Shadow in Tiger Country
The extraordinary diary and memoir of just under one year in a woman’s life.Louise Arthur was diagnosed in February 1999 as terminally ill with a malignant brain tumour. It was inoperable. She was then 28, had been married to Tim for 5 years: and they have a 4 year old daughter.After reading Ruth Picardie’s book, Louise decided to write her diary – named Shadow Diary – on the web. She started in April – it was frank, poignant, funny, brilliantly observed. Tim also contributed – occasionally – and showed what life was like for him, for their love together. By June 1999, the ‘hits’ to the web site were running at 1,000 a day: she started a column in the Daily Mail: and Channel 4 decided to do a documentary on her.On January 11, 2000, Louise Arthur died.Shadow in Tiger Country contains selections from both Louise’s and Tim’s contributions to the Shadow Diary, but has also been written by Tim since her death, and includes samples of both Louise’s earlier writing and her photographs.
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Fourth Estate
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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2000
Copyright © Tim Arthur 2000
Tim Arthur asserts their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006532422
Ebook Edition © MAY 2016 ISBN: 9780008193317
Version: 2016-05-05
For CAITLIN
Contents
In January 1999, Louise began the diary on her website.
When I was fifteen I spent about six months in bed with a vague, undiagnosed condition described at the time as a post-viral infection by my GP. In retrospect I think this was a symptom of my condition, although it was not diagnosed for another nine years. From the age of eighteen I suffered from pretty appalling headaches and turned to alternative medicine for the answer, having had little help from my then GP. I was treated by acupuncturists, homeopaths, osteopaths, nutritionists, reflexologists, aromatherapists and various spiritual healers. No one suggested I had a brain scan or even intimated that they might not be able to sort out the headaches. During this time I was vegetarian and did copious amounts of yoga and T’ai Chi. I also spent a great deal of time searching for a reason within myself or on some spiritual level as to why I was in pain.
In 1993 I fell dramatically in love with Tim, who proposed two days after we first kissed. We were married three months later and are still blissfully in love. In November ’95 we had Caitlin, our gorgeous little girl. During the pregnancy I developed Homer’s Syndrome (a drooping eyelid), so when Caitlin was six weeks old I had a brain scan. What it showed was a very large ‘shadow’ in my sphenoid sinus in the centre of my head. I had a biopsy soon afterwards. A week before the biopsy results were due the hospital phoned at 8 a.m. and asked me to come in. I overheard the surgeon asking a nurse to ‘come in while I tell her’, and at that point I knew I had a malignant tumour.
He told me it was slow growing and I had had it for years – also that it was very likely to be inoperable as it was in ‘tiger country’. A couple of weeks later I met a fantastic surgeon, Professor Gleeson, and after a load of tests and scans he and a brain surgeon called Mr Strong did a twelve-hour operation to ‘debulk’ the tumour. After some recovery time I had a very intensive course of radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
That was all two years ago. I made a fantastic recovery, discovered photography, made a darkroom in our house, rediscovered all the important things in life and generally assumed I had learnt what I could from the experience of having cancer, that I was a happier, more fulfilled person and that I was in remission. I wrote in an article for Marie Claire magazine ‘I think the cancer has given me more than it has taken away …’
Just after Christmas I lost feeling in the right side of my face. At first I thought it might just be the result of a bad cold I had had recently, but when it hadn’t gone after a few days I rang up my GP, who told me to go back to Guy’s. After a meeting with Professor Gleeson again I was in no real doubt that the cancer had returned (or rather, never really gone away), but when I went for my scan results meeting I was expecting to discuss chemotherapy dates. What actually happened was that Professor Gleeson met Tim and me and took us into his office as opposed to his consulting room and told us, in a very caring and clear way, that I was going to die. He showed us the scans and told us that there were one or two people he could talk to if we wanted him to about the possibility of treatment of some kind. However, preliminary enquiries he had made indicated that no one thought they could do much more than slightly extend my life, and that at great cost to my health.
My memories of chemotherapy were not good, to say the least, so we decided to see if anyone thought they could help, but to reserve the right to decline if it looked too painful. In the event there was only one doctor who thought he might be able to do something and after he saw the scans he decided he couldn’t. The tumour is currently residing in the main vein in my head (which makes surgery impractical) and around the back of my nose (which is somewhat bloody). My face (well, half of it) is still numb, but I am in no pain and do not look any different.
