delightful suburb in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, where we could afford a larger house than in Mosman. Norman would still be able to commute to Beacon Hill High School, where he’d worked for the last five years.

  He chose wisely, finding us a long house facing northeast, well positioned high up on Bilgola Plateau. Currently it was drenched in winter sun, but there was a verandah that would protect us from harsh rays in summer. It was close — but not too close — to his father’s home at Palm Beach, where there was a little ferry service that crossed the mouth of the Hawkesbury River to the Central Coast where my sister lived. There was room to expand if necessary, Norman explained with a glint in his eye, hoping that there would be more than two children.

  Once again, Jack’s fingers were itching to get to a paintbrush, and Sheilagh came to inspect the garden and to offer welcome advice. Alan, the constantly stoned gardener, was hired to strip the garden bare then install a low-maintenance watering system and native plants that also required very little work. Norman insisted on the large green lawn; he’d always yearned for a strip of grass to mow on the weekends. Somehow, this lawn represented everything that he wanted out of life.

  We made the move to Bilgola when I was six months pregnant. Henry Norman (soon known as Harry) joined us on 2 September 1992. We were deliriously happy and proud of ourselves, like most parents of young children — but even more so after everything we’d been through to have our two babies. Our love spilt over into all parts of our existence. Two unexplained children now lived with us and dominated our lives.

  Norman wasn’t going to miss out on any experience; we drew straws in the afternoon to see who would be the one to bathe our darlings. When they were both asleep we would sit in the garden with a cup of tea for hours at a stretch, just holding hands. We were living in a bubble of such abundant happiness. Everything was good; the sea was calm. The calm before the storm, as they say.

  Eventually, the demands of raising two very young children started to catch up with me. Mimi had learnt to run before she could walk and needed constant supervision, and meanwhile I couldn’t manage to get the baby into a proper routine. Our first baby had been extremely restless and fretful, and it appeared her brother was going to be the same. My brain would be completely dead by the end of the day, and I found that I fell asleep in front of the television before 8.30. My mother often visited, but she couldn’t be there during the night when I really needed her. Norman was an exemplary father but did not like to do night duty or deal with the children’s asthma attacks. (Mimi’s were particularly bad, and she’d often have to be driven to the nearest hospital.) I loved the lists that Norman stuck up on the fridge or in my car to help me arrange my day slightly better, but they did little to organise me. Any thoughts about juggling a job with the demands of two little children had been pushed onto the back burner. Never in my wildest dreams had I realised that babies could be so difficult.

  I was so preoccupied that when Norman started complaining of feeling off-colour in late July 1993 I was unsympathetic. ‘Go and see a doctor!’ I snapped. Like many men, Norman didn’t want to consult a doctor about every trifling ailment he developed — in case something would need to be done about it. But reluctantly he went along to our local GP, who referred him to a specialist.

  I was in the garage of our new home when Norman returned home.‘What did the doctor say?’ I asked, feigning a certain amou
nt of indifference, as I was pretty sure what the news would be. He was a young man in perfect health, tired due to the demands of a young family. We were so smug that we were coping perfectly well with the complexities of our married life.

  ‘The specialist says I have something that needs an operation.’

  ‘What on earth is it? A hernia?’

  ‘No, apparently I have some sort of tumour in the colon. Boy, just as well I don’t have bowel cancer! That would be really scary!’

  Norman too was feigning a lack of concern, but I wasn’t fooled for a second. It was as if a terrorist car bomber had sneaked past our defences and was in the process of blowing our family into a thousand different pieces. My heart rushed out to him.

  ‘Norman, my love, how about we have a cup of tea?’ I tried to say, but the words just stuck in my throat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Long Goodbye

  WE NEEDED A PLAN of action. I made a mental list of things to do immediately:

  1. Ring Kate, a nursing sister (information retrieval).

  2. Wean six-month-old baby Harry.

  3. Clean oven (therapeutic).

  Within minutes of hearing Norman’s news I was on the phone to Kate to find out exactly what was happening and the possible outcomes of his operation. It was to take place straightaway. I didn’t want Norman to be concerned about the apparent urgency, and tried to cover up my grave apprehension when I was around him.

  Babysitters were organised, so I could spend as much time at the hospital as possible. Smart new pyjamas were bought. More lists were made. By the weekend he had been admitted to the new Mater Misericordiae Private Hospital with a wonderful, caring staff at his beck and call. He would stay five days at the most.

  Norman was only thirty-eight, a non-smoker and non-drinker: a completely healthy male, apart from the small tumour lurking somewhere in his lower colon. The doctors had explained there was a risk that the entire colon would have to be removed and a colonic bag attached. It didn’t even bear thinking about, as it would never happen. In the admissions office, all our health documents were checked and the costs of intensive care were explained to us. We both nodded and agreed to everything. Again, it didn’t matter, as nothing would go wrong and he would be discharged and quickly make a full recovery. This whole episode would become a blip in our memories. Soon forgotten.

  Before Norman’s operation the team of doctors and anaesthetists came to speak to him. Did he take any medication? Did he smoke? Drink? Had he eaten in the past twelve hours? No to all of the above. Then he was ready to go. I couldn’t bear the fact that he would be in the theatre by himself, but it was out of the question for me to join him. We kissed and he was wheeled down the corridor. I didn’t know when he’d be back. In hospitals you tend to lose track of time.

  Suddenly a nurse came rushing up to me, saying that the operation had been a success, but they were losing him, as he was on some sort of medication that was affecting the anaesthetic. I went mad with worry. What were they talking about? Norman didn’t take anything. He was Mr Clean!

  I grabbed his bag and started pulling everything out to see if he had anything hidden away. At the bottom of the bag was a sheet of Serepax (a stress reliever), with most of the pills already used. I guessed that he had taken some to calm his nerves — maybe a few too many?

  Once the medication had been identified, the doctors were able to stabilise him and send him off to intensive care for observation. My darling ended up in the ward that we had been joking about only hours before in a vain attempt to assuage both our fears.

  The roller coaster of emotions had started. Norman’s secret medication was now out in the open, and I began to question why he would hide something of such great importance from me. I was riddled with so many shortcomings of my own that it was easy to forgive his transgression, but it was his disloyalty that hurt. What else had he hidden from me throughout our marriage? It didn’t fit into the picture of the wonderful husband and father I was madly in love with. But first things first; he had to recuperate and then we would deal with this problem together.

  A week later, Norman came home to a house full of flowers and balloons. We both knew there was a slim chance that the cancer had spread to other organs, but there was no reason to suspect anything. His recovery was rapid and complete. We were together forever again.

  We made appointments to see a dietician, who talked us through all the things Norman should be eating: fibre and vitamins, whole grains, fresh vegetables and fruit. In our early days of marriage, between IVF programs, I had finally paid attention to the words of Signora Bruni and learnt how to cook. Now the challenge was to make appetising soups and main meals without overloading Norman’s delicate system. Just like in the Brunis’ kitchen all those years ago, a pot of chicken soup would be forever on the stove.

  Positive thinking and good medicine, aided by his non-smoking, non-drinking and correct weight, made Norman heal in record time. It almost didn’t seem possible, but within eight weeks he was raring to recommence work at Beacon Hill High School, something that the doctors had recommended, along with meditation, light exercise, no stress and lots of sleep and rest. Norman went out and bought a new BMW sports car to go with his new tumour-free body. Navy blue, of course. Once he started feigning dizziness and weakness when the garbage had to be taken out, I knew he was firmly on the road to recovery. But not for long.

  Our blank faces had shown the doctors and nurses that we had very little idea about the seriousness of his operation and its implications. After further tests, they explained that although the entire tumour had been removed and the healing was under way, Norman would need a course of chemotherapy to ensure that the cancer was stopped in its tracks. I had already been in the chemotherapy ward with my mother, so the sight of patients hooked up to intravenous drips wasn’t as shocking as it had been the first time round. I tried to give Norman an idea of what we could expect. This was going to be part of his life for a short period of time and we would handle it as a family. Every day we would drive for forty minutes in heavy traffic to Royal North Shore Hospital, with Norman clutching a bucket between his knees in case he needed to vomit.

  The nursing staff told me to watch out for any changes in Norman’s condition, but warned me that sometimes the body masked the most obvious signs. Pain would be our best indication. They also talked to me about the early warning signs for a twisted bowel and I regurgitated the information to Norman in palatable sentences. When his chemotherapy finished, almost three months after the operation, the two of us went on a trip to Fiji to celebrate. In the plane on the return journey, his temperature skyrocketed and he became pale and clammy. The nurses’ words came flooding back. I hadn’t understood that these symptoms could become a regular part of his life.

  Norman stopped work and his father promised to support us until he was better. All talk of a third baby was put on hold while we waited for his condition to improve. Our chances of conceiving had been shaky at the best of times, but adding the drugs from the chemotherapy and the effects of the twisted bowel, it was pure folly. Our relationship was beginning to suffer, but we knew it was strong and that a couple more months would see this whole event behind us so we would get back to being the happy couple. A few more bleak months; we knew that we could hold out.

  Family and friends rallied around to assist where they could. Sheilagh was desperate to help, and as always was very practical about things. She and Jack would come to baby-sit while we rushed off to doctors’ appointments. On their visits they would bring wonderful home-made soups, easy children’s meals and groceries for the fridge. We would come home to the smell of something cooking on the stove, and the sounds of happy children who had been thoroughly spoilt by their grandparents. My parents had a precious commodity that Norman and I lacked: time. Illness strips you to the bare essentials. We no longer had time to do anything.

  Most of our friends lived on the south side of Sydney, a good hour’s drive away, so we mainly k
ept in contact with them by telephone. But every now and again, our wonderful friends Bill and Deborah and their four children made the trek up to see us. Those visits stood out like beacons for us — golden moments, when we could behave like any other couple.

  Other friends suddenly became Medical Sages; nodding their heads wisely, they’d tell me, ‘Just take it day by day.’ Predictably, people said that it was a miracle to have the children and that they would ease the burden. When I quipped back that I would trade both children if Norman could just get better, the stunned faces said it all. Never voice your inner feelings; the raw truth can be far too harsh.

  Far from easing the burden, the children soon sensed that all was not right in the house, and became unusually quarrelsome and difficult. Having taken Harry to the hospital once for Norman’s chemotherapy, I vowed never again, as I had struggled to get him into the pram and Norman down the steps in one piece. And Mimi began to wet the bed nightly. So within a short while, home help in the form of a succession of Wonder Nannies — Carol, her sister-in-law Jane and finally Louisa — came to us daily. As a result, I missed out on vital parts of my two children’s early years. I couldn’t say when Harry first sat, walked or talked. I had no idea what Mimi’s favourite story, nursery rhyme or food was. How would I know? I was never there.

  As the months passed and no further symptoms appeared, I was supremely confident and hopeful that the doctors had the disease under control. Norman’s outlook was also extremely positive. He desperately missed teaching, which lent some order to his day, but he was convinced that he would be back at work after the shortest delay.

  But at the start of 1994, reality hit. The cancer had spread to his liver, making it completely inoperable. On top of this, shadows had turned up on his kidneys on the latest CT scan. A small tube called a stent was inserted to keep the passages of the liver functioning as best as they could, but the doctors explained that it was only a matter of time before the tumour would grow over this and completely block the area.