Me Life Story by Scarlett Moffatt (best classic books of all time txt) 📗

his little girl having to have tests for that awful C-word – cancer – was heartbreaking. My dad picked up my sock, held it to his eye and started to cry.

‘Come on, Dad, my socks don’t smell that bad.’ I smiled weakly, trying to cheer him up. Even though I was nervous and confused at what was happening I just wanted to hear my dad laugh, not cry.

I remember when my dad got diagnosed with cancer, although now it feels like that part of our life was just a distant nightmare. It started when I was nearly eight years old and we were all sat on the sofa eating sausage casserole and watching Gladiators (it’s so weird how you remember minor details). My mam saw a small lump on my dad’s back as he was just chilling in his joggers. There was no freckle or mole around it so my mam tried squeezing it, thinking it was a spot. But a few weeks passed and it started getting bigger and my mam got worried and forced my dad to go to the doctor’s about it.

That evening when my dad got back from the doctor’s he seemed really relaxed. ‘The doctor said it was a cyst and to just keep an eye on it,’ he said. But my mam kept checking it constantly as she just had a bad feeling about it. She made him go to the doctor’s again a month later as it had got even bigger. ‘It’s just a cyst, Betty, stop worrying. They’re going to remove it, I’ve got an appointment for two weeks.’

I now get so angry – if the problem had been properly diagnosed when my dad had originally gone to the doctor’s, he wouldn’t have had to go through all the agony he went through later. By the time he went to have it removed at the surgery, the doctor said it was too big and it needed to be taken out at hospital. ‘We are just going to cut a piece of the lump now and send it for a biopsy, Mr Moffatt. This will take around ten days and hopefully we will be in touch with good news,’ the doctor told him.

A few days later, me and my mam were sat on the back seat of the 1B bus, being rebels. I can’t remember where we had been, but my mam got a call from my dad at work. ‘This isn’t going to be good news, I can feel it,’ I remember her saying when she saw it was his number.

‘Betty, can you come to Darlington Hospital now? I’m about to set off from work. The doctor has called and told me I need to go to the hospital immediately.’

Mam cried the whole journey on the bus.

‘What’s wrong, Mam?’ I asked.

‘It’s Dad, he has to go to hospital, we are going to meet him there. It’s just a few bus stops away.’

‘Don’t worry, Mam, Dad is Dad. He is super strong, he will be fine.’ To me my dad was my superhero; he could lift me on his shoulders like I weighed nothing.

When we arrived he was already shut away in a little room with the doctor. ‘I’m afraid you have a malignant melanoma, Mr Moffatt.’

‘Does that mean I have cancer?’

‘It does.’

‘But half an hour ago I was welding at work, how is this happening?’ It didn’t sink in and I remember him coming out of the room with an expression I can only describe as defeated. He just looked blank.

They said they’d be in touch when they had an appointment for him as he would have to have X-rays and a CT scan.

My dad sat in the front seat of the taxi on the way home, crying quietly. Mam said later she’d only ever seen him cry once before, and that was when I was born. He wasn’t even crying for himself, it was for me and Mam. At the time, my mam was my age now, twenty-seven, and my dad was just thirty-two. But my dad was lucky and the day after his diagnosis he got a bed at James Cook Hospital and had all the necessary scans and X-rays over the next week.

The surgeon was called Dr Viva. He told my mam there was a strong possibility the tumour was wrapped around his spine and if it was they wouldn’t be able to operate. I don’t know how my dad coped or slept over the next few days waiting for his operation.

He had a room on his own and I remember every day when we went to visit him we drove past a factory just beyond Stockton that displayed the time and temperature and we knew then we were just ten minutes away. I would get excited when I saw it, knowing I’d soon be able to give my dad a cuddle. I remember my mam telling me in the car, ‘We have to be brave, we can’t cry even if Dad looks poorly. If we cry it will worry Dad and it’s like saying God, this is serious, this is cancer.’ As soon as we left the room we would cry together, we sobbed our hearts out, but as long as we were in that room with my dad we were strong, stronger than Wonder Woman.

I slept in my mam and dad’s bed while my dad was in hospital and we cuddled and cried and every night we would say lots of prayers. It’s strange because my mam wasn’t a big believer but she said that even a non-believer can change their minds when you think maybe someone is listening and maybe can help you. When I think of what my mam must have been going through, she was dealing with all of this and she was just my age. I get stressed if the hairdresser cuts too much of my hair, and there she was dealing with a kid and the worry of losing her one true