Up Front by Emma Hart

Thank you, Emma. Not just for the update and a chance to read your pleasurable prose again, but for making real an experience that most people don't have the skills or the venue to talk about. xx

Thanks for going into more detail here what you're going through Emma. Offerings empathy sounds shallow but I've certainly been thinking of you and even the cricket has lead to thoughts like "Oh! I hope Emma enjoyed that!"

cheerfully offering people cups of really vile coffee

Heh that's so you feel better about the other truly shit stuff going on right?

Thank you to the Black Caps for cheering me up no end through my treatment. I have been assured by many people that they’re only doing it for me.

Seriously it's the only reasonable explanation.

And really seriously, I hope the last third is tolerable and I really really hope you get well enough soon so you can come up to Auckland and we can give you all those hugs we've been saving up specially just for you.

a yellow line with daffodils on it.

and a rainbow where the sun will shine. kia Kaha. x

Emma, you’re a champion. Not just for enduring all this, but also for being able to write about it with your characteristic wit and flair. Holy shit.

PS Anyone who isn’t already, you should all read Emma’s ripping, sexy novel The Isis Knot, and flick her a koha.

More power to you, Emma. I couldn't talk about it when I was doing it, let alone write about it for strangers.

Kia kaha.

Thanks, guys. Yous are all fabulous. I was looking at writing on this (and for a video a guy had made with a gopro attached to his treatment machine) and nothing felt right. There was this weird sense of compulsory optimism. It was kind of like parenting: you either talk about how wonderful it is, or you STFU.

and even the cricket has lead to thoughts like “Oh! I hope Emma enjoyed that!”

My sentiments are apparently being passed on to the team. My first thought was "Oh gods, now I could actually jinx them."

You continue to amaze in so many ways.

My sentiments are apparently being passed on to the team.

This is so cool.

I've always enjoyed using twitter as a virtual couch for the cricket. Recently on the days you're understandably a bit quiet, I think 'fuck I hope Emma's Ok today'. Glad the end is in sight, and all the best for the rest of it.

Arohanui.

Thank you so much for sharing this, especially so elegantly and wittily prosed.

“My standard reply to “How are you?” is now “Hi.” It makes no difference.

I can relate to this. In the early 1990's the sales team at my work all went to a training session, and came back using "How are you?” (or variants) as a greeting. After a couple of days, I started to just treat it as a greeting, and reply with a "Hi". It was weird how it evolved so that "Howarya" became a non-question.

Of course, any answer to "How are you?" other than "good", is always interpreted as an invitation to the questioner to ask follow-up questions. (I'm often tempted to reply "do you really want to know?" or "fuck off", but my politeness doesn't let me).

Emma, your radiation department sounds almost identical to Auckland's although we didn't have daffs on our corridor line. That's a nice touch.

I had the mask and the meds: used to take a dose of Oxynorm before going in and Ondansetron on coming out. With a tongue depressor in my mouth that stuck out of the mask, it was a struggle every day until my jaw stretched and relaxed. I had an alphabetical list I'd go through over and over for the 10 minutes or so of treatment.

But the staff were so nice. No one was grumpy and the receptionist greeted me each day like a long lost friend.

I associate that time with the 30 trips over the bridge to the hospital: volunteer drivers, friends and family and all the car conversations we had.

We had the yellow-clad volunteers, the vile coffee and the huge jigsaw but no knitting:) An American woman who was treated in the US said they used to have a "hugs lady" who would come around and distribute hugs to people who wanted a hug.

Damn it, I missed your original post. Warm thoughts your way, and the hope that the shithouse days are seriously limited.

I am so sorry for what you are going through. I've never (thankfully) had to undergo chemo or radiotherapy, but I HAVE undergone treatment that felt even worse than the illness it was intended to treat. Never let go hope, and do whatever you need to do to get through. Kia haha and my thoughts are with you.

I always felt like my partner’s face was so beautiful every time she took off that mask.

I had to get written permission to film in one of the radiation rooms at Auckland Hospital, I haven’t got any of that video broken out, but there’s some footage starting around 4:34 in this longer thing:

If you have very fast eyes you’ll spot pixels being activated by the radiation.

Our line had a different colour.

I always felt like my partner’s face was so beautiful every time she took off that mask.

Ha, they swear to me I don't look like that afterwards! liars.

Also that video made my eyes leak. Thank you.

I always felt like my partner’s face was so beautiful every time she took off that mask.

I had to get written permission to film in one of the radiation rooms at Auckland Hospital, I haven’t got any of that video broken out, but there’s some footage starting around 4:34 in this longer thing

That's wonderful.

I've mentioned before that my daughter had similar treatment about 25 years ago when she was little. The mask then was not as flash as these mesh ones but otherwise not much seems to have changed. The staff being nice made a difference then as now. But most importantly whatever they did it worked.

Great to see that.

I'm glad it worked so well for your daughter, Hilary. When my mask was being made I saw the mobiles for children overhead. The technician said they tried to make it fun for the kids.

Con the grats for the end of the sessions Emma. Here's to allowing thoughts to wander from suchlike... h/t io9