at the expense of the drug companies that wanted Greg’s business.
In a short space of time, it became clear that the treatments I had been scheduled for weren’t working and the cancer was spreading. When Greg said, “We are going to try something new”, I never imagined my friend would put me at risk. He put me on an experimental drug, which I took for two days and then was bedridden for three weeks. Greg got a brand new sports car about a week after I went on this drug. Strangely coincidentally, it never cost me a cent to be on this drug.
After this I had had enough. I put a stop to it all.
I was grey, skeletal and completely bald, not an eyelash to my name. I felt utterly stripped and devoid. I couldn’t eat, though that didn’t seem to affect my ability to vomit. My stomach responded to filtered water as though it was curdled milk. The only relief I had at this time was when I closed my eyes; for some reason I felt cooler, safer, calmer. Everything else burned, ached and stung. The chemotherapy left my very veins feeling scraped and charred. You know that feeling you have, when you’ve spent all night next to a campfire and you can feel that grotty charred sensation in every pore? Well, that was what I felt like on the inside. Bizarrely, I had extraordinary insight into the internal trauma of my battle-raged body.
I refused treatment. The oncologist was peeved. He said, “At best, you’ve got two weeks.”
Two weeks to live. Two weeks. I was twenty years old.
I phoned my parents and told them I had cancer. This probably seems strange, but as I lived alone and some distance from them, I didn’t want them to worry; I just wanted to get on with the job of getting over this cancer. Actually, I didn’t tell many people about it because I couldn’t tolerate their pity. And I couldn’t help them in their distress; I just didn’t have the energy. They were so angry! But I just didn’t have it in me…I had to focus on surviving.
So I locked myself in my apartment with my cat, Rhubarb, and lay down awaiting death. Somewhere on the second day, I thought, “I don’t feel like I’m dying.” I wasn’t well. I felt like crap, my body was wasted away, simply breathing was painful…but I wasn’t dying. Perhaps that was more the core reason why I didn’t tell my family or many of my friends; I knew, within, that this would end and I would still be here. So I got up and got on with life.
I can’t explain it, and now I know that it actually doesn’t require explanation. The fact that I am still here is enough. My body healed itself.
Within a year I was cancer free.
But the damage was evident. My body was wasted down to its very base elements and felt truly foreign to me. I had no strength, restricted movement, little stamina and no appetite. Out walking one day, I tried to race a friend in a sprint up a hill. He laughed triumphantly when he got to the top and turned to find I had barely moved from where he left me. He joked, calling me “slack”and ‘slow”, but what he didn’t realise is that I had given it everything I had! There was just nothing there. This was a shattering revelation. My body had forgotten me! It was not unlike getting into a cab in a foreign country and finding the driver doesn’t speak English. We were going nowhere until I could communicate with this body again.
So the very first body I rehabilitated was my own, sculpted and rebuilt from the wastelands of terminal disease. It was hard work and felt agonisingly slow, but in reality, in a matter of months, I had discovered a body purpose-built for living.
I was still studying at university and was now paying my way through school by teaching aerobics classes (I had found a way to combine rehabilitation and earning). Leading sixteen to eighteen classes a week, my body was strong, muscular, capable and I loved the way it felt again! I was ready for a new challenge.
So I applied to enter the army. Of course, what else does a young girl do? I wanted to go in at general entry, as I admired the character at that level. Instead, with my evident education, they put me in for Officer Training, necessitating almost a year of psych tests, medicals (I’ll get back to that), exams, hearing tests, the lot. Out of 1200 applicants, sixty got in and only three were women. I was one of the three.
I left you hanging about my doctor, Greg, “doing me harm”. It turned out that Greg had some pretty serious issues, I’m afraid. Allegedly, Greg had been having sex with his patients in his rooms and charging the time to Medicare. What was worse, he was HIV positive, as now are many of the men he’d had sex with. While I’d known him he had married and had a daughter; thankfully, both his wife and daughter are not HIV positive. As you can well imagine, when all of this came to light my shock was miniscule compared to the shock his wife experienced. He had also, in his incredibly charistmatic and charming way, convinced many of his elderly clients to leave their millions to him…and the list goes on. He’s now jailed, having been charged with many crimes, including millions of dollars of Medicare fraud. I had been quite the “beard” for my doctor!
No doubt because he was covering his tracks, my medical records disappeared. That is no mean feat, I tell you, and it wasn’t just mine alone. Many of his patients have had to deal with this. These records were removed from a number of databases. It’s never been a convenient thing, I might add. The only medical records I have left are of a tonsillectomy I had at eighteen. However, this worked well when I was entering the military.
I was in the army now.
My mother was horrified, the relatives disbelieving; my father, however, having been in the army himself, said “It will be the making of you.“ He was so right! It was some of the best times and some of the worst times I can recall.
I had no expectations except that it would be hard. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed it so much; every day I was pushed to my limit and then beyond, so every day I had a hugely empowering sense of accomplishment. Even today I live very much by the Infantry corps motto: “Improvise, Adapt and Overcome”.
I later found out that during my basic training, there was a huge betting pool on how long I would stay in; the longest bet was three weeks. Probably because of my physical appearance, people have a habit of grossly underestimating me.
It wasn’t long before my fellow recruits figured that out. The guys later confessed that I pushed them all, because I would whip them on the obstacle course, on the firing range, and tactically. We would run at a 10-foot wall and I would make it over first time, one-handed, rifle slung. You can imagine the male ego response to that.
And it was that male ego thing, too, that created some of my worst moments in the army.
Early on it was discovered that I had a talent with weapons. I have a dead eye when shooting and a love for the mechanism of the weapons we used. My first love was rifles and individual automatic weapons. No need to worry, it’s not some demented, crazed obsession. The military ensures that not only are you proficient in handling the weapon, but that you revere it and handle it with the utmost respect.
As time came for me to choose a corps, I wanted to go into armoured; tanks, etc. I mean, why carry the weapon when the weapon can carry you? That, and I loved the sound of the 30 cal and 50 cal guns; beautiful. But justifiably, women aren’t allowed in armoured. We aren’t allowed in infantry either, but that is the corps I entered.
I think my father was right. I saw so many great guys grow into great men in the military. And I’m sure it was the “making of me” too. I made some awesome friendships whilst in the military that last to this day, and could tell you a thousand hysterically funny “war stories” about our service, training and exercises, that to this day have tears of laughter rolling down my cheeks.
It was a truly amazing
