Pregnant with a tumour?

I've always been honest about the fact that I've never had any desire to have children. Where once it was a vague 'I don't see having kids as part of my life plan', in recent years it became more of a mandate to change society's perceptions of women childless by choice, and re-write the tired old narrative that women without kids were somehow 'selfish, shallow, self-absorbed', or worse, failures. I love being 'Auntie Carmel' to my friends' kids, but nothing about any part of the process of bearing children has any appeal to me personally. Back in my single days, when people would condescendingly say 'You'll change your mind', or 'You just haven't met the right man', I'd retort with 'Imagine looking at a pregnant woman's bump and telling her she'll soon change her mind, you'd be shot!'. I loudly and bolshily defended a woman's right to choose, probably to the severe irritation of my clucky, maternally-inclined friends. I have even been known to respond to a friend's pregnancy announcement with an involuntary, 'Why? Why would you do that to yourself?'. And let's not get into the story of how I accidentally came to be at my nephew's birth, saw the whole thing in all its messy glory, and ran away to the nearest birth control clinic, my ovaries shrinking in horror. On my first date with Tanai, I casually mentioned that I didn't want kids, and when I asked him to marry me (two months later, yes, total badass) I reminded him of this little fact. Thankfully, he doesn't want to have children either, although I suspect his reasons are more linked to climate change, so we are both happily child-free.

Imagine my amusement, then, as it slowly dawns on me how many parallels there are between my current situation, and being pregnant! Now I know this sounds strange, but bear with me. First of all there are the chemo side effects.

Nausea: an obvious one, the nausea equates with morning sickness, and the recommended remedies are the same. Mothers at work have all been telling me to drink ginger beer, ginger tea and eat ginger biscuits. Even the meds I'm on for the nausea are given to expectant mothers.

Cravings: I knew that my tastebuds would be affected by the chemo, but no-one prepared me for the cravings. Since last week I have had intense cravings for salty, stodgy food. Mashed potato, marmite on toast, even bran flakes, which I've not eaten for years! I've totally gone off sweet things, wine tastes disgusting (this makes me very sad), but if it's got carbs or protein content, bring it on!

Sleepless nights: I'm having very erratic sleep patterns at the moment. A combination of nighttime nausea waves and having to get up to pee every 2 hours because of the gallons of water I'm drinking all day. My pregnant friends tell me it's the same when you have a bump pressing on your bladder.

General fatigue: sometimes when I do something relatively minor, such as catching the tube to work, or having a shower, I rustle up a rapturous round of applause complete with whistles and cheering in my head. Because, frankly, I deserve a bloody medal for the smallest things nowadays. My energy levels are severely depleted and everything uses up about 10 times as much energy as it used to. Again, see above!

And then there are the obvious but admittedly slightly creepy parallels. In the early stages of my diagnosis, I met up with an old friend and disclosed my news. She then revealed that she was about 9 weeks pregnant. I've been pondering on our future trajectories since then. We both have something growing inside our bodies. Over the next 6 months, I am taking steps to try to reduce the size of that growth, while she will be feeding hers and encouraging it to grow. As well as the side effects listed above, we are both conscious of the ways our daily habits affect the success of our endeavours, eating healthily, looking after ourselves, dealing with reduced immune systems. Our respective employers will be flexible with our working arrangements to accommodate our needs. And then, around the same time, October sometime, we will both have these growths removed from our bodies, and hope for a successful outcome. The only difference I can perhaps perceive, is that I shall hopefully get off scott free once my growth is removed: if the treatment is successful and I emerge cancer-free, I will finally be able to get on with the rest of my life, and become my healthy, energetic, independent self again. Whereas she will be stuck looking after her 'growth' for at least the next 18 years!

Okay, so perhaps that last part was a bit flippant, but still, the similarities are uncanny, don't you think?