“That’s what the Nazis said!”

At the beginning of this journey the endless time stretching out ahead of me with little to do, filled me with horror. I had lived such a busy life. How would I spend my time not working? How would I feel about my new idle self? Would I spend hours trapped in my own head going around in circles?

It has certainly been interesting slowing down. Sometimes the chemotherapy forces you to do absolutely nothing. You are exhausted but the steroids keep you awake. You are exhausted but the night sweats keep you awake. You are exhausted but the need to keep running to the loo keeps you awake. What have I thought about in the silence of the middle of the night? Often I have thought about the complexities of people that I have admired, but who have ended up disappointing me. Having thought about those people, their flaws and reflected on the reasons for what I interpreted as bad behaviour, I have forgiven them. It has been remarkably therapeutic. After all, life is too short to harbour resentments against people who probably don’t know that you resent them and care not a jot for you anyway.

Ultimately people are complicated. Very often the people in my life who have badly disappointed me, have been working with me in a close professional capacity. The law throws people together who may not have necessarily chosen each other to hang out with. Throw in ego, money and greed and it can bring out the worst in some people. The people I have perceived as greedy may well have good reason for behaving the way they do - insecurity, lack of confidence in themselves or lack of control. People who I have perceived as selfish and inhumane may just be arrogant, lack empathy or are so caught up in their own situation they cannot look outside it. I don’t know - but thankfully I no longer care.

People also surprise you. When news spread that I had cancer I heard from people I did not expect to hear from. Kudos to them. I respect them for contacting me and acknowledge that I was wrong about them. Conversely I haven’t heard from people I would have expected to hear from, or at the least politely acknowledge my situation. I understand that it can be awkward dealing with someone with cancer but I think it shows a level of cowardice and coldness to just ignore it, or in the case of some I unfortunately know, threaten me. I forgive them too. I am grateful that they have exposed their characters and I acknowledge their choices.

Cancer is shitty but overwhelmingly there have been way more positives than negatives. I have been showered in kindness. I have made some fabulous new warrior friends. I have been reacquainted with friends from my past - I’m looking at you Nikki H and Michelle C. I am delighted to be in regular contact with my dear friends Bernadette, Nicola, Michelle and Inger. We’ve had many good chuckles together over the past few months. I am terrible at keeping in touch but I hope they know I love them unconditionally and I feel unconditionally loved by them. I am sad that Nicola and Michelle’s trip (from Christchurch and Brisbane) to visit me a couple of weeks ago didn’t go ahead due to the COVID-19 lockdown in Auckland. However I am hopeful it will happen when I’m out the other side of treatment, I am double vaccinated and we can go out and shop, eat, drink and most importantly, laugh together. I feel I need some Michelle anecdotes in my life.

So in answer to the questions posed above, yes, I have spent a lot of time going around in circles in my own head but it has been helpful in resolving some unresolved feelings. I feel comfortable with my idle self as chemotherapy is hard and sometimes I have zero get up and go. I fall asleep at the dining table, on the sofa, at my desk and sometimes lying on the floor because I cannot be bothered getting up and moving to bed. I wish I had this ability previously when flying internationally. I spend my time resting, listening to audiobooks, watching TV, reading recipes, walking, gardening, planning my new raised garden, looking at seedlings online, listening to the radio, picking flowers, baking and planning what I will do when I have more energy. The end of chemo is in sight and I have a few projects planned. I have enrolled in an Open University creative writing course, I am planning to learn Te Reo and I have ordered a raised garden that I have organised with our gardener to install up on the bank behind our house for some tomatoes, strawberries, herbs and veges. I am also thinking of renovating the house. It is long overdue. It will be lovely to recuperate with projects. I also intend to resume walking every day and lifting weights.

I have a couple of surprising side effect of cancer. I almost always run early now. It is a result of having time in abundance. This is quite frustrating when you combine it with medical appointments as they (like the pre cancer me) almost always run late. I also can’t stop online shopping and it is usually for things I have no need for at the moment. I have some lovely clothes and shoes waiting for my return to public life. I really wanted to buy this dress: https://www.net-a-porter.com/en-nz/shop/product/jenny-packham/clothing/gowns/margot-embellished-tulle-gown/13452677152391876 - but fortunately I resisted long enough for it to sell out. It is worth more than my car.

As chemo comes to an end, radiation treatment is gearing up. I have had a telephone consultation with Maria, my radiation oncologist and have two further appointments coming up before it starts in about 3 weeks time. The move to alert level 3 has seen two physio appointments and a heart scan. I was pleased to learn that my heart continues to be in perfect working order and when Megan looked at my body composition it (by some miracle) has improved during chemotherapy - that is - fat as a percentage of my overall body composition has decreased and muscle has increased.

I am booked in for my first COVID vaccine tomorrow. My final chemo is on Wednesday.

So reflecting back on my work life and disappointing people - I thought I would finish with an anecdote from my very first law job. I shall set the scene. It was the mid 1990s. I worked in a relatively new office building decorated in colours popular for the time period, pink and grey. My rustic looking grey desk had a beautiful black leather top. We had really tall grey doors and painted pale pink walls. I had two pretty grey arm chairs in my office and lovely rustic grey cupboards for my files and books. My office had a fantastic view of the back of the fire station, where there was a volleyball net and in the summer, topless firemen fiercely competed. My boss, Gordon, was in the office next door and my secretary, Vicki, sat outside my office. Vicki worked part-time. This is an important detail.

My dear friend, Michele (with one L) was a family lawyer at the same firm. We met during profs and started at the firm within weeks of each other. We had for a time flatted together with another lawyer, Jenny, in a house owned by nudists (but that is a whole other story). Michele‘s office was further down the hall and next door to the senior associate who headed the family team.

For some reason, unknown to us, the partnership promoted the receptionist to office manager. She was a dreadful/disappointing woman with no EQ, who appeared insecure about her lack of higher education and took that out on the secretaries and young lawyers at the very bottom of the pecking order. Michele and I had numerous run ins with her and I frequently felt bullied and put upon. To say I detested her is an understatement.

On the day this story unfolds, I was in the third week of junioring a murder trial. As anyone who has done trial work knows, the lead up to a trial is intense, as is the actual trial. The hours are long and involve early mornings and late nights. Our witnesses were giving evidence and I was in charge of marshalling them. This was just pre the advent of mobile phones. I could call from a phone at the court to organise the timetabling of witnesses but I sometimes needed to pop back to our office to fax the notes of evidence to our expert witnesses, to delegate tasks to our secretaries or to collect things Gordon needed. On this particular day I had returned to the office at the afternoon adjournment to get the keys to the front door as Gordon anticipated the court would sit late to finish the evidence of the witness currently on the stand and we would need to get into the office after hours.

Upon returning to the firm for the keys I found our office manger in my office removing things from my filing cabinet and replacing my things with someone else’s things.

“Hello” I said. “What are you doing?”

”I am swapping your office with Michele’s office” said the office manager.

”Oh, well that’s interesting because I know nothing about this and nor does Michele. No one has spoken to us about it.”

”Yes you have been spoken to about it” said the office manager.

Now, Michele was away at the Family Law Conference. I was in a 5 week murder trial. My secretary was not working that day. My boss of course wasn’t there. I am confident that it had been impossible to tell us because we had not been there to tell - and if we had been there and told (a) I’d have remembered and (b) Michele and I would have spoken about it because we were friends and it made no sense to swap our offices. We were at the time both next door to the people who delegated work to us. I was also confident that the office manager had seized the opportunity, while no one was there, to mess with Michele and me.

”We have not been spoken to about it” I challenged. “Put our offices back, now“ I commanded.

The office manager ignored me and walked down the hallway with my files to Michele’s office.

I waited for her to return to my office. When she did I repeated myself. She insisted I was lying about not being told. This made my blood boil (and it was already simmering).

”Put our offices back” my voice started to rise. I could hear all typing cease in the hallway outside as the secretaries took off their head sets and tuned in to the drama unfolding in my office. The office manager started walking off again. “Don’t you walk away from me” I shouted as I followed her into the hallway “you will put my office back by the time I return or I quit. You can explain to Gordon that I did so because you moved my office without telling me in the middle of a murder trial.”

The office manger, still walking away, turned back towards me and shouted “Look, I’m just following orders”.

I screamed down the hallway at her “That’s what the Nazi’s said”. Some of the secretaries applauded.

I then shouted dramatically “I’m going back to court now. The choice is yours. If I return tonight and my office isn’t back, I won’t be coming to work tomorrow and everyone in this hallway knows why.” I flounced off back to court.

When I returned from court that evening - everything in my office was back in its place. The office manager and I never spoke of it again. Nor did she mess with me after that.

As I had suspected Michele had not been told about the office swap. Nor did our secretaries know about the said plan. Some months later, when Gordon and I were walking to our cars one evening after going to the gym, he said “I hear that you had a run in with the office manager during the Bradley trial and the secretaries loved it. Why didn’t you mention it?”

”Yes” I said “it was nothing I couldn’t handle and you had enough to worry about without adding petty office power plays to the mix. And plus it all worked out perfectly.”

”But what if you’d resigned?” he said “I’d have been screwed”.

”I wouldn’t have quit in the middle of a trial” I said “but she didn’t know that”.

We both laughed.

Morals of this blog:

1. Stand up to office bullies.

2. Do not move peoples’ offices without telling them.

3. Forgive disappointing people. They are not worth wasting your energy over.

4. People are usually thinking of themselves rather than of you.

5. When a person shows you who they are, believe them.

6. Godwin’s law of Nazi analogies occurred before I had the internet.