What is the funniest thing anyone ever told you? Take a minute. Think about it really hard. Does it make you smile? even just a twitch at the corner of your mouth? Yes. What about the time you really hurt yourself? A wince? Now the most embarrassing moment, cringe. Then the hardest thing you’ve ever done, proudest achievement. Nice feeling. What about the saddest time in your life….
Everyone has a sad story to tell. The problem being everyone thinks theirs is more so than the next one they hear. So why should anyone want to bother listening to me? That is what I have been saying to myself, my husband Mark, my mum and my friends for the whole of these past two years, burying each second of time in my brain like a camera recording. Logging every detail for future reference and dissection at a later date, like a detective at the scene of a crime. And when I go to bed at night and the lights go off, the sound clicks on and the film begins. Pause, rewind, replay.
For most women dreams of their wedding day have been ever present since we were old enough to put the table cloth over our heads and dance around our childhood homes humming 'here comes the bride'. It was the day that we too got to be a princess, our makeup and hair elegantly styled to perfection our prince at the other end of that aisle gazing back at us, eyes full of love. Then we grow up and reality reminds us that it's not all a fairy tale. Anyone who's planned a wedding will know it takes a lot of hard work, stress, tears and organisation, to get the day as close to that childhood fantasy as you possibly can.
As most people will be aware by now the preceding months to our wedding weren't exactly run of the mill. Whilst most brides were deciding on menus and going to food tastings at their chosen venues, I was debating the culinary offerings of York hospital catering and even then to what my limited appetite could tolerate. There was toast you could bounce of walls and roast dinners reminiscent of school dinners you could smell 3 corridors away, a far cry from the mini smoked salmon blinis and bucks fizz reception options at four star hotel venues. Once back on the main ward my pre wedding food selection was a safely selected baked potato, salad and tinned salmon.. most days, for two weeks.
Aside from the food there was still a whole wedding to organise. Despite eye rolling from the nurses and funny looks from other colourful characters on the ward, seven weeks before my wedding I was sat upright in bed, oxygen tube in my nose, be-dongled laptop on my knee and was tap tapping emails to florists and ordering shoe stretchers off Ebay to widen a slightly too tight pair of bridesmaid shoes. All the while contending with those pitiful looks and barely veiled mournful thoughts of the other patients, 'she's kidding herself, look at the state of her she'll never be well enough' and counteracting them defensively with my very own bold, grand statements of ''i'm getting married soon - look at this picture of my dress!''
But why would these five strangers I shared the 25feet by 15feet four walls be convinced otherwise, the evidence was pretty much stacked against me and I looked a sorrowful sight. My hair at this point was half its normal curly wiry thickness, wisps sparsely hiding terrifyingly bald sections, my face still like a beach ball and a stomach and ribcage full of nephrotic fluid to match. My legs were like tree trunks that if you pressed and would leave an imprint and felt not too dissimilar to a memory foam mattress. But what other choice did I have? Cancel the wedding and suffer through this with no end point?
To cancel a day I'd been looking forward to my whole life would have been a decision crueller than what this disease had put me through already that year. My heart was broken enough, this illness unveiled more and more of it its hideous secrets as we approached 10th June, piece by piece it was shattering every expectation of what it should have been like to be an excited bride to be. Every little moment, from not being able to wear my engagement ring due to my fingers being swollen to considering a cheap alternative to my already chosen and paid for dream wedding dress for one that may fit my grotesque body, was a little tear in a page of my storybook wedding. To this day it leaves a little hole in my heart that I didn't get to embrace the pre wedding joyfulness most do.
With all brides I have known since, I smile and feel the excitement and happiness of their big day for them but I envy the innocence and carefree fulfilment of preparing for their big day. I envy the trivial wedding woes of family disagreements and disorganised suit hire companies. It's something I never had and will never get back. I'll never forget back the fact my dress was 2 sizes too big as after the fluid drained away, you saw the true toll the illness and chemotherapy had taken on my body. I'll never forget that I never really had a proper hen weekend, that despite appearances I actually still felt pretty sick and shaky and was rattling with medication on our wedding day, then for our beautiful honeymoon we'd spent a twelve months paying for postponed in year that we perhaps deserved a holiday the most.
But never for one moment despite all my worries, fears, selfish anxieties and ambiguity about the wedding taking place, did I ever doubt I would make it to this day, that this would be the best and most happiest day of my life, that despite the far from fairy story embarkation of these would be nuptials, we would have a storybook ending and I would marry this wonderful man.
Most know that this chapter of the story has a happy ending, that thanks to some very clever (expensive agh!!) hair extensions and hairdressing wizardry to hide the areas on my head feeling the cold breeze nor than others - nobody could tell I was having more issues than Wayne Rooney before his hair transplant.
