Today marks nine years since my husband died, and although this blog has pretty much been mothballed for a few years, I’m still here, still Fanny, still picking my way through the ups and downs of life.

The new chap? Reader – I married him, almost three years ago. After cancer (x2), bereavement, lockdown and the challenges of blending five kids from three different mothers and two different fathers (one dead) we seem to have bumbled along in our unusual but generally pretty happy family. It was nice to have a break from total chaos, so writing took a back seat while I picked my way through a new life of normality.

Shortly after our wedding, though, I hit a major depression which lasted for months – possibly because I was so unused to a non-eventful life, and still reeling from the utter chaos of the years before. So, I did what every middle aged wanker in a crisis does, and signed up for an Iron Man. Meanwhile, my twin boys have both struggled with their mental health, and one in particular veers so rapidly from crisis to crisis that being his only surviving parent has utterly drained me.

His story is not mine to tell. He is so loved, so capable, so bright, so kind, so brilliant, so very traumatised by events beyond his control. Perhaps one day I’ll fill you in on the last few years, but for now, I’m going to fill you in on my fanny.

Since my left boob didn’t succeed in killing me, now my gash is in on the act.

I am fortunate enough to have a woman who comes to our house to clean for us.  She hasn’t seen my nether regions, as far as I know, but she does have my PIN code and she regularly reorganises my knicker drawer.

She’s not just a cleaner. She’s a woman who has been an adopted part of my late husband’s family for 30 years, and is most definitely the best, most valuable thing I inherited from him. A straight-talking, four foot four force of nature, who’s lived on the same street of our small Northern town for her entire 62 years, bringing up her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren with love. She’s been like an extra mum/granny/nagging wife to all of us, and I’m pleased to say that she loves my new husband and his kids as much as she did my last one.

The bond between us is such that when she spotted, a few weeks ago, that my bathroom bin was almost always full of tampon wrappers, she raised the alarm. With my stepdaughter at uni, I’m the only female in a house full of fellas, and she said she didn’t think it was right that I was clearly bleeding so often. She apologised for being nosey but she couldn’t stay silent any longer. I mentioned the symptoms to a GP friend, and she told me that Tamoxifen, the cancer drug I’m on, can actually cause endometrial cancer, so it was important to get it checked out.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and I’m under a general anaesthetic with my legs akimbo, and there’s a Fanny Mechanic peering down my growler with a hysteroscope. The gynae couldn’t actually get very far into my womb (because of the big fuck-off fibroid that nobody knew about) but she did manage to take a biopsy. During the same procedure, she removed my copper coil, because coils can also be responsible for intermittent bleeding, and we had agreed to rule that out as the culprit.  

After the procedure, I felt as if someone had scooped out my uterus like a Hallowe’en pumpkin, but I was generally okay – just a bit groggy from the general. The following day, my back was so painful that I had to wear a heat pack, but I thought nothing of it. The day after that, I was taken into hospital with a raging temperature and what appeared to be a severe infection.

Because I’d had all the lymph glands removed from my left arm during cancer surgery, it’s only possible to cannulate and take bloods from my right. And because chemo has left my veins in a sorry state, even my right arm refuses to give blood without a fight. But without bloods, nobody knew the type or extent of the infection, and eventually an anaesthetist had to come down with his ultrasound machine to find a vein. I was put through the CT scanner and kept nil by mouth until bloods and scan results confirmed I wouldn’t need surgery straight away.

The scan showed a large mass at the top of my uterus which they believed was an infected haematoma – probably caused by a ruptured uterus and/or bowel – which had then turned into sepsis.

My husband was quite prepared to take the credit for the ruptured uterus, but absolutely not for the ruptured bowel.

Later, the theory was that the removal of my coil had probably taken a bit of uterus with it, which may in turn have been attached to a bit of bowel. Nobody really knows. Either way, the infection was serious – and the doctors were in a catch-22 situation: drain the infected mass and risk it going wrong (I’ve had so much abdominal surgery already that it would be an extremely dangerous procedure), or hope the antibiotics started to work quickly and lessen the infection day by day.

The antibiotics didn’t seem to be working and my temperature raged. I was worried. I felt helpless. When you have cancer, even if the prognosis isn’t good, you have a plan. You usually have time. This time, I was petrified. I didn’t feel well enough to sort out the admin of leaving my kids, marriage, and business behind, and didn’t even feel up to amending my Spotify Funeral Playlist which has changed a bit since I put it together (I suspect now we should be focussing on as many musical jokes as possible about fannies as well as those about tits, since both have now tried to end me). I even lost my twatting 536 day streak on Duolingo, parce que j’etais tres malade.

I asked the doctor to reassure me that I wasn’t going to die, and he said they were doing their best. They just needed to find the right cocktail of antibiotics. There wasn’t a lot of time, because I wasn’t responding to anything, but there were a few more drugs to try. All the doctors and nurses were absolutely wonderful. Caring, compassionate, friendly – I was in awe of them all. I can’t fault a single person I interacted with, apart from the jobsworth in the kitchen who circled the part of the menu that said “choose one” when I’d ticked both beans AND cheese for my jacket potato. And then they crossed off the fucking cheese – as if my overwhelming demands for extra dairy products were single-handedly bringing down the NHS. You can’t have a jacket potato with beans OR cheese. They go hand in hand, obviously. It’s an absolute fucking travesty.

After five days, the infection appeared to be under control, and they let me go home with oral antibiotics. I gratefully left behind the woman in the bed next door with all the enthusiastic chatter about her inexplicable heavy bleeding, and the woman opposite who gave half hourly updates on her clotting. I decided I wouldn’t miss Prolapse Lady in the bed over the way, either, who divided her time between online bingo and arguments with relatives, and who’d left her keyboard clicks on loud.

Two days later, I was back on the same ward with a raging fever and more severe pain. My veins were in such a poor state by now that they eventually had to get blood out of my foot, just to work out what antibiotics were needed.

My GP friend texted and called for updates every day, which was lovely, but I knew deep down that she was worried about me because her partner texted me too, and didn’t call me a cunt.

Even the fucking Pope got out of hospital before I did, so I began to wonder if there might just be something in the power of prayer after all, rather than the dark humour and sweary sarcasm that I’d always relied upon. I asked a few close friends (one of whom is a member of the clergy but nonetheless taught me the word “cumbrella”) to send some heartfelt messages to the big guy upstairs.

Another nine days, several scans, and the most heavyweight antibiotics later, my infection markers had come down, my haematoma had burst and made its way out the natural way (by causing what looked like a crime scene on my hospital bed, and traumatising another generation of small boys in the family who’d come to visit). I was no longer spiking temperatures, and was finally allowed home. The downside is that I had to go home with a picc line (a sort of glorified cannula which is semi-permanently installed in my arm) for daily IV antibiotics. These should – in theory – stop after today and the line will hopefully be removed in the next few days.

We’ve all heard horror stories about sepsis and how dangerous it can be, and I even heard recently about someone who’d lost both their hands to the disease. Relieved as I might have been to have wriggled out of washing up and hand job duties, I know I’ve been exceptionally lucky. The inconvenience and pain of the last five weeks is worth it if I can keep all my limbs intact, although it does look as if I’ll need a hysterectomy when I’m better – thus leaving me with barely any part of my anatomy which identifies me as a woman.

Annoyingly, over the last few months I’d been training every day and trying to lose a bit of menopause weight, which simply wasn’t coming off. But after three weeks in hospital doing nothing but lying on my back and eating biscuits (and jacket potatoes with beans and/or cheese), I’ve lost six pounds. Iron Man can go fuck itself.

Since the coil came out, I’ve had no intermittent bleeding either, and the scans and biopsies show no cancer. The only pressing concern now is how I’ll look after my husband whose vasectomy is booked in already, and who is already assuming that his forthcoming Major Bollock Surgery will render him incapable of doing anything for several months, other than having his fun truncheon tended to with plenty of loving care.

In another strange twist of fate, the date I was sent home from hospital was the 1st April, with my IV treatment to finish on 14th. My first husband was also sent home from hospital on 1st April, and he died on 14th. He didn’t have a picc line for drugs to make him better; he had a syringe driver for drugs to make him comfortable, and to see him off to sleep.

The first two weeks of April are always horrible for me and my boys, with the memories of their ever-more-frail dad, and the run-up to yet another anniversary, but it’s as if the time frame here is deliberate. I can spend an April looking forward to a new life, rather than dreading the end of one. The daily IVs are making me feel really sick and wiped out, but it means I’m not concentrating so much on the grief. I can’t decide whether my first husband is still here, deliberately holding my hands through it all and making sure I have a life to go back to… or if he’s saying “you think you’re fucking ill?”

Yet again, on 14th April, a long road opens up ahead of me, but this is the road to recovery. This time, I have a husband and five kids by my side – some skipping along, one backflipping, most bickering, and my new husband is holding my hand tightly, just as he’s done for the last few years. My first husband is with us all too – in spirit, in conversation, and especially in the weird little habits his children have inherited and carry through life.

Still, I have decided that’s this is the last time I let someone near my fanny with a blunt instrument. I’m sticking to cock from now on.

Love Fanny x