Patricia’s Good Year

On Sunday evening last, my wife Patricia was due to receive a prize for tennis. I’ll tell you about it in a minute. Alas, through a couple of circumstances that were really nobody’s fault, the prize-giving was over when we got there. Patricia got her prize and got her photo taken for the paper, and that was all good. However, there was an escapable feeling that a small moment has been lost. Just a small one but still a moment.

You see, Patricia had secretly been planning to say a few words after she was presented with her prize. Not a speech or anything. Just a line or two to her friends.

Because that didn’t happen, through no fault of anyone, I thought I would try and create a moment here on the blog where those few lines could be set down. Not to fix anything or, heaven forbid, to punish anyone but just simply because the lines are worth setting down and worth hearing. I don’t even know exactly what Patricia might have said but, knowing her as I do, I imagine a line or two like this would have been in there.

“Some years ago, I had major surgery. At the time, the surgeon couldn't guarantee that  I would ever be able to play tennis again. And you all know how much I love my tennis. I would say to you, no matter what you get told, keep trying. Always keep trying.”

When Patricia’s eldest sister Una got breast cancer and then her next eldest sister,
Penelope also got breast cancer, just as their Mother, Maevie, had got it before them, it became clear that the cause was a genetic one. Una, Penelope, and Maevie all gave Patricia a gift. A gift of foreknowledge, where she could take some action against an oncoming train. It also left her with a decision to make. Not an easy one.

On the morning that Patricia was going in for her surgery, she was due to be taken down to the theatre at eight in the morning. I was driving to Galway at seven when I got a call from her to say she was being brought down early so we would have to catch up afterwards. Patrica had a bi-lateral mastectomy and, at the same time, she had the muscles called the latissimus dorsi taken from her back on both sides for a breast reconstruction. This was judged to be the best way to do things, implants tending to be a bit troublesome after a certain age. The operation took over fourteen hours.

My abiding memory will be of Patricia asking if she could walk into theatre under her own steam rather than being wheeled in. The staff obliged. It is hard to walk into a room full of people who are waiting to go to work on you when there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. It takes a bravery beyond my understanding. A profound will to live.

On the day before the surgery we walked on the beach, had some cake, and carried a feeling that this day was the end of something and the beginning of something else. In the hospital that evening, ensconced in a bed that she could have got up and walked away from, a nurse with a chart tutted at Patricia’s smiling face and, a little judgementally, said, “this is a major procedure… a very big procedure.”

And it was.

The recovery was slow. We walked the corridors of the hospital, drain tubes and murky maroon collecting bags slung in every direction like handbags. One of the back wounds was desperately slow to heal.

But it did heal. It healed well.

The prize that Patricia won in the tennis club was in the ladder competition. You play the person above you and, if you win, you ascend. Patricia ascended more than anybody else in the whole thing. She climbed eight rungs of the ladder. She played and beat men half her age along the way. Ironically, the latissimus dorsi muscles that they took from her back are the very ones you would normally use to climb a ladder, to pull yourself up. You have to use something else when they are no longer there. I’m not sure what that is but it is something strong.

Patricia is having a good year. The things she set out to do are being done in great style. She swam a mile, she won the tennis prize, she excels in other aspects of her life that I can't really talk about here. She is rocking 2023.

And it feels like Una, Penelope, and Maevie too, all dearly departed from us, are encouraging her on to be the best she can be. Having given her the gift of a longer life, through the hardest of lessons, Patricia acknowledges their strength and love by continuing to live the best life that she can.

And we both count our blessings to be here still. We don’t feel as if we have dodged a bullet; rather we have slowed it down. It’s the same for all of us, really; the bullets are coming for us all at some point. That's life. We can only avoid so many. But we keep ducking and diving and doing the best we can and we remember the people who have gone on ahead who, in doing so, have given us a better chance to carry on a while longer.

Onwards with your great year, my Patricia. It’s only August. 

Anything could happen yet.