Where and Back Again?

Mistletoe is an extraordinary plant. It grows as a parasite on various hosts, and takes something unique from the host tree.  It is used in the treatment of conditions such as  cancer - in fact in Germany mistletoe therapy is offered alongside conventional cancer treatment - as well as traditionally as a treatment for epilepsy.

In Lily's book ODYSSEY - which is the journal of her year into and out of treatment for breast cancer, regular mistletoe injections were central to her ‘Journey back home’, the strap line of the book's title.
Lily has a charming illustration of the mistletoe plant in week 2 of the journal - and here it is.

PRINT: Mistletoe is not just for Christmas

What I love about Odyssey are two main themes: first, the journal itself, written as a diary with humour and an honesty throughout, plus great back reference in the range of music, a particular track chosen for each day that Lily wrote a diary. For example, on Sunday 4th of July, when old friends from Norfolk visited, her choice was MEET ON THE LEDGE by Fairport Convention, where a big line is:

"When the time is right, I'm gonna see all of my friends."

And second, the brilliant and unusual iPad illustrations that go throughout the book accompanying each page of text, some with additional photos and you can even find images from her scans if you look hard enough.

Realizing she had cancer was the result of a regular mammogram - telling me what it would mean was something else, talked about in the M&S cafe at Musgrove Park hospital after her consultation. Lily's book is an inspiration to cancer sufferers, but the beginning of it all was not easy. This is the poem I wrote describing that day.

I am in the cafe

The Labyrinth

I am in the cafe, 
M&S providing yet another coffee
to help my moments join together
in some predictable way.

The cafe is good, filled with doctors, nurses,
and the rest of us, waiting our turns.

And then she is there, her face not happy,
but focused, intense, as though she had just 
been to the bank and found that we had
much less than we thought..

It’s bad, she said. It’s the worst type of cancer there is,
aggressive.
And my blood, she said, has nothing positive, only three
types of negative, as if I would understand.

I'll get you a coffee, I said, hoping that the normal
could bring us back from the brink.

It’s probably a mistake, she had said when the letter arrived,
with a date, so that somehow we could put it to the side
and carry on, as if it was a letter from the hygienist.

A lady shuffled by, her dressing gown shabby, creased,
no effort now needed, no point in dressing.
Her ward was along one of the endless corridors that seemed to
lead nowhere, only backwards.

I’ll need chemotherapy, to try to kill it I suppose, and perhaps surgery.
As she told me, she was looking at me, and to the side, 
the truth and horror of it all somehow in the distance.

We held each other’s hands, as tears came quietly,
and touching across the M&S table
we know that something new has entered our lives,
a gift that we wanted, oh so very much, to leave unopened.