“In the arms of a mother and father
In the arms of a son and a daughter
It’s there if you want it
Oh, oh, oh, oh
In the water the sun passes through
In the air that is all around you
It’s everywhere
You just have to care
It’s the right thing to do
And you know it
And it’s inside of you
So just show it
Love is the truth”
Jack White
Over my time I have been a member of many different clubs, societies, associations, and groups. In Dundalk , as a child I was briefly a member of the Setanta Cub Scouts, and a very proud member of the Dundalk Library. I think I was a member of the John Travolta fan club, but that may have just been something my cousin Shiela made up, or she did really sign me up , but just so that she could get extra posters. When we moved to Monaghan I again briefly joined the 2nd Monaghan Cub Scouts, going so far as to get the scarf/handkerchief and woggle. At secondary school I nearly made it on to the Dalton panel, the school’s junior GAA football team. In the try outs I scored 4 goals. This was not due to any great footballing ability, I was a lonely forward and Michael Moyna was the captain of the other side and always screamed at their goalkeeper to kick the ball out to him, and I quickly realised that their poor keeper was as miscast as a footballer as I was and couldn’t kick it very far, so I simply stood about 10 yards in front of him, caught the ball and kicked it back over his head. I missed the next training session because I had a cold and Fr. McHugh contemptuously told me on my return that his team had no place for Hypochondriacs and didn’t think it was funny when I replied indignantly ,
”I am not a Hypochondriac, Father, I’m a Catholic !”
I was a fully fledged member of the school’s cross country team, largely because absolutely no one wanted to be on it, with the possible exception of Vincent McQuaid. I later joined Monaghan Phoenix Athletic so that Ronan and I could meet girls. I was a member of Monaghan Rugby Club for 6 weeks. Technically I was a member for a year, but 6 weeks of pre-season training put paid to any notion of it being something I would enjoy. I think I was a member of Monaghan United Soccer Club, but that may have been a legal loophole for them to have discos, and our entrance fee was our ‘membership’. I was a member of Rain, a shamefully overlooked band of wonderful troubadours. I was a member of The Holy Ghost Fathers, Rossmore Golf Club, the Simon Community, Foroige, the Upper Malone Gardens Residents Association, Vistage ( the business network, not the band), Drumkill Rovers, Monaghan Coder Dojo, Kilmore & Drumsnatt Parish Child Protection Committee, the Monaghan Town Team, Friends of Rossmore Park, St.Macartans’ College Board of Management, Irish Cricketers Association, Irish Shoe & Leather Golf Society, The Pink Elephant, Four Seasons Fitness & Leisure Club, Monaghan Chamber of Commerce, Clogher Historical Society, and Monaghan Town Runners.
They’re not in chronological order and I think I only belong to two of them now.
I was up in Dublin today and …
My friend Karl is the course facilitator in Trinity for a module called eHealth in Innovation, which is part of a MSc in Cancer Survivorship. It’s a course for health professionals that deal with oncology patients, and once a year they ask a few people who have been through treatment to come in as an empathy panel to share their experiences and to allow the students to ask questions about everything and anything associated with navigating your way through cancer treatment from the patient’s perspective.
This is the third year I’ve taken part, and this time there were 8 of us, four of us had been before and four were new. Karl started of by asking us to introduce ourselves, and I said that I was ‘Paul, from Monaghan, the True Centre of the Universe’, which earned a few giggles, and almost a slap on the ear for Robbie, who was sitting beside me and said something derogatory involving Cavan. We then, in turn were each invited to say as broadly or as minutely as we wanted to describe our cancer, our treatment and observations. Each and every story was completely different, but all were bravely and honestly relayed. This year we seemed to touch on the emotional or psychological aspects more naturally than I remember from other years. It’s a weird thing, in that it’s the same setting each year, in the exact same classroom, and Karl has always been the facilitator, and yet I think I’ve told a different story each time. Obviously the basics are the same, I haven’t grown back a kidney or a bladder, but I seem, even to myself, to mention something I hadn’t before, and also to skip other things that had seemed central previously.
I’m always in awe of my co-panellists stories, especially the ladies, ( no offence Robbie). I never recall having to argue my case with my GP, consultant, or pharmacist, but almost every one of the ladies seemed to have had an extra gatekeeper to placate in order to be finally heard. Two of the panellists are now advocates for other patients for the Irish Cancer Society.
Two things that we had in common were fatigue and stoicism…and gratitude , are three things we had in common…( that’s an old Monty Python sketch, The Spanish Inquisition, you should look it up, you know what , I’ll save you the bother, and just link it here.)
I was glad to hear the others mention the fatigue. Even years after treatment has ended almost everyone said, or nodded along , that energy levels never returned to what they had been. Hearing that was worth the trip for me. I’d been getting frustrated with my running lately, in that I can’t seem to get any faster. At one point Ray and I used to race each other manically at the Cootehill Parkrun and regularly had 24 minute times. We comfortably add another 10 minutes to our Parkrun meanders these days. So it was nice to hear that it may be connected to the cancer treatment and has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with Guinness, Rioja, Keoghs Cheese & Onion Crisps, Mallon’s sausage rolls, chocolate HobNobs or the CoffeeDoc’s lemon drizzle muffins.
We all seemed to share a stoic outlook on life, and I think we all felt lucky. We felt lucky that we were still here, mostly intact, that we had received incredible care and treatment, and that , all in all, there are worse things.
Everyone’s story was their own to tell, so I won’t mention any specific details or identify who said what, but among some great laughs, my favourite was the lady who said her husband knows when she’s due a checkup because he says that the Seven Dwarfs have arrived.
“The Seven Dwarfs ???” she asked.
“Yes.” He replied “Grumpy, Itchy, Bitchy…..”
The class who listened and then asked questions were very cool indeed. All of their questions were pertinent and made us stop and think before answering. We broke up in to groups of two panellists and sat with groups of four students and then shuffled around so that extra questions could be asked. One lovely student said that in my story I’d said that some of the procedures I’d had I couldn’t quite recall their actual name, as an act of self preservation, but that when anyone mentions a tiny camera, no matter what they say, it’s never actually smaller than the aperture they’re inevitably trying to crowbar it into. She asked me if I though that I had subconsciously blanked out the name to stop reliving the trauma. I said that my Soulmate sometimes refers to me as Dory, so I’d just forgotten. Cystoscopy ! That’s the chap. And , God forbid, you ever have to have a cystoscopy and the medical professional administering the procedure tells you that the gel they’re applying is a numbing agent, you can, without fear of contradiction, call them a damn liar , there and then. That fucking gel is just to lubricate that tiny camera !
I don’t quite know if it was the slightly new format, or the stories my fellow panellists told, but I learnt a lot myself and have to say that it was a heart warming experience.
A few of us went to lunch together and after a while we agreed to get off cancer stories and talk about holidays and pets instead.
Lately I’ve been busy doing actual work things. This may come as a shock to my work colleagues, but I haven’t had a day to wonder and ponder in a while, so after lunch instead of heading straight back I walked through the grounds of Trinity and stopped and sought out the spot where I had liberated a cobblestone a few years ago when I was attending my own course. It’s on a shelf in our Stephen’s office if anyone needs it back. I wandered up Grafton St., thinking about the chats earlier , and absentmindedly found myself in SpinDizzy records and the first album cover I saw was The Beths ‘Expert In A Dying Field’, and I laughed out loud. It seemed fitting for the day we’d had together. I must have laughed a bit louder than I thought as two other browsers moved away and the staff behind the counter had stopped what they were doing and glaring at me. I bought the album and left.
The Chester Beatty Museum is one of my favourite places in Dublin. I’ve been there oodles of times and yet I always find something new. It’s never actually new, it’s always something that has always been there, but I’d never noticed properly before, or noticed at all. In the ‘Arts of The Book’ exhibition there was an Albrecht Dürer print of Adam & Eve from 1504 which used some subtle oak leaves to save the blushes of the viewing public. This contrasted sharply with another depiction of Adam and Eve , upstairs in the Sacred Traditions gallery where there was an 8th century Irish Celtic drawing. The monk who drew this had clearly never seen a woman naked and seemed to imagine women’s breasts manifesting from behind their shoulders. This monk may have been related to some of the GPs that the panellists had met on their cancer journeys. But I did like the fact that the monk had no time for finely drawing oak leaves to cover anything and drew huge rhubarb leaves instead.
In the first gallery I stopped and looked at an 18th century astrolabe. I’d watched a Darwin lecture by Sandi Toksvig, titled ‘Eve’s Byte of the Apple’, where she explores women’s contribution to knowledge and history and how they are written out of it. Mariam al-Astrolabi , a renowned and much in demand maker of astrolabes is featured. I stopped and looked at the golden astrolabe for a while and thought of Mariam.
On my way back to the car I stopped and bought a tee shirt at the Seeking Judy stall.
A great day.
The best part of all was when we had finished our lunch and we were saying our goodbyes and the hugs I got , especially from Catherine, Cora and Shampa, all of whom have been panellists with me before. There was great warmth in the hugs and genuine well wishes and the poignant hope that we’re all back together next year.
This might be my new favourite club.
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. In 2007 Coke asked a Japanese artist, Nagi Noda, to make them an ad , and she made it using multiple actors all dressed similarly in one single shot, without CGI or special effects. For some reason they only broadcast it once and whenever someone posts it, it gets taken down. Here it is. In case it doesn’t work, here’s Jack White singing an acoustic version. I dedicate it to the Room 115 club. Enjoy it while you can.
