Now I was back at home and trying to come to grips with the new order of life. I looked too sick for my own liking so I covered all the mirrors. There is no independence in serious illness and I am so fortunate to have a magnificent family, and group of friends who rallied round bringing meals, visiting and helping in every way possible. My family also became my advocates and ultimate support team. I was also lucky to have begun this whole chapter in very good general health so my physical recovery began and progressed very fast.

Ati put a wonderful large mirror covering the wall of our bedroom so that I would have a full panorama of the garden through the window and in reflection from the mirror. This was very uplifting as I felt that I was in the woods. When I was exhausted I would lie in bed just staring at the view in the mirror and gently fall asleep. Helenka came and snuggled with me in bed on frequent occasions. I couldn’t have done without this.

Ati and Helenka took me for walks every day. Walks is a big exaggeration as they began with taking me a few steps outside the front of the house. Each day I took more steps and finally after a couple of weeks I managed to get half way along the path in the ravine. This was a great triumph. Stairs were challenging as well at the beginning, but it didn’t take long before I was managing without too much trouble. I have a little exercise bike at home, very basic, and I began to sit on this very early on and push the pedals at their lightest tension, one or two rotations were enough for the abdominal muscles initially. This was probably absolutely the wrong thing to do but I am a physical compulsive and needed to be autonomous even if it were only for a few seconds at a time. I also need to generate progress, and tend to overdo this, so I was very careful to listen to the body and not push it further than it could go. I certainly didn’t want to endanger the surgery with its careful internal stitching.

Then the day of the pathology results finally arrived. Ati took me for my few steps outside in the snow to the top of the first hill and back. He was looking preoccupied and was not conversing. Something was up and I knew that he wasn’t daring to tell me something. So I asked him if the pathology had come back. The answer was yes. And yes, the cancer had metastasized and microscopic tumours cells were evident in the omentum. I was officially a stage 3 cancer patient. We both burst into tears out there in the snow in front of the house. Helenka was inside and I just couldn’t tell her immediately, so we left telling the kids till the next day when we could contain the information and face it, rather than reacting to the blow.

Those were hard days and we were all emotionally shattered, fearful, amazed, grieving and trying to put some order and sense into this catastrophe. But above and beyond the shock and sadness, we realized that we had a real battle to fight and that we had to put our heads up, face the enemy and attack with guns blazing. This we assimilated in our own very personal ways and each of us subliminally outlined our own battle plans. This is very complex as when a family member has cancer, the whole family has cancer. We have cancer! So we had cancer. Yep, the big C.

I was so sad, sad to bursting, that my beloved husband and children were suffering so much. They were so sad. I couldn’t watch them as it tore my soul to shreds. I think that I had the easier time at that stage as I was the one doing and being done to, and my role was clear. Cut the invader out and zap any remaining offspring, and work with the physical and emotional conditions of this engagement. Energy and consciousness limited my horizon of perception. I had my work to do which was clearly defined. For them it was less clear. They faced losing their mother, wife, lover, best friend. Their grief was palpable, and I had no energy to spare to console them. All I could do was love them with all my heart and keep everything out in the open.

It was the first priority for all of us not to have any mysteries or untrue conjecture. The emotional strain was enough on its own without adding the stress of guesswork, guilt or helplessness. We learned to use the words death and cancer freely, though each time they were mentioned, the pain for all of us was obvious. But they came to mean battle, and the energies became highly charged and positive. Tactics were calculated and the battlefield became more and more clearly defined day by day. Cancer bombed us, but we were alive amongst the flames and ruin. We now had to push it back by giving it no room to multiply. Surrounding and suppressing it were what we had to do. It is an invader which can consume given time and passivity. We were going to win by hook or by crook.

Where to begin to continue? We had already cut out all the visible tumours and were preparing to poison the rest with 5 months of chemo therapy. This was good. The drugs Paclitaxel and Carboplatin were the tried and true chemo drugs to use against the proliferation of the ovarian cancer cells. We are lucky to live in an age where we have this option, and where cancer treatment is now very effective. I was to begin chemo two weeks after surgery. The questions dancing around our family were all concerned with how to do everything possible to kill the cancer, how to leave no stone unturned and how to come away from success or failure with dignity and clarity, knowing that we will have done everything in our power to win.

OK, now to chemotherapy. Ati is a neuro-scientist and both Andy and Sam are computer engineers with their own business. All three are relentless researchers. Ovarian cancer was now first on the list of extensive internet information gathering. Completely coincidentally as I was having my surgery there was a worldwide news release about the results of recent research into intraperitoneal chemotherapy with carboplatin for ovarian cancer patients. This is the technique of delivering carboplatin or cisplatin through the abdomen in order to marinate the tumours directly, rather than through the normal intravenous methods. The published results looked promising and we seriously considered that I undergo this therapy. Ati spoke to the researchers directly and to my brother John who enlisted the help and knowledge of his oncologist friends and colleagues, and in the end we were advised not to go this route as the data was not inconclusively positive and the neurotoxicity of the treatment could have led to the end of my cello playing. We were all hugely relieved!

Then there is what I call nerve storms which are my way of describing some of the feelings generated by the neuropathic side effect of taxol. These began usually three days after the infusion and gathered in strength over a couple of days and then subsided. They also varied in intensity from cycle to cycle being at their very worst for me after the fourth infusion. The feeling is hard to describe. I think it is the nerves being tortured by the chemo drugs and shrieking in protest and then giving up the ghost with one last extended yell. It happened mostly in my legs and arms, but elsewhere as well. It feels like a collection of internal thunder storms gathering in random places throughout the body shooting numerous short, painful and irregular shafts of lightning simultaneously in different parts of the body. Oh so strange and very uncomfortable. Pain killers didn’t touch it. Heat helped to relieve it somewhat. It was always at its worst during periods of rest, so the nights were not good. I was the least uncomfortable when I moved. But like all the other side effects it had a limited time span and subsided after a few days. It would be truly dreadful if it lasted throughout treatment, but it doesn’t.

After a couple of months the tips of my fingers and toes began to lose feeling. This was quite disconcerting. I was learning how precious normal feelings of touch and texture are. I had been told that the feeling returns in time once chemo is over, and this is indeed the case.

It had also been three months since I had played my cello, having had no energy, concentration nor real physical strength, and once the fingers reached a certain numbness threshold I thought that it was time to begin again. My logic was that I had better train my hands back to the cello whilst the neuropathy was developing so that I would be able to play with the neuropathy in place. This seemed the better alternative rather than waiting till the fingers had become truly numb which would make beginning again much harder. It was strange to observe that, once over the hump of beginning again, the numbness seemed to be alleviated with the movement and stimulation.

I had to talk myself out of being the perfectionist that I am on the cello and play regardless of ghastly noise and feeling. It took a couple of weeks for the cello to become familiar again, and I haven’t looked back since. It is truly my faithful friend. I developed a real Huntist contraption to cheat my hands into developing callouses and fine muscle control again. This consisted of a ruler with a cello string drawn end to end and fastened with tension. Then half corks were put under it at each end to increase the string tension and I could doodle with finger exercises whilst doing other mindless things like watching movies. It actually helped. I used a small double bass bow to help the right hand regain some of its acuity. Ati has now refined this original idea and used a paint stirring stick and some clothes hanger wire on one side, a dowling glued along the other and weights of Australian two dollar pieces glued at each end. So both hands can work on the same little device.

My feet weren’t so lucky, but I walked around with bare feet and kept trying to give my toes some sensory and temperature stimulation to keep them going as well. It has all helped and now they are also back in the land of the living.