At the beginning

Mum begins chemo.

The people are the first thing you notice—edging the room in pale blue wingtip chairs, their faces the same peculiar shade of marbled grey.

For the females, a quiet rhythm, their cooling hats are plumbed into machines [to avoid hair loss], which churn out chemotherapy in varying strengths and doses.

Young and old, sad and happy.

How do they manage this? I wonder. But, of course, they don’t - they have no choice. The act of enduring becomes automatic, like breathing in and out—beyond control, yet still awe-inspiring.

It’s art that meets them in their fear — music through headphones, literature through books, the culture of the family that meets their gaze in recognition of the symbolism of what is coursing through their veins.

Mum takes the chemo well: a bag and a half, delivered intravenously through a cannula that was difficult to place.

We suck boiled sweets. She rolls her eyes at the more chatty patients behind her regulation face mask.

I can’t help but notice those around us—their individual stories forming a quiet hum of resilience.

The process feels hyper-normal once you grasp it. Plug in for treatment. There’s a quiet choreography to it all — unplug for the loo, start again and … wait…

Mum is afraid but almost giddy, a strange euphoria flooding her veins. I know I’d feel the same, for now I dissociate— her needs are primary.

The MacMillan volunteer hands out hot tea from a silver trolley in cancer-branded cups. He deals in Wagon Wheels, shortcake biscuits, and jokes; making us smile because that’s “the kind of guy he is.”

My mum sips her tea between cycles, her hands steady but her fingers fidgeting with the rim of the cup.

She is calm, though I know the fear is there. It strikes me how survival can look so ordinary, folded into these small, unremarkable gestures: a sip of tea, a shift in a chair, a shared glance. Nothing dramatic, yet everything is.

Three hours later, it’s done. We leave the ward, stepping out into the ‘real’ world that feels anything but. We head home to wait, braced for the Christmas list of side effects that may or may not come. There is nothing to do but wait—and we do.

Day 8 begins on Monday, but for now, at 48 hours post-treatment, we breathe a sigh of relief, hopeful that the worst is not yet to come. Her body will tell us, but only in its own time.

It feels like waiting for a storm. The skies are calm now, but we can’t shake the sense of something brewing. And yet, we take comfort in these fleeting hours of normalcy.