Digging Deep

I haven’t posted for a few days because I’ve been completely overwhelmed by the post diagnosis rollercoaster whilst trying to wrap up things that need doing before treatment starts. Like my PhD. In one week I have climbed the highest highs and reached the lowest lows, sometimes in the same 5 minutes. In case anyone is expecting an all singing all dancing positivity fest this isn’t it. I never knew it was possible to travel this vertical emotional distance one week. I’ve been in denial, I’ve prayed, I’ve howled, I’ve begged, I’ve remonstrated with the universe, I’ve accepted and then started again. My grief curve is more like a salad spinner.

With the viva fast approaching I decamped to the family farm and locked myself in a barn with a desk and not much else to fiddle with. Right now ADHD is not my friend. I am queen of the displacement activity. My joke is that the net result of my PhD is that I learnt to paint, started singing again and got involved in helping the university win about £80m quid and set up a national lab; all to avoid doing my homework. So three focused days of prepping notes and summaries and just trying to get my head round what the hell I’d been writing about for 5 years was a challenge. Doing anything in a logical order in fact. It literally got knocked out of my brain with the diagnosis and it was like reading it for the first time.

It was a comfort to be home with my dad on the bonsai nursery. I love catching up with him and the people who work there, some of whom have been in my life for forty years. Others newer but no less dear to me. And always new people around – some of whom are too kind for their own good and have no idea and foolishly let me play on their dangerous digger before anyone sensible said ‘stop she’s a maniac!’. I allowed myself a study break for this unexpected treat and immediately turned into a small excited child. Did no one tell the builders there might be a reason why I’ve never been allowed on the sit on lawnmower? I’ve not really analysed why myself. Probably female gaslighting or because the boys want all the decent toys to themselves. I actually did quite a good job on the digger (if scary for the builder who shouts ‘don’t lift it too high’ ‘slow down!’. But is kind and patient all the same.) My dad says that if academia doesn’t work out this new skill might be an option. I am thinking.. as a therapeutic activity an adult ‘digging and heavy machinery’ retreat might be really viable. Bury your past. Dig up old memories etc. Find hidden strengths. Corporate away days. Better count them in and count them out eh just in case some fails to bury the hatchet.

So, Tuesday night – ahead of the much feared viva examination – was a long dark teatime of the soul. I had crammed and crossreferenced the life out of my 100000 word magnum opus. I’d thought forward, backwards and in circles, plotting imaginary questions and challenges for several days. Funnily enough, I couldn’t sleep and at one point, as I was staying alone in our barn, I let the darkness in and found myself howling at the moon and my sad fate. Positivity has to take a rest sometimes. In the cold light of day I found myself back on my horse with that tough sleepless burning behind the eyes, a feeling familiar from when the twins were small. You put the night behind you and push through. I thought ‘oh well I can survive like this till lunchtime’.

There was a hard frost as I got the train from our country station. I chatted to the coffee. guy and a few fellow early travellers. I find myself more open to strangers at the moment and have become that slightly unwelcome friendly person who starts conversations at random. People are surprisingly open when you stop ignoring them. And I am like a vampire feeding off their energy.

Once I get to Royal Holloway I keep my calm until about 10 minutes before I have to go in the room. My wonderful supervisor Oli has picked me up at the office to walk me over to the boardroom where it will be held. I feel like a child being walked to the school gates. We walk through the woods, the tall trees and daffodils I’ve loved so much for this five years. Sometimes I think I have only come to campus for the ancient trees. My dad would love it. And he takes me up to get everyone in the right rooms and well briefed and to introduce me. He tells me he has heard that the examiners have some technical and some philosophical points they want to ask about which freaks me. I am not sure I have any technical or philosophical information at this point!! I go for a last pee 4 times in the cafe while we wait, then put on my brave face and my meet and greet smile and in we go.

The examiners are both charming and curious and they open by asking me to put the PhD and academic discussion aside and tell them how I found myself doing this PhD. They are curious about how I ended up in this position doing this research and the experience. I tell them the truth…about my long history in television, from making documentaries to diversity work and wanting to make more impact through emerging tech, seeing the dangerous territory we are straying into with data and representation and inequality. And then I tell them the more mundane, honest answer that I googled four things I liked on holiday skiing once whilst having coffee. ‘London Norway PhD and immersive‘ and an Angela shaped hole opened up in the universe. My little boy had said he wanted to live in a cabin, have a husky and work from anywhere on computers. This seemed a fine ambition and I wondered how I might facilitate it. Initially there was a comparative Norwegian aspect to the PhD but then covid happened. Anyway. It’s true. Over coffee and waffles a bored google changed my life.

We talk for nearly three hours about neoliberalism and how the goals of technology and scale are not always compatible with social values, about how marginalised people experience exclusions through technology and its institutions, about innovation systems and affinity networks, about precarity, emotional labour and value chains. They challenge me on a couple of areas and I realise I have not quite understood some key methods and, as usual, have just styled it out my own way making them work for me. Fortunately they like this style and think it more interesting as a method so I get minor corrections three paragraphs and some typos. I’m asked to leave the room so they can discuss me and then they invite me back in to deliver the news. I am congratulated and they clearly enjoy saying well done ‘DR Chan’ for the first time. A little round of applause. I like this format very much. It has a sense of occasion, formality and friendliness to it. Feels like a low key tv format. And I get a kick out of being called Doctor. My husband says ‘they have created a monster’. Me and Oli go for champagne in the sunny courtyard of a local oub. It’s been a long journey and he’s been like my supervisor, my father, my therapist and my brother. I feel grateful. I feel joy. He is The Best. I wonder what I did right to have such a human in my life.

And why am I telling you all this? Well, one, to record that joy and achievement and new narratives unfold even when you think you’ve run out of road. It is possible. This week I remembered I could still feel, not just happy, but elated and excited. And sad. All at the same time. I felt a bit less washed up and like cancer is going to be the end of all that.

The strangest thing was that throughout the viva and the joy that followed. I was aware that another meeting about me was going on across town at the same time, like all matters of significance converged on a point in one day. The breast cancer team at Imperial were meeting to discuss my ongoing treatment and I was holding my breath for a call. But it didn’t come. Not that day or the next. Eventually, by Friday, I was getting agitated and rang to hustle and for the very first time got a bit worked up at the pure frustration of not being able to get things moving. I mention to the nurse on the phone that the lung team had marked my appointment as ‘urgent’ as I have been waiting since January and switched teams. She coolly tells me with a derisive tone that ‘everyone is urgent’ and they will allocate me an oncologist ‘when they can’ but they are very busy. I have never felt like my life was less important. Like I was being told I could just get in the fucking queue with all the other people waiting to have their lives saved and should not make such a fuss. I honestly would have punched her in the face if she weren’t on the phone. But that’s not really fair. She was speaking the truth. I just didn’t need to hear it. Instead I say ‘I understand that but I have been twice round the queue and you have not met the NHS guidelines times for starting treatment’. In spite of her somewhat offhand dismissal, an appointment to see the oncologist finally lands an hour later. Ten more days.

I go back to celebrating and make the kids call me Dr Chan. In between dinners and champagne and congratulations and genuine joy, I laugh and I cry bitter tears and try to keep going and doing all the normal things. I cry in the kitchen where kids can’t see me fall apart and I’m getting good at a fast recovery because I don’t want to chip away at their hope. Keeping mine afloat is enough. This is a hell of a rollercoaster and I am clinging on to my seat for dear life.

Ten more days.